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Jury Duty Issues
Just trying to make folks do some deep thinking |
The Love of My Life!
| Jury Duty Issues |
| 06.25.04 (7:55 pm) [edit] |
 Much of my adult life has been spent in the military and roughly half of my twenty-year adventure with the U.S. Army was spent overseas. Even when I was stationed stateside only half of that time was spent serving in a state for which I had a legal residence. While still serving in the military, the only time I can even recall receiving a summons for jury duty, my employer promptly took maters into their own hands. They contacted the court system assuring them that my job was considered vital to national security interest and that I was already serving in a higher civic cause.Since my retirement from the Army arrived, the call for jury duty started to become as regular as clockwork and the timing of the summons seemed to almost always come at the worst possible of times. My first four years after retirement were spent going back to collage and of course a student never wants to miss a class (yea right!), but especially an exam. Fortunately the local court system is rather sympathetic to collage students and it is a simple mater to just list the school of attendance and all is forgotten. (With all the 18-23 year olds around here that still trying to gel out of high school I'm wondering if this works for them too?) Upon graduation from collage it was time to do my civic duty and like clockwork the summons for jury pool selection came. Now I'm no expert on jury selection systems, but in my first call to the court all the potential jurist were seated alphabetically. Having a last name starting with an R placed me fairly far back in the seating. Albeit a lot of the potentials were rejected, the selection process was done well before the shysters got up to me. Upon leaving this selection a few things crossed my mind 1) Seating potential jurist alphabetically is about as dumb a concept as one could come up with and it bothered me considerably that the same people doing this were the ones ensuring that justice was properly and impartially being served. 2) There were a lot of drug possession cases being tried here and only one case among six was larceny, the rest were all dug position cases. For the record, I do not condone drugs. To me recreational drug use is a fool's errand and a sign of weakness. Self-control is too important an issue for me and I'm not willing to give it up for other than for a practical and legitimate reason. I can honestly say I've never used drugs for recreational escape, albeit I've become truly wasted on alcohol four or five times in my life, but not in one damned instance did I find the outcome enjoyable or funny. The only distinction I can make here with alcohol is that what I drink is consumed for the enjoyment of its flavor as a beverage; I do not drink to get a buzz. The problem with my friends, Jack, Johnny, Austin and Jose is that they can over power you in relatively small doses; it is not all that difficult to let them get control unless a good amount of self-will is exercised in the first place. My theory is, if you don't have self-will you shouldn't play with them. I'm fairly strict on a rule of not drinking more than one drink per hour or more than three drinks a day. Trying to ethicize drug use is not what I'm all about here thought. However, there are some aspects of current drug laws and their enforcement in the USA that I find very problematic and they go against my grain. As for laws focused on personal use and possession, I'm just simply not in favor of them. To me drug use is a medical issue and not a criminal issue. Now if I'm presented with a law that has exceptional penalties for breaking the law while under the influence then I've got no problem with that. DUI is an easy example of this, but committing a violent act under the influence of a drug also warrants an extra special severity in my book! Drugs are not an excuse for stupidity, but their abuse should be criminal if you let them become your excuse for doing something stupid or illegal. Our courts and jails are filled with personal possession cases and it is one hell of a waste of taxpayer's resources. I truly feel cheep legal sources of drugs would clean up a lot of the heinous crime that is associated with what is currently illegal drug use and that would be a positive benefit of drug legalization. It would be smarter in this case to focus on the illegal pedaling and holders, because the legitimate ones could be registered and monitored. Another problem with current drug laws is the inclusion of all hemp in this country as being tied marijuana. All marijuana is hemp, but not all hemp is marijuana and hemp could be and should be a valuable resource to this nation. It grows readily throughout the country and it is so versatile in its potential use. Its fibers can be used for making rope, cloth, and fine paper or plywood type products. Its potential as a fuel source could well surpass that of corn based fuels. Hemp has become a victim of a misguided conservative political cause and even its marijuana subset has some very persuasively useful medical applications as long as you're not a politician. Even then it is Ok just as long as you don't inhale. Paradoxically I will also state that in many jobs it is justified for an employer to demand screening and dismissal of any of its employees found to have drugs in their bodies. It all comes down to a case of rights but not necessarily rights without consequences. Dropping out of high school or getting married is not an exception to my concept here; they too are choices made with possible consequences but we see people do these things each day and it isn't a problem and often the outcome is not bad. After flirting with the Libertarian party for almost a decade a time came five years back where I dropped my affiliation with the old party in favor of the Libertarian one. Like all political parties it isn't perfect to my desires, but an honest and critical assessment of its ideology seems to conform more to who I am than any other party. The Libertarian approach to drug legalization is attuned much to my way of thinking, albeit admittedly this is not factor that drew me over to them. The party has a core platform of reducing the federal government back to constitutional legitimacy and letting the states have the majority of exercise in our government rule and I think this is wise. Now the last time I was called to jury duty it became obvious that I was going to be stuck with another personal possession case and it was painfully obvious that seating now favored me to get selected this time around. When the lawyers asked the prospective jurors if there was anything in their background that would possibly bias their decision to rule in favor of the law I raised my hand. Several others stated their case before with the typical response being, 'I've been busted for drugs; my family member is in jail over drugs, etceteras.' When it came to me I raised my registration card and said, "For the record. I think drug use is stupid and I have no doubt of my ability to rule in accordance with the law; however, I am a registered libertarian and not in agreement with many of those laws. Still, I am more than willing to serve on any other type of case but I would prefer not to serve on this one." At this point the judge started to scribble down some notes and asked for my name. I have never been called back to jury duty since that time. This in itself of course is a miscarriage of justice, because there was a wrongful damage case following this one. However, if your one of those people looking to duck out of jury duty... just try registering as Libertarian and then use my line of logic; it seems chances are good you will be black listed and never get called back to serve in a jury pool again. |
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