Okay, so we get 12 cats, and put them in a room with one large square on the floor that says “Guilty” and one large square that says “Innocent,” and whichever square has the most cats sleeping on it is the verdict. Y’all with me?
I was under the impression that all 12 cats have to end up in the same box.
If you want to fix it, put a cardboard box in one of them.
I can’t blame the jury commissioner who denied the request. I assume his thinking goes:
Cat accidentally entered into jury pool: Plausible, but checkable
Selfish person wanting to get out of jury duty by claiming its her cat that was called: Probably already happened to the commissioner before, earlier that week.
Well, you want a verdict sometime this decade, so I wouldn’t make it that stringent.
MA jury pool creation: http://www.mass.gov/courts/jury/the.htm
Somehow, the cat got on the town resident list as an adult.
I assume his thinking goes:
If I fix this now, it was just a mistake.
The farther this goes, the funnier it gets.
If the cat actually sits on a jury, it will be fuckin’ hysterical.
Oh yeah, bring him in.
In crayon? Oh, please, someone tell me it was in crayon.
Just an FYI - many towns in Massachusetts send out a yearly census form, completely separate from the once a decade federal form. I’d suspect she’s referring to that - IIRC, the one from my town does ask if you have any dogs. It’s a one sheet form, and most years all you have to do is sign & return it, unless the people in your household have changed.
Nope. You don’t have to be a registered voter to get called to jury duty. You’ve been watching too much “Monk”.
The whole thing sounds like a setup for that kind of sketch, doesn’t it?
We call that “playing the cello”.
They want to know if you have a dog, but they don’t care if you have a cat?
Don’t underestimate the ability of cats to lay down directly in the middle, between the squares.
If the prosecuting attorney taunts the cat with a piece of string, would that be jury tampering?
Often there are local ordinances that control the number of dogs per household but not cats.
Correct. And I’m not sure why, but somehow that makes sense to me.
Okay, gotcha.
shrug I’ve got all year.
Next you’ll be telling me I need a fish license, and half a license for my half-a-bee.
Don’t be so sure. When I was in college, the minute I registered to vote (in Georgia, where I was in school) I got a damned jury summons. Moved back home, changed my registration, there it was again. Some places just do the jury pool from registered voters.
I think this used to be almost uniformly true, but a lot of jurisdictions have been moving to driver’s license lists in order to expand the jury pool.
Judge) So what makes you think that you’re not qualified to serve on a jury
Cat) Well your honor, you see…uhm…well, I’m a cat
Judge) Motion denied
Of course, any trial lasting longer than 15 minutes is automatically a mistrial. Half or more of the jury pool will be asleep by then.
That was actually based on my experience of all the places I’ve lived.