I finally had my first day serving on a jury for Stearns county today. I made it to the voir dire (French for ”to speak the truth”, it is pronounced “vwa dear” by the French, and ”voyer dyer” by the bailiff today — gotta love Minnesota). After an hour and a half, everyone had been interviewed about a variety of things, and it was easy to tell who was smart (the branch manager of a bank, the guy who owned his own business, yours truly, and a few others). They needed 6 of the 14 of us for a misdemeanor trial, so they called out the names of the 8 people who were excused. Every smart person was kicked off the jury. The ones that were left included one man who, when asked if he could be impartial, sat silent for 10 seconds and then mumbled, “Yeah, I guess so.” (10 seconds to answer that question!)

The experience has shaken my faith in the legal system a bit. Here we have smart people being kicked off by lawyers so these lawyers can try to win their cases by persuading stupid people with arguments that smart people might question. A reverse Darwinian process, if you will, where the weakest are chosen. I guess it makes sense when you think about it, and if I were ever indicted for something I might want a lawyer who did the same, but it still just doesn’t seem right.

(There’s a good article in Time recently saying this is same time of Darwinism-in-reverse is happening with deer and other hunted animals, where the big and strong are prized and therefore shot and the weak are not. As a result, the species thrives by becoming smaller and weaker.)

One guy did get kicked off for cause, and I think his explanation was so good that there’s no way they could have possibly kept him. The defense attorney asked the jury panel if any of us had ever been in a courtroom before. This man raised his hand and was asked to explain the context in which he was in court. He said that he had been in court 4 times because he was convicted of 4 different crimes. The defense attorney asked if he ever had a jury trial. He said no, that each time he had pleaded guilty. When asked why, he said, “Because I didn’t want to waste everyone’s time, and I really was guilty, so just told the judge I did it.” When asked how his experience in court might affected his ability to be an impartial juror in this case, he said, “Well, I know that every time I was sitting in his (the defendant’s) seat, I was guilty. So it pretty much makes me think if he’s sitting there, he’s probably guilty, too.”  Sounds pretty logical to me.