At 5:42 PM -0700 12/19/97, Bill Stewart wrote:
Tim brings up the issue of identity papers for jury duty - even if you feel like confusing the poor court bureaucrats by not bringing the PhotoID with SSN, Thumbprint, and DNA sample, there's probably a requirement to bring the jury duty summons. (Depending on your motives, your FIJA membership card is a good backup ID, or your ACLU card if you've got one - don't leave home without it.)
I'd guess that either an FIJA or ACLU card is a pretty good "Get Out of Jury Duty" card, if the jury consultants (if any) learn about it. (In small, local cases, they won't. Other means of evading that $5 a day wonderjob are advised.) On a loosely related note, I've wondered about the constitutionality of some of the exhaustive "jury questionairres" which potential jurors in famous cases are expected to spend several hours carefully filling out.
From what I've heard of some of the questions used in the OJ trials, the questions seem incredibly invasive and personal.
And the questionairres are hardly kept confidential enough (not that I would trust the court not to forward to the local justice officials some of the _honest_ answers I would be tempted to provide). In several high profile cases (OJ, McVeigh, Menendez, Wm. Kennedy Smith, etc.), it was possible to deduce that "Juror #7" was the one who said she was a drug-experimenting lesbian single mother of three who has religious objections to the death penalty and whose father raped her. And "Juror #19" is the recovering alcoholic who wets the bed and can't keep a job. The reporters were able to put the clues together easily enough. (And of course those who are in the courtroom can (usually) see the jurors and their numbers and deduce who is who.) I can't understand how a person can be compelled to answer questions about their personal views on abortion, on the death penalty, on blowing up Federal buildings, and so on. Seems to me one ought to be able to take the Fifth, or to say, "That's my private view." (Their claim will probably be that since one is not facing prosecution, taking the Fifth is not allowed. This is the logic used to compell testimony, even if it is later useful in a prosecution, criminal or civil, of the witness.) I last served on a jury in 1973. --Tim May The Feds have shown their hand: they want a ban on domestic cryptography ---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---------:---- Timothy C. May | Crypto Anarchy: encryption, digital money, ComSec 3DES: 408-728-0152 | anonymous networks, digital pseudonyms, zero W.A.S.T.E.: Corralitos, CA | knowledge, reputations, information markets, Higher Power: 2^2,976,221 | black markets, collapse of governments. "National borders aren't even speed bumps on the information superhighway."