Jury Duty all done!!

Oh dear didn't realize this cartoon was um what it was.

So, I have just completed jury duty for Coos County.  I am eligible again within the next three years.

The routine is like this, about 100 people assemble, get signed in, fill out waivers for fees and watch a video.  Then the court clerk takes all the names and goes off to randomly select the jurors. First twelve picked go into the juror box, no shilly shallying around.  Everyone gets to go to one of three courtrooms and once the lawyers have divied up the ones they want, we are excused.  The courtroom I went to was all about theft by receipt of stolen goods over 1000 dollars.  Now lets stop and think a minute.   It seems a little excessive that one hundred people, a judge, two lawyers, the defendant and various witnesses were all assembled for this exercise in justice for  goods costing 1000 dollars.  And if convicted, there are a few years involved in incarceration, parole, probation.  This is quite an industry.  I'm thinking an enlightened justice system could have a six person jury listen to the evidence, bind or free and judgement to serve public service.  Go clean up the cemetery, pick up trash by the road for six months, bring back the chain gang with umbrellas because this is wet wet Oregon after all.

And I do have some other experience for comparison; 70's in California, case was fraudulent check passing.  When I lived in Alaska you became eligible for jury duty after you had received a dividend check.  In Barrow the court was very brisk; my term of jury duty was for an entire quarter EACH YEAR.  I served on three juries; one was a mistrial when it was discovered that not every one had copies of the testimony, one was an assault and one was a DUI.
I also served on Federal jury duty in Nome, Alaska.  That was very interesting. The whole North Slope panel were called to Nome, some didn't make it past Fairbanks because it was a free ride to a bar that sold liquor.  That case was a sort of a sting, some Fish and Game official dressed as a hunter sold illegal mammal parts to some doofus dumb enough to purchase them.  I got a nice ride to Nome where the Iditarod ends.  It was very interesting.