Yep…it’s a summons for jury duty. I called Mike at work and got his permission to open it. They want his ass there at 8AM, March 5. At the courthouse in Cambridge.

The first thing that came to mind was, holy shit, they aren’t looking to use him on the jury for the Neil Entwistle trial? I just saw that fucker on the news this morning, and his trial is supposed to start on March 10. Do they start calling prospective jurors in sooner than that, for pre-questioning and shit? I’m worried because the courthouse to which Mike is being summoned is where Entwistle is to be tried.

This case made international news, since Neil Entwistle is British, and he did indeed run off to the U.K., to his parents’ home, after his wife and 9-month-old daughter were found murdered in their Hopkinton, MA home. He was extradited back to the U.S. once he was officially a suspect in the murder. He’s been in the jail at the Cambridge courthouse since.

I know that courthouse well…I got divorced there eleven years ago. Then I had to go back there several months later, and pay ten bucks to get a copy of my divorce decree so that I could legally marry Mike…since no one could be arsed to send it to me in the first place, when the divorce was final. It’s in this really tall building in Cambridge, the courtrooms are on the bottom floors, and the jail is WAY up high, to make is hard to escape. No, I’ve never been up to the jail part…LOL!

Anyhoo, this Neil Entwistle guy allegedly shot his wife, Rachel, and infant daughter, Lillian Rose, almost two years ago. So now he’s finally going on trial for it, and I hope that Mike won’t be stuck being one of the jurors on that trial.

We can’t afford it, not unless either Mike’s employer will pay him his full salary for more than the three days that is required by law, or he uses his accrued paid time off. The law says that employers only have to pay full salary for three days, after that, jurors get a measly $50 a day for service. How the fuck do they expect anyone to live on THAT? Especially in Massachusetts, you can barely afford to breathe for that amount of money around here! It’s a joke. If he does end up having to serve on the Entwistle trial, we can pretty much kiss any vacation plans for 2008 goodbye, because he will have to use his PTO just so that we can pay the bills. This is SO not fair!

Since this is a very high profile case, no doubt that the jury will be sequestered. That would seriously suck. I don’t know if I’d even be allowed to see him or talk to him on the phone, lest I leak news stories about the case. I dunno how that works. Mike is going to have to try to get out of it, if he was indeed called as a potential juror for the Entwistle trial. It might not be that hard…we watch news programs 2-3 times a day, we know all about the case, and we both think that the fucker did it, he killed his wife and baby. Saying this might be enough to get him excused.

I just hope that the only trial he serves on turns out to be for some guy who held up a liquor store, or something like that. Those cases don’t go for long, and as such neither our finances nor vacation time will be harmed.

The only other option would be to ask for a postponement. Those are granted with no reason required. That would get him out of the Neil Entwistle thing, but no guarantee as to what new high-profile case he might get sucked into next.

If it were me, I’d try to get out of it, too. I would literally go crazy if I had to be sequestered, no TV, no radio, no internet. In fact, I can’t sleep without a TV on. Sound doesn’t have to be on, just the picture. I can’t prove any of this to a judge, so I’d probably just ask for a postponement and hope for the best.

But seriously…”civic obligation”, my ass! We pay taxes to the state and get little to nothing in return. Our damned side street wasn’t even plowed over the last snowstorm…and until the temps got higher and the shit melted, it was a treacherous walk from our house to our car. Our trash also didn’t get picked up at all last week. The cops won’t come here when I call them about the teen thugs trespassing on our property. And now they want us to live on $50/day so that Mike can do jury duty?

They can get fucked. He’ll either serve for a short, crappy little trial, or get out of it. Civic duty, my fat ass!