By Robert Merkin
I had jury duty last month. And was really nervous about it.
A few years ago I had a chat with a pal, an old retired professor who was the clerk of Quaker Meeting. He flat-out said he was going to refuse jury duty because he just couldn't be part of any trial that could send anyone to prison.
His wasn't a Grand Theoretical Quaker Objection to all incarceration. He was specifically refusing to serve as a citizen cog of the War on Drugs Gulag, with its monstrously selective racist targeting.
I had jury duty last month. And was really nervous about it.
A few years ago I had a chat with a pal, an old retired professor who was the clerk of Quaker Meeting. He flat-out said he was going to refuse jury duty because he just couldn't be part of any trial that could send anyone to prison.
His wasn't a Grand Theoretical Quaker Objection to all incarceration. He was specifically refusing to serve as a citizen cog of the War on Drugs Gulag, with its monstrously selective racist targeting.
I like to think I'm a very advanced political thinker. But this was way ahead of me. I was actually more than a little shocked.
But of course he was right. The WoD's wonderful and amazing mandatory minimum sentences (modeled all over the USA on NY's 1974 Rockefeller Laws -- still in their Original and New Extra-Strength Formula) means that most of the black and Hispanic and poor schmucks caught up in the WoD never face a jury. Even if their crummy public defender believes his client is innocent, he has to ethically advise his client to plead guilty to a lesser charge as the poor schmuck's only chance to escape a decade or two in state prison.
Because if the client says, "I want a jury trial!", that will boil down to a poor black street guy's word against a white cop's testimony. And 99 times out of 100, a mostly or all-white jury takes the white cop's word for it.
Is the cop telling the truth? The Boston Globe was the first major media outfit to write a big investigative series about "testilying" -- the systematic cop culture of perjury under oath in criminal trials. It's expected. It's part of the job. The prosecutors depend on it, and insulate themselves from accusations of suborning perjury by "don't ask, don't tell."
When a Boston woman cop told prosecutors that she intended to tell the truth at an upcoming drug trial, her precinct commander ordered her to duty Somewhere Else on the day of the trial, and threatened to fire her if she disobeyed his orders and showed up at the trial.
Is the jury all-white or mostly white? Are Hispanics and blacks getting a "jury of their peers"? In Springfield Massachusetts federal court, I was in a jury pool of about 250 people. I saw not a single black face, and heard not a single Hispanic last name called. And the drug trial I was nearly impanelled on, the defendant required a Spanish translator. Springfield has huge Hispanic and black communities.
Three years ago, the state supreme court publicly censured the DA of Springfield (Hampden County DA) for his efforts to impanel an all-white jury in a murder trial of a black defendant; the court gave the guy a new trial.
It was a little better last month in the state court jury pool of about 150 people. I think maybe I saw two Hispanic last names on the computer printout. Maybe one black face. I've seen suburban private country clubs with more color.
The trial I was nearly impanelled on had a white defendant. I was there just long enough to hear the indictment. He was maybe 24, looked reasonably cleancut and Caucasian, and was charged with breaking into garages and stealing stuff in a rural hilltown. The stuff wasn't worth much, but enough to make it a felony.
And that seemed rather odd. Why was he demanding a full-blown felony jury trial for such piddleshit? Why hadn't he pleaded guilty to a lesser charge and done probably less than a year in the county jail?
My wife figured that out. The nighttime burglary of the riding lawnmower was no big deal. But he was a two-time loser facing a Three Strikes sentence of Forever. The prosecutor was drooling over him and wasn't offering any deals. And he was fighting for his life.
But of course the jury would have never been told about that circumstance. We were supposed to think this was all about a lawnmower burglary. The deliberation would have been a quicky. We probably wouldn't have even been in the courtroom when he was sentenced to thirty years, because we'd have already done our civic duty.
But my Quaker pal had a plan that completely covered all these Naughty Little Secrets of the Jury System. He just was going to refuse to serve on any criminal jury. And, if asked, was going to tell the judge why. I knew him really well; he would have been delighted and proud to go to jail for contempt. And what a Smelly Noise that would have made in the newspapers: Judge sentences 80-year-old Quaker to jail for refusing to serve on a jury.
Plan B is Nullification. Lie and smile and dress like a Good Citizen to get on a jury, and then hang the jury, even if it's your Not Guilty vote versus eleven Guilties. Regardless of the prosecution's case and the sworn police testimony.
You can make a pretty compelling case that this is fairer and more just than Quaker Plan A. They'll just replace my pal with a more compliant juror who swallows everything. But a Nullifier actually makes a difference; you can't convict with a Nullifier in the jury room.
I guess it's a personality thing, but I like Quaker Plan A. It's honest and straightforward -- and so lets me contrast my beliefs with the lies and tricks of The System.
But I know that Lawnmower Boy was praying every night for some juror to sneak in there with Plan B.
I'm totally ripshit over all of this because I was raised to have the most awesome respect for the jury system. I was raised to believe that no matter how sneaky and unjust and racist the cops and prosecutors were, no matter how many millions of dollars the state spent to convict an indigent defendant, the community's ultimate protection was 12 ordinary citizens in a private locked room. And if they thought the whole thing smelled like 4-day-old sushi, they could ignore the judge's instructions, they could ignore the law, the sworn testimony and the "facts," they could even ignore the ineptness of the defense lawyer, and let the defendant walk free. And never have to explain their verdict to anyone.
Well ... the Ed Rosenthal jury trial ... several jurors, ordinary good square citizens, would have WANTED to let Ed walk ... but the whole thing was very carefully rigged, by a tag team of the federal prosecutor AND the judge, so they never got to smell the sushi.
We still have the right to trial by jury, but we've been robbed of its power to protect us from government lies and corruption. The War on Drugs and a generation of politicians screaming "I'm going to really get tough on criminals!" has turned the jury system into a cartoon sham.
If we show up for jury duty, WE DON'T EVEN HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE JUST AND FAIR ANYMORE.
* * *
OLD JOKE: "Suddenly I realized my whole life was in the hands of twelve people who weren't smart enough to get out of jury duty."
* * *
I'm more than a bit of a coward. I didn't want the Jury Duty Notice to careen me into some kind of contempt showdown with an angry judge. I didn't want to start the morning with "Okay, honey, I'm off to jury duty," and then have to call her that afternoon from the jail pay phone.
I decided to just take it one step at a time. I might end up on a boring civil lawsuit where nothing important was at stake. If I was headed toward a criminal case, I'd hope for softball questions I could answer honestly, like "Are you related to a law-enforcement officer?" or "Do you know any of the people involved in this trial?" The judge introduced the jury pool to all the potential witnesses, and these first softball questions were asked to the whole jury pool en masse; if you had a Funny Answer, you stood up, the bailiff wrote down your number, and the judge and lawyers later questioned you in a private sidebar conversation. I didn't have any Funny Answers.
Things started to get hairy. They filled the box with potential jurors. After a few were dismissed, I was called into the jury box. I was either going to have to say, "I refuse to serve on any criminal trial," or I was going to have to decide to be a Secret Nullifier.
The same thing happened that had happened in federal jury duty. The (woman, both times -- why don't women prosecutors like me?) prosecutor dismissed me without asking me any further questions or giving any reason -- a peremptory challenge. I was off the hook for that trial and for my entire jury duty. And I went home.
Whew.
There won't be a next time for at least three years. I don't know what I'll do next time. I used Plan C this time: Hold your nose, grit your teeth, pray for softball questions, pray not to get picked as a juror.
Which, in its own way, is as sneaky and creepy as the New Corrupt Jury Gulag System. But I didn't have to send Lawnmower Boy to prison for life. That task fell to twelve other people. (I don't know what happened to Lawnmower Boy.)
* * *
One other creepy little vignette ... and it's the reason I still feel I should show up for jury duty whenever they call me.
The first morning I showed up for federal jury duty in Springfield, we were finally allowed out into the hallways to pee and use the water fountain. Everybody was white, and nearly everybody was older than me -- almost all middle-class white retirees in their 50s and 60s.
Around the water fountain, a handful of these people were chatting. One woman said, "Well, I don't like jury duty either. But SOMEBODY has to put these people away."
We hadn't even been in a courtroom yet, or seen a defendant.
She was like that juror in "A Tale of Two Cities," who goes through the whole trial knitting a scarf that says GUILTY. And all the other people around the water fountain nodded in agreement and understanding.
By Jules Siegel
It is cloudy here where I live in Cancun today, folks. Very cloudy, very humid and very hot. We will have some cranky tourists. Speaking of cranky tourists, the World Trade Organization will meet here in September, peak hurricane season.
A Cancun User's Guide reader asks, "We were thinking of going to Cancun for our honeymoon from September 1 to 15. What happens if there is a hurricane?"
It depends on the scale of the hurricane and where the eye hits. Only direct hits cause a lot of trouble. The main problem is flooding. In the case of a direct hit on Cancun, low-lying areas would be evacuated. This last happened in 1988, for Hurricane Gilbert. We were living in nearby Puerto Morelos at the time and were evacuated to mainland Cancun. Everything was impeccably handled.
I'm sure the WTO delegates will be given high priority in case of an evacuation. These people are planners, you know. The advance team is arriving today to take over the Cancun Convention Center and get it properly spiffed up. I am tempted to look for an assignment to cover this. Then I think about the White Monkeys and other globafóbicos.
For the last big globafílico conference -- I forgot what -- the protestors (all outsiders) marched on the Hotel Zone, an island strip attached to the mainland by causeways at the airport and downtown Cancun ends. The state and city riot police met them at the downtown entrance and descended on them with bone-crushing fury.
Cancun's many affluent liberals screamed loudly, but one businessman said approvingly, "We can't allow these kind of people to feel that they can come here and make trouble." Against my will, I found myself agreeing with him, except I was thinking about the World Trade Organization or whatever it was.
While the police were beating up the hapless pacifists (and some of the press, too), I was in a taxi trying to get home. I live in the Hotel Zone, toward the town side. Access was blocked. We had to go out the airport way, usually $20 instead of $6. But the taxi driver charged me only $6. A miracle. Some would have charged me $50 because it was an emergency.
I gave him $10 and told him to keep the change. We beamed in mutual appreciation.
In the public debate that followed, more than a few questioned the wisdom of allowing contentious political events to be held here, especially Hotel Zone workers and businesses who were inconvenienced by the security arrangements. Armored police in black riot gear stationed all along the principal thoroughfare? Bloodstained sidewalks and ambulances? Is that the right Cancun image?
I raised these points with the businessman's wife. She said, "Did you see how they were dressed?" The usual student jeans, sandals and serapes, cheap serapes, too. "You would think that they would want to put their best foot forward for an event like this," she continued, her gold chains clinking approval. Maybe she was joking. I was afraid to ask and she gave not a single hint.