Jury Duty

man, like, you know, being picked for jury duty is such a drag. like, i wanna do it and all, but they make you do it at the worst possible time in the world.
i sent in the thing to try and get out, coz i'm running O-Day, which is on wednesday. i sent in my form and they told me to get knicked, and i had to come.
so i rang up sunday like they told me, the message said they don't need me monday, maybe tuesday. ring back monday night.
i'm happy to plead my case with them in person, but if they delay me again, i physically won't be able to go! very frustrating.

i do believe in being an active and vocal participant in society, they just make it pretty tough! what if we had to fill in a form every year, telling them the 4 weeks we definitely CANNOT do jury duty. at least that would give some allowance for the difficulty of just popping out to help out, for four-straight weeks!
furthermore, it would put it on the public conscience, realising that they are part of this society, they should actually give a hoot about what goes on in the courts and the government.

i watched the film 12 Angry Men (for a bit of homework!), where (look away if you don't want to know what happens) 11 of the jury are happy to convict the fellow, to a large degree just coz they wanna go home. the lone ranger (henry fonda), sticking to his principles, says no, he's innocent. they spend the better part of the night then discussing and being convinced he was indeed innocent, just because of the one bloke standing up for what he believed.

unfortunately that doesn't sound much like reality - i hear there are many hung juries, where people just can't agree so they give up. i have also heard of instances of people changing their mind due the pressure of being the lone nay-sayer.
neither of these examples give me much hope in the jury system.

the proposition of "majority rules" sounds ludicrous - i'm not sure if it got passed in the end, but am sure it would not solve the endemic apathy we see in this country.