Jury of Your Jeers

Serving on jury duty these last two days has reminded me why I’ve never particularly liked lawyers (and why I don’t think I could ever become one, at least a trial lawyer): they are full of shit. Few people (with the possible exception of politicians, most of whom were lawyers at some point) can hold forth for an hour, or longer, while saying so very little. If you value quantity over quality, you’d probably make a good lawyer. So it is with legalese, a dialect of English created solely to obscure reality and distract the hoi polloi from these two pesky things: facts and the truth.

And I wasn’t even selected to sit on the jury. Imagine my chagrin after sitting through a week or more of trial.

They continually exalted our system as the best in the world, and I am fully aware that it probably is, but that certainly does not mean it is the best it can be. I don’t begrudge the two gentlemen involved. I’m sure the guy whose knee was injured deserves a full hearing, and the defendant may have been completely without fault, who really knows. But two days to select six people seems like overkill. Had they cut the bullshit, we might have gotten through it all in one afternoon.

And the two white male lawyers picked an all male jury. Not one female was chosen to sit on the jury. Not even for the two alternates.