Those of you that know me also know that I was subjected to jury duty last week. Now I know that in america we "have the finest judicial system in the world" and "there are people in opressed countries who would die to be sitting in my place" and "blah, blah, blah" but actually serving woke me up to some rather startling problems with the system.

Like many of my friends I had never served before. Mostly because we are all freelancers and as the old saying goes - "If you don't work then you don't eat". But I was curious... how does the system work? So I went down to 111 Center St. and threw in my lot with the others at the criminal court building. For those of you who have never had this uniqe experience let me paint the picture. You are told you must come in at 8:30 in the morning (which for me is like telling me to pull out several teeth w/o anesthetic...) Then you are shown a lovely movie hosted by Ed Bradley and Dianne Sawyer telling you how lucky we are that we no longer use Trial by Ordeal on criminals. You sit and you wait until your name is called and then you are hearded into a court room where a judge tells you 1)You must take his word as the law 2)You must be fair and imapartial that no matter who it is on the stand testifying you must treat them all equally.

Out of the seven times I was called through the "voir dire" process 6 were drug cases -- petty drug cases or to be more precise "young black male on trial for selling a small quantity of drugs to undercover cop" cases. The only witnesses are cops and then I am asked to be "completely impartial" to this. I just sat and wondered how many other of these cases go through that building every day. Given that Iwas chosen randomly to go to a random jury selection I figure petty drug cases must make up a large percentage of the business conducted in the criminal judicial system. The frightens me. So you wanna know why I never actuall served on a trial. I live in New York so when someone tells me that I have to be impartial to a cop I am automatically gonna refuse. Let me tell you the story of one of my best friends who's a bike messenger and was pulled over by one of New Yorks finest for running a red light on his bike and when he asked what the point was of pulling him over (I've never seen anyone on a bike break for an entire red light) was hauled to the police station and the entire time he was in the police car the cops were trying to bait him into a fight so they would have cause for arresting him for example when he said he was from Maine the cop said and I quote "Maine, that's butt fucking country isn't it?" Luckily my friend had the good sense to shut up and let the cops get over their blood lust and got out of the situation with a fine. I am all for the legalization of drugs because no one forces anyone to be an addict. It is a victimless crime or rather at the worst you are a victim of yourself in which case you have no one but yourself to blame. The government wants to control you and govern what you can and cannot do with your body. As for the crime aspect of all this, a good argument can be made for drugs being good for business as far as the government and lawyers are concerned. I say all this because I can't be impartial when it come to cops because YOU MUST ALWAYS BE SUSPICIOUS OF THOSE IN CONTROL. If you don't then you are just another brick in the wall and Bob Dole becomes president.

Which brings me to my next point. This as you know unless you've been looking for life on Mars for the past 6 months is an election year. I've found that the candidates who are actually taking a good hard look at the way the country is run are not the immenently false Bob Dole nor the tell ya what ya wanna hear Bill Clinton and not even the cantankerous Ross Perot. But those wacky small party candidates. those candidates crushed by the Democrat/Republican multimilliondollar publicity machine. So to do my bit here are links to some of my favorites:

Harry Browne, Libertarian

Dr. John Hagelin, Natural Law

Ralph Nader, Green Party

Peace,
-riea