Another Skinny Dip in the Jury Pool

I’m sorry. I still haven’t written up this story. There is a story behind it. A couple weeks ago, I served on a jury, for a short criminal trial, a case that should never have even been brought to trial.

You may be familiar with the classic scene in the prototypical courtroom TV drama. The jury is returning, after only having deliberated for an hour. The sympathetic defendant asks his attorney, “What does that mean? Is that good or bad?” The lawyer responds, “It’s good if the verdict is ’not guilty.'”

The truth, as I discovered, is far simpler. When the jury returns after deliberating for only an hour, what that means is that the court bought them lunch, and it took them that long to finish eating.

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I didn’t mean to. I didn’t want to. I got pushed in, as it were. That’s one of the things I hate about swimming in the jury pool; no one ever does so by choice. The other thing I hate is that it’s filled with shark-infested water. In this age of big-brother paranoia, there are two places I avoid if I can: government facilities and airports. But today’s jury pool experience was different than others I’ve experienced before. It seems, the Massachusetts court system has discovered the value of a good story.