Jury duty is an important matter. Trial by jury is a constitutional right in many cases. The Immortal Alcoholic saw an apparently drunk woman who was called for jury duty but escaped before being given a breathalyzer:
First Bailiff: “Are you drunk?”
Potential Juror: “No. I’m Ashley.” She held out a very shaky hand to the Bailiff, but he rebuffed the salutation. Ms Ashley’s mother stood next to her with a support hand at the back center of her daughter’s waist.
…
Second Bailiff: “What’s in your drinking glass, Ms. Ashley?”Ms Ashley: “It’s OK. It’s just water.”
Second Bailiff: “You won’t be able to take that glass into the courtroom.”Ms Ashley: “It’s OK. It’s just water.”
Ms Ashley walked away (with the aide of her mother) tottering on her high heels.First Bailiff to Second Bailiff: “We’ll have to do a breathalyzer on her. She’s smelly of the stuff.”
It’s not good to fail at the first stage. But lots of people want to be excused at the next stage – as reported by fromthesquare:
I was literally the last one called into the jury box – thus, the last person to answer any of the judge’s and lawyers’ questions – and I had heard all of the answers that the other forty-nine people had given. What struck me – what shocked me, actually – was the way that so many of my fellow prospective jurors exaggerated, obfuscated, and out-and-out lied to the judge to get out of being selected. There were quite a few legitimate reasons for people to be dismissed – this was for a criminal assault case that looked like it would come down to the word of the suspect against the two officers who arrested him, so it made sense for police officers, trial attorneys, relatives of convicted criminals and assault victims to be excused. What got to me was the large number of people who claimed that because their family’s apartment had been burglarized when they were four years old, or that Grandma’s purse had been snatched when she was seventeen, that they were not capable of being fair and impartial.
Thanks to the organ builder.