Jury Duty
http://jmcl.wordpress.com/2008/07/09/jury-duty/
Today, the county had a fairly light need — 96 jurors in the initial pool — and after a brief recess, a clerk told us that that requirement had dropped to 36 jurors. Fifteen or twenty people’s names were called and asked to return tomorrow after lunch for a civil trial, then 20 names were called from the rest of us for a single trial. I kept waiting for my “George Bailey†to be called (since that’s my legal name right now), but it never came, and they dismissed the rest of us.
No drama, no outing the tranny, nothing remotely like trouble.
I have no doubt that Callidora is right that I wouldn’t be chosen to serve on a jury, but I wonder why a transitioning transsexual shouldn’t be allowed to deliberate with the rest of her fellow citizens. Lawyers on both sides of a case can dismiss jurors, of course, and perhaps they excuse jurors to achieve a racial or gender blend. My professor friends claim professors never get chosen to serve on juries because both sides want more malleable jurors, but one of my colleagues, Andrea Easton, just served on a jury, so that bit of common wisdom clearly has exceptions. Would the very fact that someone changed their name and sex disqualify them in the eyes of the lawyers and district attorneys, even if that person is happy and eager to fulfill their civic duties?
