Jury Duty

Least Ridiculous Member Removed from Scooter Libby Jury

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Valentine's Day shirt Lewis Libby Scooter Libby Above the Law.jpgWe’ve given it almost no coverage here at ATL (largely because it doesn’t seem very amusing). But yes, in case you haven’t heard, former White House aide I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby is being tried on perjury charges.
The jury has been deliberating for over two days. And they’ve just lost a member:

The presiding judge dismissed one female juror in her 70s, an art curator, after she disclosed to her peers that she had come into contact over the weekend with information about the case of Vice President Cheney’s former chief of staff. The foreperson reported it this morning to U.S. District Judge Reggie B. Walton, who interviewed the jurors and decided the female juror had not intentionally sought to ignore his orders that all 12 jurors avoid contact with media coverage and any other information about the Libby case.

So having contracted the informational cooties, she had to be booted. According to the Washington Post, “Libby and several defense attorneys wore broad smiles at the news of the woman’s removal.”
But why were they so pleased? This juror seemed to be an independent-minded sort:

The juror, who had white-blonde hair and wore large, stylish black-frame glasses and took extensive notes, distinguished herself from her peers at one point during the trial. On Valentine’s Day, the jury filed into the courtroom’s jury box at mid-afternoon, wearing identical red T-shirts with a white heart. She was the only juror who had not donned a T-shirt.

Might this juror have turned into a legal as well as fashion holdout? We’ll never know.
Juror Dismissed in CIA Leak Trial [Washington Post]
Libby Juror Booted; Deliberations Go On [Associated Press]

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Non-Sequiturs: 02.23.07

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* Jurors become instant BFF over testimony of an intimate and sexual nature. [Los Angeles Times]
* Damned if you do, damned if you don’t. [Milwaukee Journal Sentinel]
* Turns out you actually can’t dance if you want to. [Newsday]
* As kids, my brother and I were familiar with only this constitutional amendment because of the “Second Amendment = Two arms” mnemonic aid. (We knew other things, okay?) [Volokh Conspiracy]
* Faux fur is, more often than not, real fur. As in real dog fur. So who is going to cast the first stone (or, rather, paint bucket) at Anna Wintour now? [San Francisco Chronicle]
* It’s getting hot in herre. [MSN]
* “Innocence most often is a good fortune and not a virtue.” One thing’s for sure — if you’re being tried for a crime, you’re SOL. [PrawfsBlawg]

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Morning Docket: 01.18.07

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alberto gonzales alberto r gonzales attorney general.JPG* AG Gonzales: Federal judges are unqualified to make national security decisions. [MSNBC]
* AG Gonzales: Federal judges should be making national security decisions. [MSNBC; Washington Post]
* Affirmative action takes center stage at Boalt. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Dahlia asks, “Have the Supreme Court’s opinions become suggestions in Texas?” [Slate]
* Linda discusses the Texas death penalty cases as well. [New York Times]
* Former Cendant Chairman Walter Forbes get sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison, on accounting fraud charges. The prosecution was handled by the U.S. Attorney’s Office for New Jersey; Forbes was represented by Williams & Connolly. [WSJ Law Blog]
* Picking a jury for the Scooter Libby trial in D.C., the biggest small town in America: it ain’t easy. [Washington Post]

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Congratulations to Ms. Monica Lewinsky!

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Monica Lewinsky Monica Lewinsky Monica Lewinsky oral sex blow job Bill Clinton impeachment.jpgAmerica’s SweeTart just graduated from the London School of Economics with an M.S. in Social Psychology. Interestingly enough, her LSE master’s thesis was law-oriented: an examination of the effect of pretrial publicity on jury selection.
(Monica: Please don’t treat that rolled-up diploma like a cigar. Thank you.)
Lewinsky graduates from London School of Economics [Reuters via Drudge Report]
In Search of the Impartial Juror: The third person effect and pretrial publicity [London School of Economics (Psychology Dept.)]
Nature of President Clinton’s Relationship with Monica Lewinsky [Starr Report]
Now Here’s an Oral Sex Scandal for You [Volokh Conspiracy]

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Non-Sequiturs: 12.12.06

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Traffic the Movie Above the Law.jpg* Fear not, you can continue the inexplicable and somewhat cheap practice of wearing buttons of your slain loved one when attending the trial of the accused perpetrator. [The Buck Stops Here]
* Think of the occasional theft as a write-off, which of course is moot since you’re not paying taxes anyway. And then rent Traffic, you clueless surburban kid. Disclaimer: I attended a suburban high school (but I never inhaled). [Sui Generis]
* Illinois wants to make it even easier for you to get out of jury duty. [Concurring Opinions]
* The choice of law school over medical school has its roots in our rather iffy math skills; but this is Yale Law, where the career center’s number-heavy cheat-sheet on the whole billable hours thing assumes (correctly) YLS students are the s**t all-around. [Precedent: The New Rules of Law and Style]
* We think that this four-year-old’s parents may have tried explaining the birds and the bees using such technical terms as “special hug.” We’re hoping that he did not use sound effects during the alleged, er, breast nuzzling. [Waco Tribune]
* An additional bullet-point to add to my disturbingly endless “Why Video Games Creep the Hell Out of Me” list. [San Francisco Chronicle]

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Morning Docket: 12.04.06

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* You have a right to a jury trial, whether you want it or not. [Atlanta Journal-Constitution via How Appealing]
* Santa’s big behind is gonna make kids want to drink beer?. [CNN]
* Now my case is at the Supreme Court, and I know why; because I got high, because I got high, because I got high… [WSJ Law Blog]
* It’s sad when otherwise good people get sucked into the seedy underbelly of the Arizona bingo scene. [MSNBC]
* Nice try, Jane, but a little too late to get your job on the Intelligence Committee back. [Jurist]

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Non-Sequiturs: 11.30.06

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* Jurors go wild… kind of. [AP via Yahoo! News]
* This could be your fate if you have sexual relations with any animal, dead or alive, regardless of law: you could be the posthumous star of a Sundance documentary. [Editor and Publisher]
* Do not think you can know go about suing the various characters in your dysfunctional family. [Seattle Times]

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Nothing Is Certain But Death, Taxes — and Jury Duty

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jury duty summons 6.JPGFor those of you who dread receiving that jury duty summons, some bad news: Jury duty is getting harder to avoid. From USA Today:

No one keeps national figures on jury duty no-shows, but the American Judicature Society considers the problem an epidemic in some communities, especially large urban areas such as Miami, Houston and Atlanta, where no-show rates routinely top 50%, says David McCord, a society spokesman.

As a result, “communities are emphasizing the consequences of skipping jury duty.” Jury duty dodgers can be fined or even sentenced to jail, USA Today reports.
In Washington, even “celebrities” — “famous-for-DC” folks, the types of people who regularly get Wonk’d — must also discharge their civic obliations. We wrote a short piece about jury duty and high-profile D.C. residents for the current issue of Washingtonian magazine (on newsstands now). Here’s an excerpt:

Karl Rove and Ralph Nader don’t agree on much—but both believe in the importance of jury service, and both got to practice what they preach, reporting for duty to DC Superior Court.

Rove—no stranger to grand-jury proceedings—was summoned for DC jury duty in July. He was greeted by several in the jury pool who recognized him, among them former secretary of State Madeleine Albright. Rove and Albright chatted amiably.

Like Rove, Nader has reported for DC jury duty more than once. “The pool is so small,” he says, “I get called every two or three years. I’m never selected, even though I want to be.” His consolation prize? Treating himself to lunch at the courthouse cafeteria, which he says has “pretty good food.”

You can read the rest of the piece — which includes an interesting anecdote about how George Stephanopoulos got out of jury duty, and some sassy words from Delegate Eleanor Holmes Norton — by clicking here.
(Shameless Plug: We’ve done a number of freelance pieces for print publications. Editors, please drop us a line if you might be interested in giving us an assignment.)
Jury Duty Is Getting Harder To Shirk [USA Today via How Appealing]
Who’s on the Jury? Not Nader or Rove [Washingtonian Magazine]

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