For all of you guys who, in the future, may become prospective jurors in a United States Court of Law --- be it Federal, State or County --- here’s a piece of advice, which can almost guarantee you success. (Note that ‘almost’ is the operative key word in this context.)

Let’s start with the guys who operate the metal detectors. Use the words ‘your’ and ‘honor’ profusely; they like it a lot down at the Court. You can use these words separately or in conjunction, it’s immaterial which way, except if they are used together, ‘your’ should precede ‘honor’. And here’s another important thing to remember: most of the time, judges come in two varieties --- male and female, like in Joe & Judy --- and that’s where I made my first mistake. It has got to be my inexperience with the judicial system, but whatever the reason, I suddenly found myself searching for the feminine gender for honor, but couldn’t readily come up with one. So I called the judge “your honoress”, and that was a mistake! You simply can’t do that kind of stuff. I almost got cited for contempt of court. That’s right, you definitely don’t want to be stupid and call the big gal by a name that not only doesn’t exist in the Webster (even in the unabridged version!), but you chose to pull it out of thin air. I suddenly found out that I was in major trouble, and quickly tried to recover by changing the salutation to Ms Honor, but that also didn’t cut.

Who ever thought that Ms to her is a sexist expression? Your, on the other hand, is neutral, and therefore considered benign, but the problem there is that there’s no such thing as an honeress! Who would have thought?! You violate this basic rule, and you are in for a treat! You have compromised jurisprudence, or something Greek like that. I didn’t quite understand that part. Jurisprudence to me is not simply one big word, but it is a combination of five or more big words, which means something very deep in Sanskrit that is well beyond me.

Contrary to conventional wisdom and popular belief, the judge is not blindfolded. In reality, she wears a see through. False notion number 2: The judge does not sit on a bench. As a matter of fact, if it pleases the court, hers is the most comfortable chair in the entire courtroom. When the lawyers say they want to approach the bench, they’re not really approaching the bench. It’s the desk that they are approaching. The desk actually stays at the same place; it’s they who do the walking. One other thing: That commercial that we see on TV is not at all realistic. You can’t take a bio-break by writing a short note to the bailer on the yellow Post-It sticky and leave. You ask for a mother-may-I. That too, you need to ask it through the bailer; that’s what the law demands. You can’t so much as say to the judge that you want to go to the bathroom if it pleases the court. That’s a no-no! The court is never pleased to hear the B-word. You don’t control your biorhythm when you are in a court of law. The court does. You are under oath! And at the same time, you are also under a tremendous amount of hydraulic pressure. You’re the one that drank three large glasses of Coke because the restaurant offered free refills. You’re water solid! You’ve got to go, whether or not it pleases the court!! So what do you do? You simply duck and crawl on the floor to make your way to the side door by way of behind the judge. Whatever you do while crawling, don’t breathe, for heaven’s sake. The judge is no fool! Once you are outside the side door, you’re almost home free. You just pay a small (large?) tip to the court attendant (the barefooted guy in khaki), who will graciously let you use the john, after which you come back and take your seat in the jury box by the same route that you took to get out, and take part in the court proceedings as if nothing happened.

In the end, after you have heard all the arguments and counter arguments and depositions, you convict the guy or the witness, as appropriate. Remember, we’re all guilty by reason of insanity, and have the burden of proof, except the plaintiff’s lawyer, who gets paid big time. The defendant and his attorney are usually the guilty party, which you can pretty much tell by looking at their faces. They usually have that typical guilty look.

By the way, you can’t do any objections! At least on one occasion, I was at the verge of telling the judge that I have an objection to one of my fellow jurors who fell asleep in the jury box and started snoring, but I bit my tongue (which later got infected, but that’s not the fault of the court). I like the sound of it, like in “Ob-Jerk-Shun, Your-Honor!”, just like what you hear on TV, but apparently, that’s for the lawyers to say and the judge to overrule. We, the Jury, are not supposed to do that. I was later told that it has something to do with the jury pay that they give us at the end of the day, which amounts to a full thirteen American dollars, believe it or not! I tried to buy a modest lunch with it one day, and almost succeeded except for the fact that I had to pay the sales tax on the sandwich and the tip from my own pocket. But then again, this is America, felons, I mean fellows. The guys who go to jail make more money every hour from stamping out those license plates than the jurors will ever make in one whole day. You just don’t complain; it’s your civic duty to your country, remember? Guilty is the verdict! Well…, may be, because I’m not supposed to discuss it lest I compromise pruris-judence! Well…, whatever that word is, but you know what I mean…

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