TexasCHLforum.com

As long as we're on airport security stories . . .

It's pre-9/11 in Maryland(!), and I'm on jury duty. I'm an attorney, and did prosecution and defense in courts-martial in my early career, so I've dodged making the cut for juries all week.

So I'm on a new panel of 24 from which a 12-person jury will be picked. We file in, and one of the DA's (State's Attorney) first questions is: "who's a member of the NRA?" Six hands go up! In Maryland! Out of 24 people! I was so proud -- and I figured It was no sweat (for me and the other 5) to get off this jury. We're told the case involves a gun law violation. After voir dire, 5 of the 6 of us make it onto the jury (the pro se defendant challenged the 6th guy off for some reason), and I'm thinking, 'this is wierd.'

The case: a 50-something retired USAF E-8 now working for the USPS travelled thru BWI enroute CA to see off his USAF O-2 daughter (think of how proud he must have been) who was being assigned to Korea. His bag goes thru the scanner, and the operator makes a PA call for "Mr. Brown" -- guess what color MD state troopers wear? 'Mr. Brown' pulls out a gun from a side pocket of the carry-on. We jurors head off to the jury room at that point while some procedural stuff goes on, admission of the gun IIRC; everyone in the jury room (except me and maybe the other NRA folks) is saying, 'no brainer, how do you not know you've got a gun? Big, heavy, etc.'

We head back in. The DA gets the gun admitted: a .25 semi, about the size of a deck of cards, and about six teeny-tiny rounds. The Senior Master Sergeant represented himself -- a really gutsy move. He got the trooper back on the stand, and basically asked, "And how did I react?" "You were REALLY surprised." "What did I say?" "'How in God's name did THAT get in there!?!'" He then put himself on the stand. Turns out he and his wife had gone thru counselling during her final illness, because he had been gravely depressed. The counsellor told the wife to hide any firearms. He picked the bag they never used for travel -- the one she'd hidden the .25 in.

That DA was smart: politcally, it was kinda the case that had to go forward in a state like MD, but she set the table for the correct and just out-come. She kept telling us in her closing that this was an easy decision, a no brainer -- yet she never made a direct pitch for per se guilt, so we could take 'no-brainer' in either direction. It took us 10 minutes (formally -- we felt compelled to talk about it, although no one disagreed) to find him not guilty -- and the non-NRA types didn't need any help from us NRA types, once they saw and hefted the .25.

So we report back, the judge says 'thanks, dismissed,' and the bailiff asks the SMSgt if he want his gun back. "I never want to see that thing again in my entire life."