On Yearning To Join The Juror Clique, And Being Rebuffed

Left: Superior Court Of California, County Of Sacramento, 720 Ninth St., Sacramento.


This morning, after four hours of sleep (it's hard being a night owl sometimes), I hurried down for 8 a.m. jury duty call at the Sacramento Superior Court.

I was the second juror seated for voir dire from the third cattle call of the morning, in what appeared to be a shoplifting allegation against a Wal-Mart customer.

I was rather eager to be on a jury again. When I lived in Arizona, I was on two juries (homicide & DUI). The homicide case, in particular, was very interesting. The parties stipulated that the defendant had shot the victim (taking care of a huge swath of time necessary to present the forensic evidence) so the fairly-brief case turned on the jury's interpretation of what was really happening in the last ten seconds before the fatal shot was fired. For gripping human interest, better than what you see on TV!

But jury service is like a box of chocolates; you never know what you are going to get. So if shoplifting is the matter of interest today, then shoplifting it will have to be.

I was called for jury duty several times in the 90's, but in the voir dire process I propounded a jury nullification theory that the jury could set aside the law if the law got in the way. That's the American spirit! Independence! The lawyers, however, weren't that thrilled with my bracing, freelancing 'Live Free, Or Die' interpretation of criminal law. I was swiftly excused.

This time, chastened by the years, I left the lawyers little to work with in voir dire. I left blank the answers to:

Have you or a close friend ever been:

• employed by a law enforcement agency;
• a victim of a crime; or,
• arrested for a crime?

I was answering more or less correctly, but of course, in the deep past I've talked to crime victims or had stuff taken from me. It's been a long time (thankfully) since I've had a brush with crime, however, and it didn't seem germane today.

Nevertheless, the defense exercised its peremptory right to excuse me from the jury anyway. Why? Probably my Ph.D. in Atmospheric Sciences.

Now why should well-educated people like scientists and engineers expect to be thrown off a jury? Some people would suppose it's because education makes one resistant to the emotional appeals of the defense (and there is an element of truth there). But actually the reason is more because scientists and engineers tend to have a rigid, hierarchical sense of order that makes them ill-equipped to understand the moral elasticity required to participate, say, in your average drug gang or credit-card scam. The lack of imagination is the killer. And as in any proper clique, in the jury clique, you don't want to include harsh, unimaginative, overly-judgmental people who don't get it.

(But please, I'm not like those other engineers! Really! Gimme a chance!)

Sigh. Maybe next year....

Left: Fountain Sculpture, Sacramento County Administration Building, Ninth & H St., Sacramento.

Left: Downtown Sacramento Light Rail going hither and thither.

Left: The Old Governor's Mansion, 16th & H St., Sacramento.

For four years (1990-94) I worked in a building directly behind the Old Governor's Mansion (Jerry Brown grew up in this building), but I have yet to actually visit the big pile.