Here are five types of people who get out of jury duty: hand-raisers, ass kissers, people who doze off during jury selection, know-it-alls and people who otherwise seem so eager to get on the jury the prosecutor suspects they have an agenda.

That advice comes from Cynthia Franklin, an assistant municipal prosecutor for Anchorage. Franklin garnered laughs when she delivered an upbeat presentation on jury selection at a January gathering of Ignite Anchorage, a group that keeps holds speakers to five-minute time limits and raises money for charities at gatherings in bars and restaurants around town. (Ignite info is at igniteanchorage.com and the website features videos of past presentations.)

Franklin’s presentation was linked on one of the Alaska legal blogs Flashlight peruses (and can be found here). It was Franklin’s title that caught our beam. Her presentation is called: “How to get on a jury (or not)” and the video recording of it features a room filled with laughter as Franklin talks the audience through jury selection in Alaska courts. Jury selection is a misnomer because what lawyers and judges do is disqualify potential jurors. “We choose who is not going to be on the jury,” Franklin says as the top of the presentation, and then proceeds to describe the difference between “getting the axe” from an attorney or “getting the boot” from the judge. “It’s preferable to get the axe. Because getting the boot, basically the judge is telling you in front of the whole group, ‘You’re a prejudiced person,’ and some people don’t enjoy that,” she says.

Franklin says she tends to axe people who seem overly sympathetic, even if that sympathy seems to lean toward the victim. One slide in Franklin’s presentation that got rounds of laughter featured two men in Shriner regalia hugging each other. Franklin used it to describe how she tends to cut potential jurors who dress unconventionally. Bigger laughs come during a slide showing a round-eyed kitten with the words “Ass Kissers” above it—the slide appears when Franklin discusses people who seem to relish the chance at jury service.

“I’m thinking why does this person really want to be on this jury,” she says, “and this is what I suspect.” The slide behind her changes to a photo of green, leafy marijuana plants and Franklin explains that agenda-pushers are one type of person a trial lawyer may want to axe.

Flashlight’s favorite part about jury service is when we postpone civic duty by filling out a form and popping our jury-service notice back in the mail. Alaskans get to postpone jury duty up to ten months if they return the form right away. Picking the month we’d like to serve doesn’t remove all the inconvenience of jury duty, but it’s still somewhat satisfying. It’s one of few times in life when we get to tell the system how things are going to proceed.

scott@anchoragepress.com