Jury Duty II

OK, so it wasn't a short day at the Dekalb Co. Courthouse. In fact, I got there at 8:15 and I was there until a little past 6pm, but at least I don't have to go back again.

So, I got picked to sit on a DUI case. My first time called in for jury duty and I get picked to serve. Great.

Well, apparently, there's 2 types of DUIs, at least in the state of Georgia. There's the Per Se DUI, with which we are all familiar. That's the one where you take a breath test back at the station (because the portable one in their car is not admissable in court) and if your BAC is 0.08 or over, then you're Per Se DUI. However, there's also another little something called a "Less Safe DUI" which I was entirely unaware of. Get this, it basically says that if you are operating a vehicle under the influence of alcohol to the extent that you are a less safe driver, than you're DUI. This has all the same penalties as a per se DUI.

Here's a copy of the actual Georgia State code:
(taken from: http://www.legis.state.ga.us/cgi-bin/gl_codes_detail.pl?code=40-6-391)

40-6-391.
(a) A person shall not drive or be in actual physical control of any moving vehicle while:
(1) Under the influence of alcohol to the extent that it is less safe for the person to drive;

So, is it me, or is that a rather far-reaching definition there? To me, that's a pretty wide-open phrase. Basically, a police officer can arrest you for being under the influence of any amount of alcohol and later has to prove that you were "less safe." Who determines if you are "less safe?" Well, the jury, if it's a jury trial or, I suppose the judge, if it's a bench trial.

Now, I don't want to downplay the horrible things that can and many times DO happen when people drive while under the influence of alcohol. Please don't think I'm doing that. I used to be a S.A.D.D. officer in highschool. I've seen what can happen when driving drunk with both uncle Allen, and my friends Craig and Steve. However, this law just seems to give way too much discretion to the police. You can basically be prosecuted for having 1 beer with dinner and then driving. Don't laugh, it could happen if you get pulled over by an overzealous police officer and they happen to smell alcohol on you.

I'll let you all think about that for a while and add some more details of what happened in the trial later.

-Matt

Jury Duty

Off to jury duty at the Dekalb Co. courthouse. Hopefully, it'll be a short day.

ATL weather once again mucks up travel....

Like Matt and Laura, I, too, was delayed in Flint on the way home.

The difference is my 3 hour delay was at a decent time, and I arrived to have a *free* ride home. Thanks Julie! :-)

In any case, the weather in ATL had been nasty for several days. To paraphrase the captain on my flight:

"There is a weather front that has just stalled in ATL, and as a result, only 70 planes can leave or land an hour as opposed to the usual 120. Everyone is delayed. Your connections are also delayed, and those of you who have connections on this flight will make them. I sympathize with your plight, especially since I do have to fly to NY and back tonight. We will do our best to get you SAFELY to Atlanta, so please relax and rest assured we are doing our utmost to serve you."

I finished an entire trashy '40's Romance novel I took from Grandma's house in the interim. FYI, "The Gorgeous Hussy" cannot compare to modern literature.

AirTran...DELAYED!!!

Well, as most of you heard, our flight got delayed. SEVERELY. Well, 4 hours wouldn't have been too bad if the flight hadn't been schedualed to leave at 8pm. We got in around 2am and, since MARTA doesn't run that late on Sundays, had to catch a cab home. 30 minutes and $50 later, we were home and collapsed into bed (after shooting off emails to our respective employers to tell them we'd be in late).

Anyway, it was good to see you all back in MI! You can keep your snow though.


I hope everyone's getting the hang of this Blogging thing. I know it's new to most of you. If you want to post a comment in response to this post, just click on the "comments" link at the bottom of this post. If you'd like to start add your own new post, then log into your Blogger.com account. I added a nice little link on the top, right-hand side of the page in the "About" section that says "Click here to login to Blogger.com and Post to the Family Blog!!!" You can click on that, login to Blogger and then you can post a new message.

Later!
-Matt

1st Post

Well, I guess I'll start things off. It's getting late though and Laura's gonna get irritated if I come to bed really late and wake her up so I better keep this short. (she just made a comment about me coming to bed...I knew it!) ;-) ...love you hun.

Anyway, I saw that the Houghtaling Fam was keeping a blog and I thought that was a good idea. Those Houghtalings are always cutting edge!
Here's the link to their blog: http://thehoughtalingfamily.blogspot.com
Since we don't live as close together anymore, I figure we can use technology to our advantage and it won't really seem like we live a thousand miles away. With all the cheap (free) calls these days it's easier to stay in touch than (I assume) it would have been just 10-20 years ago.

So, for the uninitiated, what's a Blog? It's a chronological log of something (in this case family messages) that's posted on the web. A web-log or Blog for short. Some people use it as a diary.

Here's the definition from Dictionary.com:
Main Entry: blog
Definition: to author an online diary or chronology of thoughts
Etymology: 1999-2004; abbr. of Weblog
Usage: blogged, blogging; blogger, n

Me and Josh have been doing this Blog thing for a little while now with our poetry blog. You can check it out at: http://wesuckatpoetry.blogspot.com
Um, yeah, so don't expect to find good poetry, but you will find that at least some of it rhymes.

Anyway, I was just out jogging, so I gotta jump in the shower and get to bed!

Later!
-Matt