I've been a slacker for the past few days. Instead of lesson planning and grading for school, I've spent a good portion of these last days before heading back to work watching a marathon of one of my favorite shows, Law & Order. I'm talking about the original series which ran from 1990-2010 and starred one of my favorite actors, Sam Waterston as EADA/DA Jack McCoy. For some reason, my thoughts turn to jury duty whenever I watch this show. I suppose it's because I often wonder how I would rule on these cases.
See I'm a rather unusual person - I love jury duty! I've been fortunate enough to be called for jury service three times and all three times, I was placed on a jury - once as an alternate juror and the other two times ended up being the jury foreperson. Why do I love jury duty so much? Perhaps it's my theatre background. There is no better theatre/performance art than the justice system - particularly the criminal justice system.
I'll give you a prime example. The first jury that I served on (as an alternate juror) was a criminal case with two defendants accused of 23 different charges each of rape, sexual assault, false imprisonments, etc. The two dirtbags held three people (two women and one man) hostage and abused them in all sorts of ways. I'd go home each day wanting to take a shower to wash the disgust off my body from listening to the testimony. The twist to this case is that the three victims were less than stellar citizens. They had gone into the building to score crack cocaine and ran into these scumbags; not that the victims deserved what happened to them - no one deserves what happened to them. See what I mean? Theatre at its best! Even though I was an alternate and couldn't deliberate on the case, I found out that the jury found the defendants guilty of 22 out of the 23 charges. Good!
The other two cases were a medical malpractice which we (the jury) found that the doctor and hospital were not negligent and the other was a slip and fall against the City of New York which got settled before it went to the jury. The medical malpractice case was fascinating and made me a little angry because the plaintiff got excellent care from the doctor and hospital and had the nerve to sue them. The last time I was on a jury was 5-ish years ago, so I'm about due to be called again. Fingers crossed.
Yes, I love the justice system. Is the American legal system perfect? No! But it's the best we have and it's certainly better than some countries - like countries in the Middle East - which enforce capital punishment for: adultery, homosexuality and apostasy. Yemen recently made headlines for its “child bride” case in which a 10-year-old girl was raped and beaten by her 30-year-old husband. In this case, the abusive husband was compensated for “losing” his wife through divorce while avoiding prosecution for rape. If you're interested in reading about the top 10 harsh legal systems, check out this article from AskMen.com. Truly frightening.
So yeah, I'll take the American legal system any day and twice on Sunday.
8 comments:
I've been called to jury duty several times and I've never sat on a jury. Mainly and I'm going to play the race card, I'm too white, middle-aged, upper middle class. The defendants are always 20 something black males and usually murder cases. One case was seeking the death penalty; the other not. The prosecution always give me a nod but its the defense that always rejects me. There's a lot of racial profiling going on in jury selection. As long as I live in Philadelphia I will never sit on a jury.
I love Jury Duty!
Tom, you don't know what you're missing. Time to move out of Philly - for more reasons than that. :-)
You know it. Have to sell the house first
I never get impaneled. Lawyers never chose other lawyers which is unfortunate because I know all their tricks. I would love to sit though. I thank you for not shirking your civic duty.
I love jury duty. Mar you might make it one day. We had a federal judge get selected one time.
Maybe when I am retired if that ever happens.
It's good to know that you are enjoying jury duty. As for your second case, this is a different take on what most people see on malpractice cases. Most of the time, the hospital or doctor would be found at fault. In your case, you and your fellow jurors saw otherwise. It's good to see things from the different perspective of jurors, so that people may appreciate the effort given in these cases, in both prosecution and defense. Thanks for sharing!
Gerard Gregory @ MediPro Solutions
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