Petit Maul

Predator Press

[LOBO]

Nobody was more stunned than I that I got called for jury duty. Me? The battle-scarred tattered grease-splotched denim wearin’ working poor? I think the first thing I did was look in the mirror and sigh.

“Well” I reasoned, “I guess not all of one’s peers can be Barbie and Ken”.

Out of my respect, I dug deep into the closet for whatever forgotten “formal wear” I owned. (My favorite weather is when it’s so cold, people stop giving a shit about what they’re wearing; it’s a rare moment that I fit right in with my plaid shirt, green culottes, Tiffany’s broche and a 7th century iron codpiece.)

I was intrigued and –I must admit—a little excited at the prospect … for someone that only goes to court for occasional nuisance traffic tickets, this time I won’t be the one getting fried. I’m the State’s guest. This is analogous to going to Mars or something.

So skip ahead. A few weeks later I, Judicianaut, and 73 other “potential jurors” are eventually corralled into a courtroom, and intently listened to the judge announce the charges. And it’s then that I notice that the defendant and the defendant’s lawyer were black. I might never have noticed that little detail, save for that I was watching them amid a backdrop consisting of a white judge, white Bailiff, white court reporter, white prosecuting attorney, and a sea of 74 white jurors.

Out of 80 people in the room, two of them are black.

One’s the defendant.

The other is the defendant’s attorney.

My mind reeled. “How statistically probable is this?” I wondered. "How could our little representative sample of 80 people --Pianosians presumably-- be all white people?"

Small talk with a few other potential jurors did not alleviate my concern. Worse, some seemed to think that this was a good thing!

Ethan and I talked about it quite extensively:

ETHAN: “Potential jurors are selected by voter registration and drivers’ license record. Do you honestly think that there’s someone going through the drivers’ license photos and only selecting certain ones?”

LOBO: "No, I don’t. I think it’s far worse than that. Let’s give 'The State' the benefit of the doubt and assume they truly pooled these people at random. Racism, it appears, doesn’t need to rear its ugly head here because the overall institutionalized judicial process has conveniently “sanitized” itself --by virtue of the selection procedure-- in advance. Despite 'Rights' proudly boasting that 'All Men are Created Equal', it certainly seems evident that some men are considered more [or less] 'equal' than others."

ETHAN: [strokes his mustache for a second in quiet thought] "Have you ever seen the movie 'Twelve Angry Men'?

LOBO: "No I haven't".

ETHAN: "I've always wanted to see that movie. I heard it was really good."

LOBO: "Yeah, I heard it was really good too."

Zane is a fairly culturally diverse company … and I feel that reversed-racism sting --perhaps undeservedly—all the time. But knowing the whole damn national system is intrinsically skewed in the white mans’ favor, and at such a fundamental level as jury selection …

... Well, that just plain sickens me too ...