Those of us who have been subject to the military draft will remember getting that dreaded letter from the local draft board: “Greetings, you have been selected …”
Many of us feel a similar dread about receiving a jury summons. And, while forced military service is the more dreadful because it can be an existential threat, forced service to the judicial system is as infuriating for the same reason that all conscription is.
There is no greater imposition on personal freedom than having your very physical being involuntarily and ineluctably pressed into the service of others. There you are living your life, minding your own business, when with the suddenness of lightning your most fundamental freedom is forfeit to the state.
Habeas corpus are just two Latin words when your body has been confiscated by the authorities for involuntary servitude. Impressment for military service, jury duty, flood control or anything else is a form of slavery that has no place in a society founded on personal liberty.
While trial by an impartial jury is a constitutional right, there is no cause so noble that it justifies forced servitude. And, although some — especially those who make a living in litigation — claim that jury duty is constitutionally compulsory, there is nothing in the Constitution that says it is. On the contrary, the 13th Amendment explicitly prohibits involuntary servitude except for convicted criminals.
The lawyers and judges who lecture reluctant citizens about jury duty are paid considerably more to be in court than the $15 to $40 a day that those pressed into jury duty are paid to be there.
The median annual salary of California Superior Court judges is about $176,000. U.S. District Court judges’ annual salary is $208,000. And, as with most government employees, their retirement pay is lavish — often their full salary for life.
Easy for them to lecture unwilling jurors about civic duty, they have chosen to be employees of the judicial industry and are paid well for their work, jurors have not and are not.
The American judicial system has federal and state courts, each of which are authorized to round up citizens for compulsory jury duty at slave wages. Victims of this roundup have their lives put on hold until the court is done with them — which can be days or weeks.
It is outrageous and unnecessary.
A jury of your peers sounds noble, but who are your peers? This is a nation of vast civic ignorance, apathy and pronounced ideological hostilities. How likely are conscripted jurors to understand or appreciate even basic legal principles and civil rights?
One poll found that 50 percent of respondents thought defendants had to prove their innocence. How likely will “peers” drawn from the general public be intellectually capable to resist the sophistries of clever lawyers? How many can be impartial in imbecilically ideological America?
Lawyers survey jury pools not so much to find jurors who are intelligent, objective and dedicated to impartial justice, but those whom they believe can most easily be convinced to render a verdict the lawyers want. Justice is often secondary to winning the case.
Nevertheless, we like to believe that although the judicial process looks like sausage making, it will somehow yield true justice. In reality, American justice is the best money can buy — you just need the money to have the best chance of getting it, or at least getting the verdict you want. Lawyers and court costs are very expensive.
A lawyer is to justice what a quarterback is to football. You can have everything else in your favor, but if you don’t have a great lawyer or a great quarterback your chances of winning are diminished significantly.
The chances of having impartial justice could be improved, however — and we could end the oppressive practice of forced jury duty — by having volunteer professional jurors.
Professional jurors would be citizens vetted for the personal attributes and intellectual skills needed to be a competent, impartial juror. They would have completed standard instruction in the basics of law and court procedures. They would only be paid when serving, but at a higher rate than conscripted jurors currently get.
The financial cost of dragooning and interrogating prospective jurors under the current system would go away.
Similar to professional arbitrators, professional jurors would serve the judicial system voluntarily, and with a high level of competence and impartiality.
Finally, the cost and inconvenience of jury trials could be substantially reduced if there weren’t so many laws to break in America. It is a bitter irony that a nation founded on the principle of individual liberty prohibits and punishes so much of it.
Laws criminalizing personal choices that do no real harm to others — e.g. drug use, prostitution, gambling — have no place in a nation of free citizens. Last year, 32 percent of federal criminal cases were for drug infractions — 81 percent of those for marijuana.
I have been summoned for jury duty many times, both by the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles and the Santa Barbara County Superior Court. If ever a case involves victimless crime, I invoke the right of jury nullification. Even if the evidence is there to convict the accused, I would never cast a guilty verdict against someone for exercising a liberty that harms no one else.
Jury conscription is becoming an annual occurrence now that I look forward to as much as I do my annual prostate exam.
— Randy Alcorn is a Santa Barbara political observer. Contact him at randyaalcorn@gmail.com, or click here to read previous columns. The opinions expressed are his own.