scrawls.

scrawls

still cheaper than therapy*

16.2.06

civic duty

Having now a few hours of jury duty completed - they didn't pick me. i think the prosecutor / assistant d.a. person didn't like me - i made a funny face when he asked Do you think this is a good law, that we have to wear seatbelts and well kinda no because if you want to go off and kill yourself who am i to stop you? why should the government be able to tell you you can't? but if you do try to go off and kill yourself and go zooming out the front windshield and hit somebody else then presumably that would hurt rather a good bit for the other person, and the government can have a responsibility to prevent you from hurting the other person, on, you know, public roads, so yeah, on the whole, it's probably an acceptable law. So i made a funny face but i didn't raise my hand - but i think they were the ones that peremptorily scratched me. but. stupid voir dire. which was dumb of them: because after that little part of it he told the jury selection bunch (there were eighteen of us, out of a hundred, that had actually shown up) that there was no chance to send this person to prison, and there was only a fine that we could decide to give him or not, and the fine was limited by law to be between twenty-five and fifty dollars. And this apparently crazed person had been not only driving without his seatbelt on, but he didn't want to pay the twenty-five dollar fine and had us all take the day off work, and presumably had to take the day off work himself (assuming he had a job, because i make more than twenty-five dollars in a day of work, and that'd be under five hours of minimum wage, too) and had to prepare for the trial and et cetera, and i have no idea how much it costs the state to hold a jury trial - they have to pay the justice and the baliff and the secretary-person and for a twenty-five dollar fucking fine, this Texan asshat clearly thought he was important enough and self-righteous enough that he could theoretically make a hundred people take the day off work and screw up everyone's week - plus this was on valentine's day - for a twenty-five dollar fucking fine.

But i'm sure that wouldn't be allowed to be part of the jury's fine-choosing process.

scrawled @ 16:55