There was no escaping jury duty

“Brian’s not here all week,” someone said as I walked in the door.
I was just coming back into the office from a one-week vacation, and the last thing I wanted to hear was that the newspaper’s production manager was gone.
“Jury duty,” someone explained.
Jury duty? Usually the first folks kicked out of the jury pool are those who work at a newspaper. Defense attorneys don’t like them. Prosecutors don’t like them. They’re easy to check off the list.
At least that’s been my experience.
Called for jury duty several years ago in Jay Superior Court, I was actually looking forward to the experience. There’s a column in it, I figured.
But I wasn’t exactly what they were looking for.
Details of the case are hazy in my memory, but I know it involved a crime in Dunkirk.
George Lopez was at the prosecutor’s table along with Curt Compton, the prosecutor’s office investigator. I’ve known both of them for years. George’s father, Dr. Alfonso Lopez, delivered one of our daughters. Curt’s grandmother used to show up at our back door with a strawberry pie now and then when she was our neighbor.
And on the bench, there was Judge Joel Roberts. Journalists and public officials aren’t supposed to be friends; it’s considered out of bounds in some quarters. But in small towns, you take your friends where you find them; and Joel and I had been friends since the 1970s. We were neighbors when he and his family first moved to town, and we are neighbors still. With our spouses, we’ve been part of an informal dinner club for more than 20 years.
I recognized no one at the defense table. I didn’t know the lawyer, and the defendant was a blank.
The jury selection process began, and before long the defense attorney started to read a list of people involved with the case who might be testifying. “Do you know (fill in the blank)?” he would ask.
And my hand would go up.
The list included most of the guys who were then officers on the Dunkirk Police Department, some deputies from the sheriff’s office, and some police dispatchers.
I think I knew every one of them.
Finally, the defense attorney asked if there was anyone else involved with the case that I knew. I confessed: George Lopez, Curt Compton, and Judge Roberts, I said.
End of jury duty.
Brian faced a different situation.
When he called that Monday night to discuss some scheduling of staff in his absence, I kidded him that he should have found a way to get out of the obligation.
The case was in Delaware County. “Didn’t you bother to tell them that Jeff Arnold, the Delaware County prosecutor, is a stockholder in the newspaper?”
(Jeff’s a Jay County guy. His father, the late Dick Arnold, was a key figure at the Graphic Printing Company for decades.)
“Wouldn’t have mattered,” said Brian. “I think one of my fellow jurors plays golf with the judge.”
I didn’t bother to find out whether that was a joke or not.
“We’ll see you next week,” I said.