Got summons for Jury Duty. Yay.

[Colonel MacNeal]

I recall a few years ago, a woman showed up for jury duty at a big city court wearing her Star Trek (Voyager) uniform, complete with mock phaser. She even had her hair done like Janeway. ---She was not selected.

[bikeolounger]

I was summoned for Jury Duty some years back (1997 or -8, if I recall--a decade before I started wearing kilts). It was local court duty, not federal.

I got to spend most of the week sitting in a room full of potential jurors reading. I was called for the selection process once, and wound up on a panel. The ostensible reason for the trial was malpractice (we found for the defendant), and while we were essentially instructed to not read between the lines, the real reason for the trial was far more political (and I won't go into it here, as this is not the place for the debate that would ensue).

When we were given the opportunity to deliberate, the panel chose me to speak for us.

Of course, the plaintiff attorney called to poll the jury (at the risk of speaking ill of the since-deceased, he acted a royal twit in the court room). He looked crestfallen that he'd lost the case, even though the case was more about spending his defendant's money on courtroom-associated expenses than about winning.

While I know important things are decided in court rooms, I considered this case to be an outrageous abuse of the system, by a supposed member of that system (the ambulance-chasing plaintiff attorney).