I just got another jury summons in the mail today. Does being an atheist get you kicked out of the jury these days?

I don't know about that. It might, depending on how it was brought up.

For a while, I was called for jury duty about twice a year for a 5 year period. Never got past the jury pool. Was never interviewed for a jury. I'd show 'em my class schedule, they'd reschedule for a school break, and then I wouldn't be needed.

It was frustrating.

Then they stopped sending me jury duty notices. I don't know why. I'm not complaining - I would like to be a jury member at least once.

I got to serve on a jury for a federal case here in Fresno. It was pretty exciting for a then 23 year old.

I think I'm one of the few people who gets excited to find a jury summons in the ol' mailbox. Hooray for civic duty!

I wouldn't mind doing it at all, but it's my understanding that I would probably not be selected. I have strong opinions, I'm educated, reasonably well-read... oh, and there's that whole CVAAS thing.

I think it'd go something like this...

"So, what do you think about murder?"

Me, "Define 'murder'."

Lawyer: "Next!"

I would love to serve on a jury, too, but it's even worse for me: I'm an attorney. Which means the attorneys doing jury selection are going to kick me out immediately.

You know, I've always wondered about that. Would an attorney get jury duty? I guess not. Especially a hot-shot, high profile attorney in the selection pool for a small trial.

Would it make a young lawyer nervous to know that a "Perry Mason" analog was on the jury?

Or a bumbling Matlock?

A lot of attorneys doing jury selection just assume that if you get a fellow attorney in the pool, you dump him. I'm not sure why, because no one has ever articulated clear reasons to me, but I suspect they might include things like (1) fear that an attorney will view their trial performance more critically, (2) fear that an attorney will bring his or her independent legal knowledge into the jury room and use it to sway the other jurors, and (3) fear that an attorney will use his or her persuasive abilities to sway the other jurors.

One of my law school professors told a story about being called for jury duty once. The attorneys doing jury selection found out pretty quickly that he was a law professor and one of them asked, "Could you put aside your profession and think like an ordinary person during the trial?" It was probably a poorly-worded question. But the law professor said no, and he got booted.

On the other hand, my fiancee left an attorney on the jury in her first jury trial. He seemed trustworthy and evenhanded, so she thought he would be fine. He was; she won.

Okay, here's a loaded question.

I'm assuming you wouldn't do this, Peter, but in considering your peers, do you believe they would be more likely, or less likely to put an Atheist on a jury? And does the type of trial also matter?

It would be difficult in jury selection to even discover that somebody was an atheist. I could be wrong, but I think the only time you could get away with asking anything remotely like "What are your religious beliefs?" is in a case where one of the parties was a religious institution or an employee of one. Otherwise, such a question would likely prompt an objection from the other attorney.

And I highly doubt that even if the attorney knew the person was an atheist it would play into their consideration of whether to kick that person out. Especially here in California, even in the Central Valley. It really depends on the case, and what kinds of preexisting biases and prejudices that the attorneys are trying to bring into the jury or keep out of it, but I just cannot imagine many cases where a juror's belief in God would matter. From my experience, fundamentalists and lawyers do not overlap much. With all the education you have to get through, and having to survive the mental battering ram that is law school, I think it would be pretty hard to come out on the other side as a lawyer and honestly think, "This person would not be a good juror because she is an atheist."