Feel like bagging jury duty? Simply tell them you're a talk radio fan!
Howie Carr's recent column on how his name is being used to weed out "biased" jurors in New Hampshire (read: pro-punishment for criminals) had me chuckling.
Here's an even better way out: have a history of hosting talk shows, an even more heinous crime from the perspective of the Bay State's wacky court system.
Two weeks ago, yours truly had jury duty in the lovely metropolis of Brockton, absolutely nowhere near where I actually live.
Having not a clue where to go, I reported to the sparkling new mega-courthouse in Brockton's city center, which looks like a fancy hotel or upscale corporate office building amid the ruins of what was probably once a decent downtown area. Sure enough, I was actually assigned to the Superior Court building down the street, which is a smelly, dirty, crumbling dump.
That's where I had one of those my-God-what-am-I-doing-in-Massachusetts moments: prospective jurors were compelled to watch an introductory video featuring a sermon by Margaret Marshall, of our rogue Supreme Judicial Court.
With her odd, Barney Frank-meets-the-Kennedys manner of speaking, it was especially difficult to watch a reckless justice lecture us about the "rule of law" in a state where that concept exists only in theory.
Did the other hundred or so prospective jurors understand this as well, or were they indoctrinated into this absurd mindset decades ago? I ask myself that same question whenever I visit the RMV or another government office.
I came within a hair of being seated on a jury considering the fate of a young man who is accused of raping a mentally-retarded girl he met over the Internet. The crime occurred more than three years ago.
But let's face it, with a background in talk radio, there's simply no way the defense would have allowed me to be seated. Howie's right: that's one of the quickest ways to be sent home.
Could I have been fair and impartial? Of course. I don't know this guy or the victim and there's no way I could come to a conclusion about his guilt without prosecutors proving their case.
In fact, I'm inclined to believe talk radio listeners are more capable of being fair than the general population at large. They're certainly smarter and better informed.
But it will be a cold day in Hell before defense attorneys allow any of us to be seated inside that box.








