The Jury System

The Jury System
In a trial there are 13 people who are so closely allied it is astounding that anyone is ever convicted. The thirteen allied people are the twelve jurors and the defendant. The jurors and the defendant are the only ones there against their wills. How do ya like this system so far? The jury and the defendant are the only ones there not earning a living from the trial. In other words, they are the thirteen fools in the room. All the others, the judge, the court officers, the cops, the janitors, the court reporters, the clerks, they are all earning salaries while dealing with the case that is helping provide them with a car, a house, and a livlihood: only the jury and the fellow the jury is going to “decide” about are there, basically, at gunpoint. The jury however gets to leave everyday. As long as they come back. The defendant gets to leave too, if he has paid a small fortune in bail, as long as he comes back. But if he doesn’t have bail and doesn’t return home at night but rather to his cell, at least, unlike you, he does not have to arrange for his own transportation. It is provided by you. Via one or more of the million varieties of taxes you are required to pay against your will. However your taxes do not pay for your own transportation to and from the courthouse. Just the defendant’s. So in some respects it could be argued that the jury is actually even more reamed in the ass than the defendant is.
The jury system is a wonderful example of how anxious Americans are to “be a part of something bigger than themselves” against their wills. This impulse has apparently no limits. Americans will quite literally put up with anything as long as it is compulsory. I guess it tests and exercises their Yankee spirit of endurance, their virtues of patience, their sense of honor, their commitment to sacrifice, and their willingness to suffer in hopes of building whatever the legendarily-undefined quality “character” is.
While most Americans groan when the jury summons comes in the mail, at their very core they are convinced that they are doing something truly grand and noble when they report, namely, to probably send a total stranger to prison. Jurors think this is extremely patriotic. Jurors have never been to prison. Because felons do not get jury duty notices. Only people who have never been to prison get jury duty notices. So, hey, prison is no big deal to the average American. To the average American prison is where people who break a law belong. To a juror immune from the Dark Side of Democracy prison is some place people who deserve to go there go. In fact, nobody deserves to go to prison. Death is better. And cheaper. But jurors would not serve if every guilty verdict that warrants prison warranted death instead. Not that any guilty verdict warrants either. Jurors kind of know what death is. They have an inkling of it on some personal level. But they have no inkling or experience of prison. It’s designed that way. Otherwise they would never convict. That’s how bad prison is. And they would know. And they would never send anyone there. So jurors have no fucking clue what prison is. It’s worse than death. It is actually possible to justify killing people. With one clever and facile argument or another. Or even with one actually rational argument or another. But it is virtually impossible to justify imprisoning anyone. The new ( I am going to say President just because this is not my site.) … the new President, a few days into office, one of his most intense bloviating decrees, uttered with a fuming rage and the usual looking-left-and- right, and looking-left-and right, turns of the head, and the words pronounced righteously, and in his usual Black Panther-like cadence of droning house-music-like rhythms and cadences, he said, “The…United…States…does…not…torture.” He said it really decree-like. Like he was layin’ down the law. The new law of new change. He really needed to be more specific, though. What he should have said was “The United States does not a torture enemy combatants, who I have a certain empathy with. We will, however, continue to torture American citizens, since I am an American in an extremely marginal sense, both in spirit, and maybe even in fact, since we can’t find the paperwork.” He should have actually defined what he means by torture because prison is torture. Jail is torture. Handcuffs are torture. Arrest is torture. Having your property confiscated is torture. Having your life suddenly become confined to a small cement room, maybe for its duration, is torture. At least to anyone but an idiot. Or to a fucking Sith, maybe.The United States does torture, and even forces unarrested citizens to assist and participate in the torture via the jury summons. Obama decreed that the United States does not torture, and he probably actually believes it, because even though everyone says Obama is not stupid, believe me, he is. He’s a marginally-articulate zombie. Just like everyone in office. He’s no dumber or smarter than anyone else whose been “elected” to anything. In any office. In any government. Where was I.
Oh yeah, your complicity in torture via the jury system. The chances are usually 99% that anyone on trial is guilty as charged. That doesn’t mean they did anything wrong. It just means they broke a law. Usually the law they broke is one of the many laws that forbid people to own some of things that they own. Another fat percent of the laws involve the restricting of normal human-being behavior: a guy butts in line; you clock him. That’s illegal. So now everybody butts in line. A guy does anything to you of an asshole-nature and you clock him. That’s illegal. So everybody now does shit to you. ‘Cause nuthin’s gonna happen. And especially the assholes who don’t care if they go to jail: the psycho-assholes; they’ll do more shit to you than just the regular assholes. Resulting eventually in two segments of society out in public: the thugs and the douchebags. The heroes dare not show themselves. It just ain’t worth it, The heroes are all in hiding. ‘Cause they may be heroes, but they ain’t idiots. The thugs and the laws and the douchebags are against them.
If a juror speaks his mind and displays judgement he will not be selected for a jury. He still has to obey the summons however. If a juror has any sense of right and wrong and displays it in court, he will not be selected for a jury. He too still has to show up for the at least one-lost-day in his life, however. If a juror can immediately tell that the piece of shit shitting over there in the defendant’s chair is a piece of shit and is clearly guilty, just by looking at him, he will not be selected for a jury. If you have an opinion on anything you will not be selected for a jury. Unless you have been isolated in a sanitarium from the moment the crime occurred to the moment you showed up at court, you will not be selected for a jury. You still, in all these cases, have to respond to the jury summons. In order that the court can have a chance to determine for itself that you are smarter than a dead maggot, and thus be unsuitable to be on an actual jury. If you are so dull and non responsive and inert and lifeless that you actually do get selected for a jury, you will then basically hold the future of someone you never met and never had anything to do with and have never been involved with in any way and who has never done anything to you personally - you will hold command, literally, over his life. And you will feel that you are doing your duty to be doing this. And that is precisely why you were selected by the lawyers to be on the jury. Because you are a total fuckhead. Really. I’m not kidding. If you are on a jury, you are most likely, on more than one level, a completely unaware, completely irresponsible idiot. Who feels proud about it too, most likely. Whether you render a verdict of guilty or innocent – of the charges, remember, created by lawyers, not guilty or innocent, probably, of anything real – now matter how you render your verdict, you will likely leave the courthouse on your final day with a tear of civic pride in your eye and a good feeling in your heart. Because you’re stupid. Don’t feel bad, a lot of people are proud of being stupid. It seems to be the norm. See you in court.