Due to ongoing budget constraints, the state is considering shrinking the size of juries from 12 people to six, which, theoretically, would ease up parking congestion around the courthouses but have a detrimental financial effect on many eateries and bars that depend on the mandatory daily mob of potential jurors for their livelihood. An 18-person committee of judges, lawyers and normal people is studying the effect of smaller juries on the legal system, but seriously, it's the bars and restaurants that could be hurt here.

There are roughly 5,423 island residents rounded up daily and shuffled like cattle into the courthouse to undergo the ordeal of jury selection. Those chosen to be on a jury are generally pitiable folks unable to come up with even vaguely plausible reasons that they should not be seated. The best excuses they can invent under the harsh glare of a judge, prosecutor and defense counsel are "My dog is sick at home" and "I believe there's still a warrant out for me in New Jersey."

Personally, I don't mind serving on juries because it is a civic duty necessary in a free society and judging your fellow citizens is a highly enjoyable form of entertainment. Plus you get, I believe, $30 a day from the state and 33 cents a mile, so that's pretty sweet.

If you don't want to get on a jury in a criminal case, it's easy. When asked if you can be fair, simply say, "Anyone who gets arrested and charged with a crime is obviously guilty. The police are never wrong." That will cause the defense attorney to jump 5 feet in the air and sprint to the bench yelling, "Juror dismissed, your honor!" If you want to see the prosecutor go ballistic, tell the judge that several of your friends or family members have been unfairly tried and incarcerated by the state and that now "It's payback time, baby!"

While most people are familiar with 12-person juries, it hasn't always been that way. That arbitrary number only came about in the 12th century when King Henry II of England decided that juries were too large and expensive to feed. In fact, the cost of feeding juries is the key reason they've been whittled down over the centuries. During the Viking days, juries were made up of hundreds of people. The jury itself had to ransack small villages just to assure it had enough groceries to last the trial. (True fact: A Viking jury was an assembly of free people called a "thing." And the place where the "Thing" met was a "Thingstead." That is COMPLETELY true, I swear. What I'm not sure about is whether the Thing's verdict was called a "Thingy.")

Early juries usually tried multiple cases at the same time and were not allowed to eat or drink or sit down during deliberations. The average time for deliberation in those days was about nine minutes.

Melvin Belli, the celebrated trial lawyer, in his book "The Belli Files," points out that jury duty of "olde" could be worse than being on trial. If a judge didn't like a jury's verdict, the defendant was forgotten and a new jury was called to try the first jury.

According to Belli, if that first jury was convicted, the law said the jurors "shall be committed to the King's Prison, their goods confiscated, their possessions seized their habitations pulled down, their woodlands felled, the meadows plowed up and they themselves forever be declared infamous."

Man, if you wanted to avoid jury duty in those days, you had to be on your game.

Read Charles Memminger's blog at http://charleyworld.honadvblogs.com.