Yeshiva Teacher Drops Off Terror Jury Citing Impartiality
The NY Post reports,
An Orthodox Jew was dismissed from the jury pool in the Lynne Stewart case yesterday after he told a judge he couldn’t be fair and impartial to the radical lawyer.
“I don’t think I can do it,” the Yeshiva teacher told Manhattan federal Judge John Koeltl, who yesterday began the painfully slow process of cutting down an initial pool of 500 potential jurors to an eventual panel of 12.
“Put me on another case,” said the teacher.
Stewart represented blind Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, imprisoned in 1995 for urging followers to blow up U.S. landmarks. She was charged in 2002 with illegally helping him communicate with his followers from prison while she was supposed to be on official attorney-client business.
Well that was certainly responsible of them…
Well, at least he had a better reason than the frum guy on a jury panel with me a couple of years ago who told me (before he told the judge) that he was going to claim that he couldn’t serve on the jury becuase he always believed the word of a cop over that of an ordinary citizen. And the defendant was some kind of garden-variety break-in artist. I just think my colleague just didn’t want to be inconvienced by having to sit on the jury. His method of avoiding service was sort of silly if you ask me, I’m sure the defense attorney would have excused him with a premptory challenge the minute he saw the white male with a coat and tie.. (Always works for me, no defense attorney wants a biznoid, conservative-looking white male on a jury. Just to be sure, I always carry a briefcase to further accentuate the class difference between me and the defendant. Though, perhaps next time, I might try dressing more casually, I am curious about what it’s like to serve…)