Monday, July 02, 2007

Voted off!

I showed up to my second day of jury duty this morning and was voted off (well, "kicked off" is more technically correct) within 15 minutes of the court going on record. And, as predicted by my friend Danny when I first got my summons, I essentially got voted off for being myself.

There are various ways one can get kicked off --- in my case, it was a peremptory decision by the defense attorney. People can get kicked off in various ways but after a few really obvious people were dumped in those matters, the prosecuting and defense attorney get to alternate in kicking people off. It was the prosecutor's turn first today and then the defense attorney kicked me off during his first turn. When he had questioned me on Friday, my predilection for devotion to logic and stubbornness (the ambiguous location of the word "devotion" is intentional) came through like a beacon of light. He asked me how comfortable I felt about facts that "come out of left field" as opposed to ones that follow a train of logical progression, and I answered truthfully that I am less comfortable with those. I assume that's why he didn't want me there --- I imagine some of the stuff he brings into evidence will have that flavor. I also commented on the arbitrariness (and thus essential meaninglessness) of the phrase "beyond a reasonable doubt", which is in part what I think led to the defense attorney's line of questioning in the first place.

When I left, my going through the walk of shame very much reminded me of seeing people do that when they get voted off in "The Weakest Link", which is why I like the 'voted off' phrasing of this whole thing. When I left my seat in the jury box, I accidently tripped while walking down the stairs, which I suppose was a bit fitting for me.

On Friday, I accidently did two things that were "awesome". I was supposed to answer about whether I had previous jury experience and I indicated that I have "no experience", which led to a comment by the judge about Caltech people being generally inexperienced in life. This was completely accidental (albeit accurate). The truly "awesome" moment, however, occurred a couple of minutes later when the judge asked me what subjects I study. I answered "math and physics" and the judge said I didn't have to dumb it down that much and that I should be more specific. So, I decided that I was just going to give the short buzzword statements of what my fields are (the type I put on my CV) and I answered "nonlinear dynamics and complex adaptive systems". The entire room immediately burst out in laughter; this includes the defendant, who was using a Spanish translator. The judge didn't bother asking me what these things actually are, which would have taken a bit of time to explain (which is why I decided to be short and sweet).

Anyway, no more jury duty for me for a very long time because I'll be living in the UK by the time I'd be eligible again.

3 comments:

Lemming said...

Congratulations on your rejection!

Travis said...

I hear it's common for scientists to be struck from juries during voir dire, for precisely those reasons: strict standards of evidence, logical thinking, unlikely to be swayed by emotional appeals. The last couple of times I had jury duty I wasn't called in, so I've never been to that point myself.

Mason said...

Yeah, I definitely got the impression that the defense lawyer was going to try to appeal to people's emotions, which is something that just doesn't work with me. (This is what I was telling Zifnab at the Dodger game tonight.)

By the way, there is one more amusing thing I forgot to mention.

We started today with 11 people in the jury box, as the last person voted off on Friday hadn't yet been replaced. The new person comes in and is asked to state her occupation and so on. The case was about what a guy had allegedly done to some LAPD officers and this woman is someone who looks at documents for the LAPD and tries to determine if they've been doctored, and so on. After she said this, the judge asked her how long she thought she was going to remain on the panel. Indeed! (I'm sure she got axed by the defense not long after me.)