I've done my civic duty

[jenioctavia]

Jury duty, man... what a weird experience. Even if you DON'T get picked the process alone is defiantly a change up from anyone's usual day.

But I got picked.

Yes, that's right. Me. I was a juror for a whole two days, waking up at hours I haven't been awake for in months, going to sit through a case and listen to evidence and testimony and in the end I along with five other people decided the fate of another person.

I wish I could say that the case was something big, but obviously by the admittance of 'two days' you all can probably tell that it was a minor case at best. But it WAS typical Eugene weird, that's for sure.

Still, this was some one who honestly deserved it and I'm glad it ended the way it did.

So here's a run down of it.

The charge was Criminal Trespass in the Second Degree. That basically means this individual was on a premises he had been asked to leave by persons in charge multiple times and in the end he refused to depart the property and was arrested for it.

The reason he was asked to leave?

Not because he actually broke on to the property itself, but because of what he was wearing.

"What? How can a person be kicked out for something like that? Especially in Eugene!" one might ask.

Well there's more to the story than just that.

Every year in August, Eugene hosts the Lane County Fair, as this is the home of said Lane County Fairgrounds. Now anyone who knows how some county fairs are knows that a great deal of them are HUGE and usually only rivaled in size by the state fairs (and Oregon's State Fair is nothing to shake a stick at. I've been twice my entire life and both times I don't think I've ever fully explored the entirety of it) and run for days if not weeks at a time. Lane is no exception. But being Eugene we have a rep for people coming in clothing that's not always... modest, or even lacking clothing. Truth is, yes it happens, but security for the event (run through a contracted company) is allowed to basically tell you "put a shirt on" or "go home and change and you'll be allowed to come back". Obliviously they don't catch EVERYONE and sometimes people will remove clothing once they're inside, but again, one of the jobs of security for the event is to make sure no one is getting scarred for life by seeing Bubba J's massive naked protruding belly hanging over a pair of barely there Daisy Dukes.

I'll let you bleach your brain for a moment before we continue.



Good now?

Good.

Let's go on.

There's also a special day every fair called Children's Day/Kid's Day what have you where children under a certain age get in for free. Kids are ALWAYS at the fair but on Kid's Day they are there like some one opened the flood gates to the under-10's of the world and you can't take a step without crashing in to some one who barely comes up to your waist.

And apparently every year for the past eleven years, the same man has shown up.

Scruffy, nearly-homeless looking, kind of creepy... the sort of creepy that gives you a vibe from across a court room that makes you very glad to know he's not going to take the witness stand in his own defense. The kind of creepy that makes you wonder "should this man be allowed near children AT ALL?".

And it gets worse from there.

Every year he shows up in the same shirt - something similar to this.

Only his version looks like it might have been hand airbrushed by some one who might not be as skillful as the machines that mass produce this one and has probably been around the block more than once with how worn it is.

And that's still not the worst part.

It's very nearly all he wears. There's some kind of thongish thing beneath it (thank god I never actually had to SEE IT. Augh. Can I have that brain bleach back now?) but in every angle you see of this guy, it really does look like the shirt is all that's there. It leaves very little to the imagination.

And this guy has the gall to say 'women/mothers and children like to take pictures of me!' about it. Ugh. Gagging now.

Anyway, moving on, cause the case did pertain to that, however it didn't exactly pertain to the fact that he's been doing this every year for the past eleven or so years.

This time around, unlike previous times, when he was asked to leave he refused to. He was asked by THREE different security officers until finally they had to call the EPD in and have him arrested. While he avoided Incident Exposure by being... achem... "covered" down there, he was still on a property he was being asked to leave and refusing to do so.

I honestly felt bad for his defense attorney. She was much more well spoken than the State attorney (poor guy was a bit of a stumbler with his words, but he was cute and was trying his damnedest) but she was basically grasping at straws the entire case, asking for proof of contracts and other things (like a list of people who have been removed from the property before) during the case when clearly they would have been/should have been asked for prior to the case. She was trying so hard to get a plea of not guilty based on the fact that he was supposedly arrested for his attire, which realistically he wasn't. He was trespassing by his actions, pure and simple.

Everyone of my little group was in agreement. Guilty, most definitely. We barely had to deliberate on it. In, out, done.

No idea what his sentencing is going to be 'cause that doesn't happen until later, but I might see something in the paper on it.

And that my friends was my experience with the Lane County Court System.

Comments

[chester-no-miko.livejournal.com]

Well, at least it was something fairly simple...although I want a bunch of brain bleach after the mental images that are climbing into my little head...poor Jeni. :pats: