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Jury Duty AngstSubmitted by lana on Fri, 06/06/2008 - 9:03pm.
I spent the past two days in the courthouse, waiting and waiting and then finally being selected for a jury. The whole experience was very interesting - I liked seeing and being a part of the process. The case was tricky though, and ever since it ended, I can't stop thinking about it. i mean, i get that just because you are found passed out drunk in a car that is running with the lights and radio on that has been apparently lost control of doesn't mean that you were driving the car. i get that deciding whether he deserved a DWI or a PI is an issue. i mean, it is illegal to drink and drive, and it is illegal to be drunk in public, less illegal than driving, but still illegal. the legal system wears me out when it comes to this kind of stuff, that is all. i am also grateful that somebody thinks that their decisions about another person's conviction is serious. that rocks. i am always excused from jury duty because of my profession, seriously, every time i haven't been dismissed for marking "atheist" on the card, it has been a drug or alcohol related case and the prosecutor never wants me. oh well. thanks for taking your civic duty so seriously. the way i see it, even if the guy wasn't driving, maybe the conviction will make him stop and think about being so intoxicated that he ended up in this situation. in my experience, it is almost always a cataclysm that propels change when it comes to this kind of behavior. so making the guy accountable for his behavior, whether driving or just so messed up that someone could drag him from the passenger seat or whatever into the driver's seat of a semi-wrecked car and then leave him there, may really help him. maybe not right now, but maybe. Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast? --heather c. since i wasn't there to hear all the OTHER explanations of how a very drunk guy ended up in a running car with an empty cocktail in the drink holder arranged in such a way that any reasonable person would have to assume that he had lost control of his car, what do you think he was innocent of? Did you have a brain tumor for breakfast? --heather c. |
that people on juries put their lives on hold to do their duty and really care about the outcome and are even considering it days later. And I get you, around here the cops seem really aggressive.
The positive side of me says that you guys may have been a wakeup call to him and maybe he will stop driving drunk. I would hate to think of what would have happened if I'd been waiting at a bus stop near there, Simon had gotten out of my hands for a moment and this dude had parked into him. I think in the book Breeder there's a story of a little guy who died that way. And not to diminish the seriousness of this, but the negative side of me says fuck him.
***the United States is one of only four out of 168 countries studied to not have some form of paid family leave for new moms. We join Swaziland, Papua New Guinea, and Lesotho in not having that policy in place. ***