Newsgroups: alt.religion.kibology,alt.tv.murder-one Path: news.cinenet.net!news.ececs.uc.edu!newsfeeds.sol.net!wnfeed!worldnet.att.net!205.252.116.205!howland.erols.net!newsfeed.internetmci.com!18.24.4.11!newsswitch.lcs.mit.edu!world!kibo From: kibo@world.std.com (James "Kibo" Parry) Subject: True story - Kibo on trial for MURDER ONE!!! Sender: news@world.std.com (Mr Usenet Himself) Message-ID: Date: Wed, 7 Jan 1998 05:41:28 GMT X-Battlestar-Galactica-Date: 7145 centons, 96 microns, .02 monera NNTP-Posting-Host: ppp0a007.std.com Organization: welcome datacomp X-Newsreader: HotNews. Read, search, post to Usenet through your microwave! Followup-To: alt.religion.kibology Lines: 157 Xref: news.cinenet.net alt.religion.kibology:52101 alt.tv.murder-one:1847 X-Cache: nntpcache 1.0.6 (see ftp://suburbia.net/pub/nntpcache) You might think this true story is about Kibo's involvement in the Chris Farley or Kurt Cobain or Carl Sagan deaths. Well, you're dead wrong. If there's one thing worse than jury duty, it's jury duty where you get an interesting trial. You may recall that two and a half years ago I made some elliptical remarks about the month-long federal trial that destroyed my life while I was Juror Number One in a complicated case involving... um... something *OTHER* than organized crime. So anyway, almost three years later, I've almost caught up on the work I missed. The state (actually, Massachusetts is *not* a state, it's a Commonwealth; that's what they get for writing their Constitution before the United States did) keeps sending me threatening-looking jury duty summonses. I keep checking the box which indicates "I ALREADY SERVED ON THE JURY LESS THAN THREE YEARS AGO, YOU BOZOS, IT'S TOO BAD YOU DON'T USE A COMPUTER TO KEEP TRACK OF THIS STUFF" and sending them back. Apparently they're not smart enough to punch in the date I keep writing on the cards so they can send me one three years and one day after that date, because they've sent me three ineligible summonses this year. Your taxpayer postage meter at work! So I sent the last one back about two or three months ago. I came home from work at Friday evening and found one of the big Jury Duty Reminder notes which says REMINDER: YOU MUST REPORT FOR JURY DUTY MONDAY MORNING AT 8:00 AM IN THE MORNING BEFORE LUNCH OR GO TO JAIL FOREVER AFTER A JURY TRIAL WHERE ALL THE JURORS WILL BE REALLY CRABBY AT 8:00 AM IN THE MORNING. Apparently the pinheads had lost the card I sent back. There was a handy number to call, 1-800-THE-JURY (which bore a warning that it would work only in Massachusetts -- SORRY, TENNESSEE! You can't be on the Massachusetts jury no matter how much you want!) and I called it. It was a recording telling me that it was closed for the weekends and that I could call it Monday morning after 9:00 AM. The printer matter emphasized that 3,000 people call the number every day -- I'm surprised that recording hasn't worn out. Since they didn't process my ineligibility card, and since they mailed me the second notice too late for me to do anything about it, and since their phone is disconnected on weekends because it only gets 3,000 calls a day, I had to go on Monday to prove that I didn't have to go. And guess what? After my last service -- the huge Federal trial -- they neglected to send me the GET OUT OF JURY DUTY FREE coupon. So I didn't have the coupon to show them and the officer at the door, who looked kind of like Jerry Doyle with a worse haircut but thought like Jack Webb only without the sense of humor. He didn't buy my explanation or the various pieces of documentary evidence (i.e. the "YOU MUST REPORT FOR FEDERAL JURY DUTY APRIL 21, 1995, SIGNED, BILL CLINTON" letter) because I didn't have the piece of paper they didn't give me. He told me to sit down and fill out the Juror Questionnaire. I was assigned to Panel 11, Seat 5. They were impanelling quite a few trials that day, what with it being a Monday (because I didn't postpone service until a Friday because I knew I was ineligible to serve) and after a brief hour-long wait, followed by the speech from some judge telling us It Was Our Civic Duty, followed by the videotape of the sleazy lawyer (as seen on TV) telling us It Was Our Civic Duty (harp glissando. Title card: "YOUR CIVIC DUTY." yadda yadda yadda.) followed by another brief hour-long wait, they called for Panel 11. Another Jack Webb-like court officer packed 13 of us into the little elevator, where the guy in the corner barekly had room to stand on the officer who was standing on the elevator operator, who had clearly hated his job for the past 50 years, and we were ushered into a Jury Waiting Room. There was already a jury there, Panel 10. I thought, "Uh oh. Lots of jurors. This is clearly going to be some big deal, like that one I was on that wasn't about the mob." There was another brief hour-long wait. I noticed Panel 12 being stationed in the corridor outside the packed waiting room, and Panels 13, 14, 15, and 16 behind them. We were all marched down the stairs to a little courtroom, which didn't have enough seats for the hundred or so jurors. The defandant was a kid, looked about 16. He was on trial for Murder One, shooting someone with a sawed-off, and also doing it to someone who survived. And having a sawed-off without a sawed-off permit. All about two years ago, when the punk woulda been really young. He was wearing new pants that were about six inches too long. The judge introduced the parties and asked the standard questions -- whether we knew any of them or their families or if our families knew their families or if we knew anything about the case or cared about the outcome. Being an honest guy, as much as I wanted to not be on this monster case (the judge said it would last "about a month", i.e., two months) I didn't lie. I was in the 50% or so of the jurors who never raised a hand. After half the jurors were dismissed, they filled the jury box with the remaining people from Panel 10 and the first few people from Panel 11. Guess who got seat #12. I was shown to my seat by a court officer who even LOOKED like Jack Webb, but seemed slightly meaner. Next came the bit where the lawyers ask the judge to dismiss people that they thought had biases. The defendant's lawyer read through the Juror Questionnaires and called on a few people. I wasn't among them, of course. My hope was with the peremptory challenges. Now, those of you who watch TV news may know of "pre-emptory challenges". These are like them only spelled correctly. The lawyers and/or the defendant can simply ask that a couple jurors be expelled if they don't like their looks. This insures fairness because both sides have the same opportunities to skew the racial/gender/age/stupidity distribution in the jury, and any lawyer who is not incompetent (i.e. the guy with the pony tail and the Beatle boots in the not-the-mob trial) will use every peremptory challenge he can. The defendant's laywer, and the defendant, spent much time looking over the questionnaires. I felt sorry for the kid, because he was just a kid and he was probably going to go to jail, because he probably killed one and a half people, and he didn't have any friends smart enough to buy him the right pants for his trial. But he probably killed one and a half guys so I wanted to be extra-tough on him to make up for any bias I might have had for feeling sorry for him. Being an open and honest guy, I expessed my feelings freely, alternately smiling at and scowling at the poor little murderer defendant while staring at him as hard as I could in hopes that he'd notice me and tell the lawyer to get that creepy guy out of his murder trial. But they were too busy looking at the questionnaires to look at me. The lawyer was also careful to keep the stack covered with his clipboard so that we couldn't see what he was pointing at with his pen as he explained things to the kid. They dismissed a juror or two. My heart skipped a big fat beat as it looked like they were coming to the end of the peremptory challenges -- then sawed off another beat as I caught a glimpse of a big red "11-5" on the visible corner of the stack of questionnaires. They were discussing something dead center on my form that appeared to puzzle the defendant. I was dismissed. Yay! Being an open and honest guy, in the big "Occupation" box in the center of the sheet, I had written the same thing that's on my business cards. "Internet Legend". Anyway, to make a long story short, they sent me back to the Jury Pool (which was unusually dry for a pool) at 12:55, and at 1 they let me leave for lunch for an hour, so I walked down Scollay Square to the Stop & Shop to buy some Spam Lite. (I needed it for my Web page because, dammit, I'm an Internet Legend and my Web site talks about food products and similar items like Spam Lite.) I went back at 2, and after another brief hour-long wait, I went home, stopping at Northeastern University to take some video still pictures of the bizarro backwards "M" in the "MARINO CENTER" sign. As I got back on the train I noticed that, for some reason, some enterprising art student had done some wacky retouching to the T's "spider map" at the trolley stop: next to "BRIGHAM CIRCLE" station they had written, in fluid cursive, "<--- fame". Although, on closer inspection, they had cursived "lame" and someone else gave it an "F". So that day I learned two things: (1) Internet Legends don't have to be on juries. Sorry, lurkers. and (2) Not everyone loves the "Brigham Circle" sitcom. I still hope it never gets cancelled. -- K. I wonder how many letters a day that cable channel gets demanding the cancellation of Brigham Circle. What I want to know is, why didn't they do that for seaQuest DSV?