Thursday I had to report for jury duty, as we all must sometimes, and needless to say, I wanted to be somewhere else. But a contempt charge is something nobody really wants on their record, and Ben's recent prison post reminded me that skipping out on jury duty, or being obnoxious enough there that they did give me a charge of contempt, was not worth going to jail, so I miserably set out with Rachael to make our 7:45 AM court date. Both of us were taking an unpaid day off of work, paying an un-reimbursed $14 parking fee, and possibly being landed on a jury for 7 more days?which of course would not be paid for me, as I'm an employee of the University of California, a state organization. Rachael never even got called, and spent her day sitting in the waiting room doing Sudoku puzzles. I was "randomly" thrown in with two dozen other prospective jurors for a battery case (what would be a misdemeanor, anyway) brought to court by the state, not even the victim. Each of the potential jurors had to list off their name, profession, and other info one by one to the court as a whole, and when it got to me, after stating that I was a graduate student in physics, the judge (a good-natured older man) interjected with "So you must be really smart, huh?" To which I replied "I get by." I found it a bit amazing, a bit flattering that I was the only person he said this to, despite there being a chemical engineer and computer specialist amongst the jury pool. Evidently, physics is still regarded as an impressive field of study.

At any rate, when the defense attorney was interviewing the prospective jurors, he asked if anyone would find it hard to convict in the case that there was little to no scientific evidence in this case (after noting that there were several scientists in the crowd). That is, would we be content with witnesses as the sole source of information in the trial. I replied that it sure wouldn't hurt to have some slightly more objective evidence, and when he said there were no recordings of any kind (somewhat hard to believe, since the alleged battery apparently took place in a public setting, and with the ubiquity of CCTV cameras etc, it seems like some recording would be possible), I asked "So, all we have to rely on is people?" I had not intended to sound so disdainful and mistrusting of my fellow men, but that's how it came out, and let's be honest: how well can you trust a person's memory after 4 months?

Needless to say, as soon as my name came up for potential assignment, the defense attorney said he would like to "politely excuse Mr. Colwell", and that was that. I was quite happy to realize that my objective, scientific standards kept me from serving four days on a stupid jury assignment, and I intend to make this opinion known in future jury selection processes.