We’re blessed to live in a country where each and every individual (not you, felons!) can participate in the justice system. A trial by a jury of our peers is one of our inalienable rights, and serving as a juror is not only a privilege but a civic obligation.
That said, sometimes jury duty can be a dreadfully tedious ordeal that you’d really like to get the hell out of – like if the trial will last over a month and is about rich people suing other rich people over a bent building.
Here are some helpful tips:
- Declare yourself a sovereign republic. Tell the lawyers you are not subject to the laws or jurisdiction of the United States because you are a country from the skin inward.
- Approach the lawyers and ask, “Where the guilty one at?” This should result excusal on grounds of bias and/or grammatical malfeasance.
- Tell them you’re part of a daytime improvisational comedy troupe Mission Improv-able that will suffer hardship if you’re not there to provide base swears and crude scatological references.
- Rock back and forth mumbling
, “Man, I wish Carrot Top could see this.”
- When the attorneys ask if you can be fair and impartial say, “For $40 a day? Pick one.”
- Hold a quarter and keep referring to it as The Decisionmaker.
- Tell them you will be fair and impartial as dictated by Starfleet legal code.
- Frighten every attorney in the room by suggesting this could probably be resolved through binding arbitration instead.
“The co-op’s insurance companies refused to cover the collapse, and the co-op is suing them. The co-op is also suing the owners of the building next door, and the contractors, architects and engineers on the project. The owners next door at 72 Grand Street, in turn, have filed suit demanding that the co-op remove the sagging portion of its building.”
…and then everybody sued everybody until the lawyers had all the money. The Bastards. The end.
It’s the American way.
Personally I agree with old Willy S. “First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.”
Or cock your head, as if listening to a little voice, and say: “What dat? You say’n all of ‘dem’s guilty? I’ll get da locker key.”