Limit Heavy Breathing into the Phone to One Call

From our guest contributor who just served up a delicious batch of justice while on jury duty at the Seattle Municipal courts. Thanks Papa Geno! Your country owes you a debt of gratitude ... and $42.00 for three days of work.

Jury Duty

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Why You only Call Once!

Justice was served today. Five other men and I sat as jurors on a case of telephone harassment in Seattle Municipal Court this morning. This was my first ever experience with any court system, and boy did I learn a lot. For example, lawyers really do talk in court like they do on TV, and that made it hard to take them seriously. Come on, lawyer-guys, it's only Municipal Court.

More importantly, I learned about telephone harassment law here in Washington State.

The case we heard involved a man who, dumped by his girlfriend two months prior, got particularly angry one morning and left that ex-girlfriend two (2) slightly threatening voicemails: something about her being a b*%$#, and that a "war is on," and she had to leave town. Had I heard this story outside of a courtroom, I probably would have just thought, "okay, this guy's a jerk and needs to stop drunk-dialing at 9:30 in the morning." But following the letter of the law, he was indeed guilty of telephone harassment and is now a convicted criminal.

Why? Because he called twice that morning. For a charge of telephone harassment to stick here in Washington, there has to be more than one phone call. So, had he thought about what he wanted to say beforehand, and kept his harassment concise in a single voicemail, there wouldn't have even been a case.

Take-home lesson: Remember to get out all your obscenities and threats in a single call. You can be a jerk over the phone, but only once.