Rod and Karen discuss jury duty, Instacart security check, Karen not saying what Rod is writing, show business, Coronavirus News, man bring arrow on school grounds, woman obsessed with Tim Cook, teacher laces students cupcakes with semen and sword ratchetness.
Twitter:Â @rodimusprime @SayDatAgain @TBGWT
Instagram:Â @TheBlackGuyWhoTips
Email:Â theblackguywhotips@gmail.com
Blog:Â www.theblackguywhotips.com
Voice Mail: 704-557-0186
Sponsor:
Site:Â ManScaped
Code: TBGWT
I’ve never been called for jury duty and i don’t know why. I’d hate to think it’s because i’m a poor Black girl from the poor Black side of town but thats all I can come up with. I vote in most elections City, State and federal and I was for a time donating to and volunteering with some community orgs, but I’ve never gotten one single jury duty letter. I wouldn’t mind being on a jury duty. maybe some day
I really appreciated Rod’s passionate thoughts about stepping up for jury duty and I also appreciated Karen’s openness and honesty about her reservations and concerns about serving on a jury.
I, like Rod, never wanted to purposely wiggle out of jury duty because I also felt it was important as a citizen to show up.
On several occasions that I was called I must admit I was very concerned about losing pay but fortunately I never lost more than 2 days of work, because I was not chosen.
That was until summer 2021 when I HAD to serve on a Manhattan grand jury. You guys… It… was… awful. I still support participating but I also want to be honest about how awful it was. Granted, I went in terrified of getting Covid, so that already sucked but in the end I was ok. None of my friends had served on a grand jury so neither they nor I knew what it would entail.
Basically I had to show up from 10am to 5pm for 10 straight days. A 10 day assignment is the shortest you can be assigned so that was very lucky. I knew that grand juries are very important so I was set to take everything seriously.
Basically we saw multiple cases a day but often left earlier than 5 and often had tons of down time just sitting in a freezing cold court room waiting for assistant district attorneys and witnesses to present cases.
It was NOT for the faint of heart, so this is where I empathized with what Karen was expressing this episode. My first day I cried 3 times and I hated it. Overall, it was traumatizing for me to have to watch videos of crimes and listen to horrific testimonies. Some were more on the innocuous side for potential felony charges (a simple robbery for example) while others were just an escalating scale of the worst crimes you don’t want to hear about.
I remember a fellow juror and I talking at lunch time about how they should provide some kind of therapy, we felt that traumatized.
My jury was somewhat diverse racially, (I counted the Black people and people of color every day)and just a little over 50% men. There were about 20 jurors in total but you need just 16 to proceed so the attendance numbers varied from day to day. We all worked hard and took it very seriously. We asked questions, debated vigorously, tried like hell to make the right decision: to indict or not to indict. If we voted not to indict, sometimes the ADAs would come back with more evidence and sometimes we changed, sometimes we didn’t. A lot of work. Still there were times when later that night or the next day I would think, Fuck did I just help ruin someone’s life? Did I vote correctly?Because you are trained to stick to the law and… Sigh. It’s a lot to put on regular citizens. But this is the system we’ve got.
I’ll go again whenever called but I actually hope none of my loved ones have to experience that.
I think some people might be able to soldier through it with more resilience than others.
Anyway, thanks for still producing so many great episodes while working a whole new amazing job, Rod.
Much love to you both, especially Karen. I love nodding in agreement when she talks. Karen be knowing.
I’ve been called to serve twice, but never actually sat on a jury. However as we speak I just got a summons in the mail to report for jury duty next month
Hi Rod and Karen,
Regarding serving for jury duty, I’ve been called several times and was an alternate juror on a civil trial regarding a car accident so I didn’t have to deliberate, and was on the jury for a criminal trial.
More on the criminal trial in a minute, but one thing I have to note is that this was in Manhattan where the jury pool is exclusively Manhattan residents, and I was shocked that it was like 90% white people. There were some asian and latino people, but very few black people. Maybe it was just a fluke in terms of who was selected at that time, but it was very surprising.
So, I was called as a juror on a criminal trial, and was initially horrified because things don’t stop at work and they expected it to be a 9 day trial. The subject of the trial was also awful, it was a sex trafficking case where a mother was pimping out her 15 year old daughter and the defendant (a black man) brought them to NYC for prostitution during the super bowl.
I wish it had been a situation where I could have stood up and kept a black man from an unjust conviction, but the Assistant District Attorney who prosecuted it put together an incredibly strong case. She actually reminded me of Chef Gregorio’s wife who is an ADA in the Bronx.
I think the Defense Attorney did his best, he even floated a notion that the defendant was bringing them from Florida to one of the states where you can buy cigarettes for cheap and then selling them in NYC, but it just wasn’t plausible. So the jury did convict him.
It was definitely an uncomfortable and disturbing process, but after it was all over I did feel glad to have been able to do my civic duty.
We dont have jury duty here so I will never know how good of a person I am in that way.
I’m still glad we dont have it because of how dumb some people are.