unintended consequences: Davis recall leads to US internal passports

[Bill Stewart]

J.A. Terranson wrote:
> 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.

Well, as the button says,
   "Any 12 people who can't get off jury duty aren't *my* peers"

Aside from FIJA being an important political statement,
if you're not interested in that kind of thing,
bringing their literature with you to hand out to your fellow potential 
jurors (*before* you're hauled into the courtroom for a specific trial, so as 
not to be harassed for jury tampering) is generally a way to get yourself out 
of the process.  But yes, otherwise, whatever it was that Tim forgot about, 
no, I don't remember that stuff, unless they ask really precise questions 
during voir dire.

The last time I was in the potential-jurors pool, it was a case I'd have been 
tossed out of instantly during voir dire if they'd gotten to me (they went 
through about 50-60 people, and I was about #75 on the list.)
The prosecutor was making sure that all of the potential jurors understood 
that police never lied, and that just because the accused was a 5-foot-tall 
90-pound quiet-looking woman didn't mean that she couldn't have interfered 
with a cop during a family dispute situation, and I'd have had to answer the 
question about whether I'd been arrested for or convicted of a crime with 
something like "Well, the police agreed to drop the charges of interfering 
with an officer in return for me agreeing not to sue them"; the defense 
lawyer might not have liked me either :-)