One Angry Scooter

There are very few ways to fulfill your civic duties these days. Since I don’t have enough money to get elected to public office, my options are dwindled down to two things, voting and jury duty, and last week I got to do both. First the easier of the two, I voted in the republican primary for the first time since distancing from the party for aligning themselves with one of the worst presidents ever only to show how out of touch with the party by picking the wrong horses in every race that had more than one candidate. Seriously, Ken Blackwell won? But enough boring you with Ohio politics.

As I reported last November (see I Rocked the Vote, I Think), the state when with the evil ATM voting machines. They changed my voting place this time around and this place went with alternating ATM’s with every other one turned the opposite way so there was less space, but still not enough to keep from looking over at you neighbor. And it’s never a good sign one someone is close enough to crack a “Did you get all lemons?” joke when your ATM tabulates your votes. But at least, since this was a primary, there was no wait as the place was a virtual ghost town aside from the comedian across from me.

Then there was the longer of the civics lesson last week as I got picked for jury duty last week. I had been summons twice before, once I was in line to be the alternate, so once the first person got tossed in the selection process, I was up, and promptly got tossed myself. It was an underage drinking case and I had just graduated from college and apparently the prosecutor must have taking Animal House too literal and though all college students were alcoholics so that ended my first jury duty experience. Then last year I got the letter, but there were no court cases that week so I never had to appear.

As for this time around, I was juror number three and since the first two didn’t show up, I was first one in the jury box and met both lawyers litmus test as I survivor their six juror objections. The selection process took most of the first day and had to break for lunch before anyone got dismissed. Not that they fed us or anything as I took the time to hang out in my car and listen to Jim Rome as I chowed down on some McNuggets.

The case boiled down to an old guy ramming into a high school dude who failed to yield the right away, which had already be decided when we got to the case. So this was a civil case, so the plaintiff only had to prove was a burden of proof and there was only eight of us, and a alternate. The case move really slowly and there seemed to be a lot of time where the people involved in the case were discussing thing with the judged while we were sequestered in the jury room. Speaking of the judge, the honorable guy seemed to care less about things. He constantly cracked jokes and spent a most of the trial on hip laptop, doing what, I don’t know. And when he wasn’t on it, he had his feet up on the bench or started wondering around the courthouse.

Then after three days of testimonies, we retired to the jury room. I was less than thrilled with the other jurors who routinely went off topic or talked about things that should have had no bearing on the case. Then came the hard part of assigning a dollar amount to pain and suffering as well as other intangibles, but at least, since we were in the deliberation phase, we got free lunch out of it, and it was enough to make it dinner that night too. I was disappointed to find out that we were giving no guideline on how to come up with a number because I’m sure it’s hard for any random person off the street to do so, so it would be nice if the government would help us civilians out. But alas, that didn’t happen so he had to come up with a number from scrap aside from an example from the plaintiff’s attorney that was extremely high. Being a heartless and ruthlessly cruel person, I was surprised to find that my number amount that I threw out was the highest of the group. And when, remembering my statistics days that it was much more accurate way to calculate things, I suggested that we take the median, I basically suggested to simply throw out my number.

So after about five hours, the Forman gave the decision to the decision and my civic duty, which will net me sixty dollars whenever the county decides to send me my check, was done until November when I undoubtedly will pick more losers. As for jury duty, hopefully the next bout will be the easier, beyond a reasonable doubt case.