You Made the Wrong Decision, B*tch!

This item properly belongs under the rubric, annals of incredibly stoopid criminals, but will skip the niceties.  An Anchorage, Alaska area-man leaves court last Wednesday after being convicted of misdemeanor theft of a GPS unit gets caught up in traffic in proximity to a female juror who participated in his court case and says something incredibly brain-dead.  This is reporter Rosemary Sinohara's account from the ADN:

"A 29-year-old man had just left court Wednesday after having been convicted by a jury of minor theft when he saw a woman juror in the vehicle behind him in traffic and started yelling at her, Anchorage police say.  Now Jeremiah John Paskewitz faces much bigger trouble. He was charged Thursday with threatening a juror with intent to retaliate against her, a felony that could get up to five years in jail plus fines [ . . . ]

Paskewitz had been convicted in the theft of a GPS unit reported to be worth $228, and of $100 cash. The theft charges were misdemeanors.

The juror, whose name is being withheld by the [Anchorage] Daily News at the request of prosecutors, told police that after the theft trial ended, she unknowingly pulled out of the Hotel Captain Cook parking garage into traffic at Fifth Avenue and L Street behind Paskewitz's Lincoln.

He noticed her, leaned out his window and yelled threats at her over and over, according to a written police statement.   Charging documents say she told police that he yelled, 'You're going to get what's f-----g coming to you, ...You made the wrong decision, b---h.'

The juror said she was able to get behind a police car, but he continued to try to make eye contact with her and shake his head and laugh. She told police she became afraid of him."

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Really, who needs this sort of grief after rendering public service as a juror?

Don't talk to the jurors.  Got that?

Prospective Jurors, Don't Tell the Judge to Go %#^$ Himself!

The Yuma Sun is reporting on the local citizen who returned a jury duty questionnaire with obscenities scrawled in black magic marker.  Superior Court Judge Andrew Gold was not amused and a warrant for the arrest of Timothy Michael Jones (not pictured) has been issued.

By the way, when Jones is arrested and if found guilty of of the offense of (indirect) contempt of court, he faces 6 months in jail and a fine.  Jury duty would have been a breeze compared to what Mr. Jones is looking at now. 

Angry Jurors!

Boy, here's a story to give the plaintiff's bar the "willies" according to the LA Times recession-worried prospective jurors are in rebellion in certain LA courtrooms.  The following is from Carol Williams's article

Spurned in his effort to get out of jury duty, salesman Tony Prados turned his attention to the case that could cost him three weeks' pay.  A Los Angeles County sheriff's deputy was suing his former sergeant, alleging severe emotional distress inflicted by lewd and false innuendo that he was gay.

Prados, an ex-Marine, leaned forward in the jury box and asked in a let-me-get-this-straight tone of voice: 'He's brave enough to go out and get shot at by anyone but he couldn't handle this?'  he said of the locker-room taunting.  Fellow jury candidate Robert Avanesian, who had also unsuccessfully sought dismissal on financial hardship grounds, chimed in: 'I think severe emotional distress is what is happening in Haiti. I don't think you could have such severe emotional distress from that,' he said of the allegations in the deputy's case.

The spontaneous outbursts of the reluctant jurors just as Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James R. Dunn was about to swear them in emboldened others in the jury pool to express disdain for the case and concerns about their ability to be fair, and to ratchet up the pathos in their claims of facing economic ruin if forced to sit for the three-week trial.  In this time of double-digit unemployment and shrinking benefits for those who do have jobs, courts are finding it more difficult to seat juries for trials running more than a day or two. And in extreme cases, reluctance has escalated into rebellion, experts say. After three days of mounting insurrection, lawyers for both the deputy and the sergeant waived their right to a jury trial and left the verdict up to Dunn.

'We can't have a disgruntled jury,' said attorney Gregory W. Smith, who represents Deputy Robert Lyznick in the lawsuit against his former supervisor. He called the panel 'scary' and too volatile for either side to trust.

Money woes inflicted by the recession have spurred more hardship claims, especially by those called for long cases, say jury consultants and courtroom administrators. More than a quarter of all qualified jurors were released on hardship grounds last year, according to court statistics. And judges say they have seen more people request such dismissals in the last year."
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The article is deals with the apparent growing problem of finding jurors who are not prejudiced by their perception of life in the Great Recession and the impact jury service is going to have upon them economically. 

I have extolled jury duty and the wisdom of jurors; but this story should strike a chord with anyone in legal peril civilly or criminally.  By the way, John Grisham termed this "the runaway jury" phenomena--well, this is worse, this is the angry jury.