I got jury duty? They have jury duty in Hong Kong? And they think I can be in Sai Wan Ho at 9:15 in the morning? Not only that, the summons tells me which case I’ve been assigned to. How quaint. If I do my civic duty, can I then successfully apply for an HK passport? Nope.

I did jury duty once in the U.S. That was a truly bizarre experience. I got this case of a guy out on parole who was accused of bribing a cop. I tried to get out of it. During the jury selection process, they asked all the other potential jurors a question – If you knew the defendant was arrested in a crack house, would you assume that he was there for the purpose of doing crack? – but they didn’t ask me that question when it was my turn. So I volunteered my answer – YES! The courtroom went silent, the two lawyers approached the bench. The judge whispered, “You wanna get rid of this guy?” And the defense attorney said, “No, I want to keep him. At least he’s honest!” And I just looked down and muttered, “oh shit.”

The cop was wearing a wire and got the whole thing down on tape. For reasons that I won’t go into now, we voted unanimously for acquittal. The prosecutor gave us this look, she turned and stared at all 12 of us, her mouth open wide, the look in her eyes saying, “I had it on tape! What more did you want?” Well, the guy had a very smooth defense attorney who succeeded in planting seeds of reasonable doubt in our minds and actually the deliberation took less than an hour.

It was an interesting experience. Can’t wait to find out what it’s like in HK. Can I sit there with my iPhone and tweet the deets?

Hongkie Town
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