Why Lawyers Suck Ass, But Judges Rule (4/6/2001) Being an American only guarantees a few things: National Holidays that revolve around gluttony; Crappy public schooling without even any complimentary bullet proof vests; Being the laughing stock of the rest of the world (for one reason or another); And being constrained into performing jury duty. The last one is the worst because you're forced to sit in a crowded box for days (if not weeks) and talk to, listen to and sit next to people that you hate and want to beat up, and you can't do anything about it. You might argue that the same can be said about relatives at Thanksgiving, or classmates in school, but you can always sneak away from them and/or bring a firearm of your own to the gathering. Not so with jury duty. They have metal detectors, bailiff's with weapons and evil lawyers that can put you to sleep to keep you in your seat. Not only that, but you have to listen to a case that involves one or more totally nefarious persons who you wish would drop dead of gonorrhea. In my recent tour of duty as a jury man I had two evil people involved in the case (not including the lawyers). The Plaintiff and the Defendant were both some of the stupidest, ugliest, stupidest, greediest and just plain stupidest semi-humans I had ever met. This is my story.

It all began on a stormy Tuesday or Wednesday or Thursday in March. I'm still recovering from the shock so the details are pretty hazy. I got a letter from the Atlanta courthouse that said I had won an opportunity for jury duty. That was bad enough, but what was worse was the fact that I had forgotten that I was still registered to vote in Atlanta and not my nice little college town of Athens, GA. I loathe downtown Atlanta. It's either 100% ghetto or 100% full on tourist trap. Both parts together are what hairy and horrible nightmares are made of. The courthouse is smack dab in the middle of where those two worlds meet. I got up at 5PM the day before my duty began so that I could make it through traffic and get to the courthouse on time. Atlanta traffic is as bad as LA traffic. Only we have more rage because we fucking live in Atlanta. Trust me, that would drive any sane fellow disturbingly mad in a matter of minutes. Anyway, I got there just before 8AM and signed in, then I took a seat in the already crowded waiting room. Despite the letter telling me to be ready and willing in the room by 8:15 nothing happened till something like 10. I had a book that I pretended to read while I ogled a hot little redhead two aisles diagonal from me. At 10 they lowered the lights and played the movie: "How To Be A Good Juror". It was like Chinese water torture. I tried not to pay attention to it but it kept hitting me drip by drip in such an annoying manner that soon my will was broken and I felt like I was as dull and inept as one of the morons on the screen (like the dude who didn't know how to sign his name or the chick who couldn't remember how to raise her right hand). After our collective IQs dropped to a reasonable level they turned the movie off and started reading out names. This was my last hope. If they didn't call my name I would have been free to hit some nudie bars or go back to Athens and sleep the rest of the day dreaming of nudie bars. But I was juror number 156 of the day and was promptly sent to Judge Cameron's courtroom. The only thing that made it seem somewhat worth while was the fact that the attractive Celtic lass that I was staring at before was also in my group. In the end though, little things like that just didn't matter. The Plaintiff of the case looked just like Mr. Roper. Only instead of being kind of cool in his smug, "better than thou" semi-arrogant personality, he was a totally arrogant sonuvabitch that I and everybody else who ever met him wanted to punch in the kidneys. What made me want to cover my ears and pray to Buddha though was his lawyer, the Al Gore clone. I wished for death.

We started out as a group of 42 potential jurors but we soon faced a traumatizing onslaught of questions from the attorneys as they attempted to weed out the pathetic and mental from the strong and smart. They apparently only wanted the ignorant and retarded though, which is how I got chosen. Throughout the questioning, I sat next to a very large woman with a whoooole lot of perfume on by the name of Rolanda. We started talking and making fun of everybody else's answers to questions like, "Have you ever had money stolen from you? And how did that make you feel?" Some were great, like the big angry man who responded "Hell yeah! It pissed me the hell off!" It was a good strategy and he was one of the first to go. Rolanda and I started a bet to see who could get out of jury duty first. I thought I had a good plan, but they got to 'Landa first. Initially they just wanted to know if there was any reason that she could not be available if the trial lagged on. She said, "You bet your sweet buns there is." The Plaintiff's lawyer, the dude who looked and sounded waaaaay too much like Al Gore despite the fact that he was the only one not in a real suit, was taken a bit back by the blunt response, but he composed himself as best he could and continued. "Why, Rolanda? What is the reason?" She just bobbed her head back and forth and said "Look, baby, if you keep me locked up in this jury thing for any length of time my 5 kids will kill each other at home! Now, you can take that as literally or figuratively as you wanna, I don't care.... And I just don't really wanna be here. That clear, sugar?" She got no further questions and she was the next to get to go. I never paid her the dollar I owed her. In the end I was the first of the 12 jurors (and one alternate) chosen. Those rat bastards. After we had been settled into our big ass chairs the trial quickly began. It was a fraud case. A very long and very dumb civil fraud case. Right off the bat the defense lawyer told us that nobody involved in this case is 100% innocent and that it was going to be up to us to see who was "less guilty". Turns out that the Plaintiff (the Mr. Roper-looking man) invested in a retarded pyramid scheme mortgage deal that went shady (as if it was not when he first got involved) and then died. Despite the fact that he made a good 95% of his money back he still wanted close to $1million from the Defendant (who coincidentally looked almost exactly like Mr. Soprano) due to stress, mental anguish or some other bogus bullshit like that. The Defendant wasn't even the Chairman, the President or the Accountant of the company he invested in! It made no sense!!! All I was asking was for it to make a LITTLE fucking sense! To the right you can see the Defendant and his lawyer, or at least reasonable facsimiles. Mr. Soprano shouldn't hafta be treated like dis. Dis is disgraceful. His lawyer, Teller, of Penn and Teller fame, tried his bestest to get him off so that he could start beating up old ladies on the street and stealing bottles from babies in the park after hiding dog crap in their baby carriages again. (to find out if the Rossman snapped and got thrown in contempt of court again! Go to PAGE 2) Or go to the EXAMINER Homepage