Friday, February 18, 2005

...this whole damn SYSTEM is out of order!

I have now been a juror. Yep. That happened. It's over now. I didn't convict anybody, though, so whatever. It's done. On the plus side, it allowed me to skip work for 3 days (with pay). I don't want to get into what the case was; it was just something fairly boring: this former pop star started molesting little boy-- eh, like I said, boring.

Actually, it didn't entirely suck. Trials on TV are inevitably dull regardless of how "exciting" the case is, but when you're watching it in person, knowing that you're partially responsible for the judgment of that dude in the chair, it becomes fairly compelling. In this one, a guy from the Rolling 60s (the pre-eminent L.A. branch of the Crips) grabbed a high school girl one night, stole her jewelry, and beat her up. The girl testified, as did the arresting officer, as did another detective who had arrested the guy (and about 100 other gang members) before. The defense had nothing. Their only witness was the defendant's aunt, who was so out of it that she couldn't even remember being arrested last year but was absolutely sure that she was with him during the time when the girl claimed he assaulted her. She also added that she was drinking with him all day and he was fairly drunk by the evening. I'm no legal expert, but I don't think that particularly helped his case. Anyway, after that it was over. They sent us into the jury room and when we came out, they told us the case had been settled. I presume it was a plea bargain; none of us stuck around to find out the details.

And now it's time to give away some music. Here's the song that was stuck in my head for most of the trial, and probably always will be, not because it has anything to do with the case but because it's too good not to listen to. It was given to me by Eti (she has no blog to plug here, so her name remains linkless) , who is responsible for at least 40-50% of the 2,285 songs on my iPod.

The Shins - Girl On The Wing

By the way, I have to credit Karri for the idea of using one's blog to occasionally give away music. I also have to credit Tom for the idea of the alkaline battery.

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