Posted on 08/24/2007 9:54:50 AM PDT by Marc Tumin
I, THE JURY
BY MARC-YVES TUMIN
The charge was stealing a dollar. The plea was "not guilty." The trial was in Lower Manhattan. The jury room was stifling. The jurors were slow to agree. The supper was in a downtown restaurant. The bus was free. The bridge was the Verrazano. The motel was in Staten Island. And it was all on the taxpayers' dime. What a nightmare! What a disgrace!
Yes, some years ago, I sat on a jury. The defendant was a man snared in a police sting.
Two women were arrested along with him. He was accused of robbing a policewoman on 14th Street. They were charged with assisting him.
In this case, the plainclothes officer hung out at a phone booth with some marked bills in her pocketbook. Backup cops kept an eye on her. Apparently, bandits were drawn to her like flies. Your man pleaded not guilty and the case went to trial.
Hundred of people were called in to Centre Street. A dozen unfortunates were chosen.
The prospective jurors were grilled by lawyers. What magazines do you read? Is any member of your family in law enforcement? Was any family member a crime victim? Do you have a problem with the defendant remaining silent?
To the last question, I said I did. I wanted to hear his story in his own words. The judge must have noticed my double-barreled moniker because he lectured me about how in this country you're innocent until proven guilty.
"Innocent until proven guilty" is a convenient legal fiction. And I happened to have been born here.
So I asked the judge if he was calling me un-American. He quickly retreated: Oh, no, never! The defendant's lawyers replied: "We thank you for your frankness."
When all was said and done, I was picked. Too bad we couldn't reach a decision by nightfall.
The court had us escorted to a restaurant and paid for our dinner. We were then bused, under armed guard, to Staten Island and there we were "sequestered."
We weren't allowed to read papers, watch the news or listen to the radio. That was to prevent us from being influenced by the mob of outsiders straining for a word about the high-profile case.
I recall a mature businessman lamenting the jury selection. He was immaculate in a three-piece suit and gold-rimmed glasses. His manner bespoke refinement, education, and seriousness. He couldn't understand why he was bounced. I think I know.
The selection process is part and parcel of the nanny state. Progressives prattle about civil liberties, evoke the specter of slavery, and shudder about a revival of the draft.
Too bad they ignore servitude to the intrusive census, the inquisitorial IRS, and the peonage of public education.
Jury duty is part of the training program to make people compliant to Big Brother.
One of the worst pieces of news you can receive is a summons to jury duty. It's up there with an audit and an eviction notice.
Junk justice, television judges, and judicial activists have had a corrosive effect on the public. The jury racket makes folks even more cynical.
This wolf's head mainly serves the needs of lawyers and judges. It's a prime example of the welfare state run amok. Perhaps that's why the press and broadcast industry is so enthusiastic about it.
Business bears the cost along with the Little People. The educated and the intelligent are winnowed out: Attorneys seek subjects they can fool, whose behavior they can predict and manipulate.
Prospective jurors are compelled to fill out lengthy questionnaires about one's habits, thoughts, and personal history, including one's family.
If you're less than honest, it's easy to give the right answers to serve or not to serve. And how do you know if an unwilling juror will render a true verdict?
Progressives tout self-esteem, but how can anyone be proud to serve as a juror? The remedy? Start by making trials less of a game. Eliminate plea-bargaining, the exclusionary rule, and the juvenile laws. Let jurors cross-examine the defendant. And add the verdict: "Not Proven."
Most importantly, make unaccountable judges run for office, and compile a pool of professional jurors: an all-volunteer army of enthusiastic people, ready, willing, and able to serve.
Too bad there's as much chance of this happening as a "None of the Above" lever on voting machines.
Marc-Yves Tumin is the associate publisher of the Irish Examiner.
Copyright ©2006-2007 The Irish Examiner USA
So, was the guy found guilty or not?
By the way, I The Jury was a great book.
Can you give us the Reader’s Digest version?
It’s a Mickey Spillane Mike Mammer novel from the ‘50’s I think. How bout the Wikipedia version?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/I,_the_Jury
The idea that the jury system is part of the welfare state is not historically accurate.
The jury system has its roots in Olde England, perhaps as far back as before the Norman Conquest.
Very little welfare, or state for that matter, around in those days.
Thanks. I’m going to check it out.
I love all the old Mike Hammer novels. Politically incorrect, tough as nails and Spillane is a great writer.
Agree on all counts.
I sort of agreed with everything except the part about professional juries. An incredibly stupid idea.
When all was said and done, I was picked.
They should have bounced this clown so fast his head would spin -- and then sent him back to the jury assembly room to let him serve on some traffic case.
Micky is OLD SCHOOL
After the Pearl Harbor attack, Spillane joined the United States Army Air Corps the next day, December 8, 1941. In the mid-1940s he was stationed as a flight instructor in Greenwood, Mississippi, where he met and married Mary Ann Pearce in 1945. The couple wanted to buy a house in the country, so Spillane decided to boost his bank account by writing a novel. In 19 days he wrote I, the Jury. At the suggestion of Ray Gill, he sent it to E.P. Dutton.
With the 1947 hardcover and the Signet paperback (December 1948), I, the Jury sold six and a half million copies in the United States alone. I, the Jury introduced Spillane’s tough detective Mike Hammer. Although tame by current standards, his novels featured more sex than competing titles, and the violence was more overt than the usual detective story. An early version of Spillane’s Mike Hammer character, called Mike Danger, was submitted in a script for a detective-themed comic book.[2]
Bet it was the defense that wanted him seated. The state musta burned through all their peremptories.
Agree, and I'll never forget something he wrote years ago to aspiring writers:
"The first page of your book sells the reader the idea that he bought the right book...
...and the last page sells him on the idea to buy your next book..."
Jury duty is part of the training program to make people compliant to Big Brother.
Uh. . .what?
I notice that Mr. Tumin spends a lot of time whining about the system but doesn't offer any idea as to what would work better.
Seems to me Mr. Tumin just resented having to spend time on a jury and wanted to rant about it.
What a loser.
There are some things wrong with our jury system, the main thing being that judges fail to acknowledge the power that the jurors actually have, which is greater than that of the judge. On the whole our system is a good one.I am not totally happy with the way juries are selected but I think the idea of a "professional" jury is terrible, to me a better idea would be to take the first 12 people regardless of who they are, instead of letting both sides try to stack the jury in their favor.
What a whiner.
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