Thanks to Susan Cartier Leibel, host of today’s fantastic Blawg Review, this story from the northern hinterlands of Yankee spontaneity, Vermont, proving it’s dangerous to walk the streets. No, not crime afoot, but a wacky judge bent on filling out a jury pool.
According to this story, Judge Harold Eaton Jr. wasn’t satisfied with putting together a jury pool the old fashioned way, so lacking enough jurors for his upcoming sex trial, he sent deputies into the streets of St. Johnsbury to round up some more.
Caledonia County Sheriff Michael Bergeron and three uniformed deputies stopped people on a sidewalk in front of the post office, asking if they lived in the county. Those who did and were 18 or older were given a summons to report to the courthouse.
That will teach them for using snail mail.
Now most people will jump through hoops to avoid jury duty, despite the fact that all lawyers know how thrilling it is to sit in a seat, day after day, and listen to lawyers talk for hours. But what do you do when you’re walking along, minding your own business and some uniformed fellows with guns ask you a question? I bet these good folk of St. Johnsbury wished they had read my post about being left alone.
Apparently, they succumbed to the badge, admitted their residency and were immediately summonsed for jury duty before Judge Eaton. It’s funny, except the summons were real. You have to wonder if they thought Allen Funt would pop out at any moment and tell them to “smile”.
Over defense counsel’s objections, the judge filled out his jury pool.
According to [Sheriff] Bergeron, “99.9 percent were just excellent” about being summoned.
I’m sure they were all just thrilled to have their lives disrupted, without any opportunity for preparation to clear their schedule of whatever activities and responsibilities that ordinary people have, to be commandeered into jury service. Most people would just love the opportunity, right? I wonder who these find Vermonters will blame when they think of the problems this kidnapping has caused them. Oh, maybe the miscreant defendant who’s demand for a trial forced them onto a jury a theoretical gunpoint?
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Uh, uh. The trial is the prosecutor’s show. He can stop it at no personal cost whatsoever. And if this ever happens to me, I’m explaining that to every juror on the panel.
That’s just not the way it happens. No one is going to say out loud that the defendant is responsible, but that’s going through the jrurors’ minds. And you don’t get to explain it to them. There are places that lawyers aren’t allow to go. So there’s no dicsussion, just hidden blame and anger at ruining their day.
Er, I’m not a lawyer, but I’ve been a juror twice, so by “if this happens to me” I meant that if some judge ever dragoons me onto a panel, I’m going to be looking for a way make everyone responsible sorry for it.
At least that’s what I’m saying here, where some smart lawyer might google it and have me struck for cause.
I keep forgetting that you’re not a lawyer. lol.
And if you’re ever googled, you will never sit on another jury again.
I think I’ll take both of those statements as a compliment.
Every once in a while, I feel stupid for posting my half-assed opinions where real lawyers will read them…then I realize that posting on the blogosphere means never having to have qualifications, and I get over it.
They were both meant as compliments. I try to avoid using “lawyer” in the pejorative sense. It upsets the natives.
Though I completely agree that its ridiculous to get jurors off the street in modern America, that actually is “the old fashioned way” of putting together a jury pool. In colonial America, the jury was first selected of people from town meetings, and if there weren’t enough jurors, the rest were taken from arond the courtroom. This actually resulted in an impartial jury in the trial of the British soldiers in the Boston massacre, as the town meetings were controled by the Sons of Liberty.
However, we are no longer in colonial America and modern people picked off the street probably would be resentful.
Crispus Attucks is long gone, and so too are the days when jurors were rounded up in the town square.
my cure to being left alone is simple–stick a hearing-aid in one ear. People think you are deaf, it actually works well. some will say things around you they would not had you not had the hearing-aid in an ear!!!