unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports

[J.A. Terranson]

On Wed, 10 Sep 2003, John Young wrote:

> Don't ever respond to a jury summons by showing up or calling
> in. If you do then you'll forever be in the sucker-responsive data 
> base.

	For many years I believed that failing to accept jury duty was simply
the wrong thing to do - by serving, I had hoped that I might find myself in a
position where I could prevent a true miscarriage from fucking over some poor
shmoe.  Or, given the right case, possibly help keep an honest to god bad guy
(as in rapist/murderer/<fill in your favorite violence here>) off the streets
for a while.  

	Because of this misguided belief, I responded to all of the various
jury summonses that came in.  But, as John noted above, the more I responded
to, the more I got, until at the very end (yes, you *can* stop them from
coming - read on), I was finally confronted with almost one per month
(fed/state/locals all get their shots, and they can do it over and over again
if you don't get selected).

	As infuriating as the barrage of summonses was, what really stuck in
my craw was that I was simply not "juror material".  Once I was asked what I
did for a living, I rarely saw a second question before being stricken, and
those that did arrive were invariably the "have you ever been a victim of a
crime yourself?" - say yes, and you're done: go home, thanks for showing up,
see you tomorrow to play this game again.

	By the time that I, in my amazing density, finally realized that
trying to "do the right thing" was pointless, I was staring at an almost
career in Jurydom!  It was totally out of control, and when I dared to
mention to the droids that I wanted out as I had been there just 6 weeks
before, I was told that that was just tough, and please have a seat over
there Juror 135...  No manner of pleading or kvetching had any effect
whatsoever.  I even tried to complain to one of the judges, who kindly
reminded me that she would be quite pleased to make my stay in her court a
little longer if I didn't STFU...

	Finally, in desperation, I answered the next summons with a
mission.  When asked the standard questions as to disqualifying information,
I answered that "Sure, I can serve.  I finished my time, and my parole is up
next month".  After getting the "you've gotta be kidding" look over the
glasses, I was of course asked as to the reason for my unfortunate
status: Aggravated sodomy and attempted vehicular homicide, "But it really
wasn't my fault - she was just *asking* for it".

	Sent home, never got another summons from *anyone*.  If anyone tells
you they don't share list information, they're lying their ass off.

--
Yours, 
J.A. Terranson
sysadmin at mfn.org

	"Every living thing dies alone."
	Donnie Darko