Wilderness Blues- Ramblings from the Great Land

      As I mentioned in my last post, I was on jury duty. Note the past tense- was.  We finished up the trial last Friday. I've never been on jury duty before, so it was a learning experience for me. Now that it's all done I can speak about it, although there isn't all that much to say. There were four defendants and multiple charges regarding transporting big game across boundaries from the United States to Canada. We found all the defendants not guilty with the exception of one charge of falsifying documents. Believe me, it could have been much worse. The men got off, not because of any exceptional work by their lawyers, but because the government failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that crimes had been committed. I'm quite certain that the prosecutor was disappointed. There was a lot of time and money that went into this case to say nothing of the effort. I'm not sure how many of my fellow jurors were from out of town, at least f...

     For the past two weeks I've been involved in the process of jury duty. Since no cameras or cell phones are allowed in the courtroom, I have no pictures to accompany this post. One of my fellow jurors took  a picture from the top of the federal building in Juneau, but I can't make it work right now, because I'm on a computer in the hotel lobby.  Like many of my fellow citizens, I wasn't overly enamored with the idea of being picked for jury duty. Frankly, I didn't really expect it to happen. I was one of 100 people who were summoned to show up for jury selection. That means I had a one percent chance of being chosen. Imagine my surprise when I was. Go figure. It doesn't make much sense to me to be taken, given the expense of having to  house me in a hotel, give me per diem for food and provide an allowance for transportation. It becomes a pretty spendy ordeal. I can't say I'm enamored with the whole process of being away from home and eating fro...