jury duty

I was just reading some of the responses on questionnaires by potential jurors in the Barry Bonds perjury trial (for telling the grand jury a few years ago that he never knowingly used steroids). Some of the responses are so over the top (stuff along the lines of “Oh, Barry Bonds is my life. I could never find him guilty”) that one suspects these people are simply trying to get themselves excused.

For years, several of my friends and family were repeatedly summoned to jury duty, while I had always escaped it. Last year I was finally summoned myself after all these years, but living in Egypt turned out to be a good enough excuse to be absolved of duty.

My favorite jury duty story… A good friend of mine in Chicago was summoned. He went to the extremely inconvenient location on S. California Avenue early in the morning, and sat there all day as the opposing lawyers grilled dozens of potential jurors for hidden biases.

The last potential juror of the day was a Chicago police officer. One of the lawyers asked him a standard question, pointing at the defendant and asking if he knew him. The policeman’s response was something like: “Yeah, I think I arrested him once.”

The judge then called both lawyers to the bench, they conferred, and all of the jurors were sent home permanently. The policeman’s statement was ruled to have contaminated the entire juror pool, and the day’s work was completely wasted.