{"id":236,"date":"2014-09-11T22:15:16","date_gmt":"2014-09-11T22:15:16","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.decamp.org\/?p=236"},"modified":"2014-09-12T00:09:24","modified_gmt":"2014-09-12T00:09:24","slug":"trial-chicken-pawn","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/?p=236","title":{"rendered":"Trial Chicken Pawn"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Trial chicken pawn.\u00a0\u00a0 That might be a good passphrase, if you subscribe to xkcd&#8217;s advice as illustrated in Munroe&#8217;s popular &#8220;<a title=\"xkcd correct horse battery staple\" href=\"http:\/\/xkcd.com\/936\/\">correct horse battery staple<\/a>&#8221; comic.\u00a0\u00a0 But in this case, it reflects how I spent my day.<\/p>\n<p><!--more--><\/p>\n<p>By virtue of either having a drivers license or being registered to vote in the county of Ventura, California, I was selected to serve my community by performing jury duty.\u00a0 Along with hundreds of other similarly responsible citizens, I showed up at the Superior Court Hall of Justice this morning and began the great wait. The whiteboard at the head of the waiting hall showed that 102 cases were on the day&#8217;s docket for jury trials.\u00a0 Typical, I understand, for a Thursday.<\/p>\n<p>As the very nice judge explained to the crowd this morning, most of us would not see the inside of a courtroom.\u00a0 Of those 102 cases, most would not actually select juries today.\u00a0 Some would be continued, but most would be resolved at the 11th hour.\u00a0 In an elaborate game of legal chicken, one of the parties would decide that they didn&#8217;t have the winning hand and would agree to a settlement or plea bargain.\u00a0 Our job, the judge explained, was to be the credible threat.\u00a0 Without the ability to seat a jury, the parties didn&#8217;t have to stop negotiating and commit.\u00a0 As a parent, it sounds familiar:\u00a0 &#8220;don&#8217;t make me come in there.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Trial chicken pawn.\u00a0\u00a0 That might be a good passphrase, if you subscribe to xkcd&#8217;s advice as illustrated in Munroe&#8217;s popular &#8220;correct horse battery staple&#8221; comic.\u00a0\u00a0 But in this case, it reflects how I spent my day.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34,6],"tags":[17],"class_list":["post-236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","category-thoughts","tag-life"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=236"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":239,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/236\/revisions\/239"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.decamp.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}