“Irreverent would-be juror finds joke’s on him”

The judge was a little testy and too quick to use his extra-constitutional authority to punish a man with prison time without a writ or trial. It would have been quite sufficient for the judge to give the prospective juror a rebuke and a second chance to correctly understand his civic responsibilities in the matter of the questionaire. It is the strong judge who can resist the urge to have the balif throw the juror in the pokey.

But that’s my point. He has not been found guilty of anything. He can only be guilty of perjury if he is charged, tried and found by a jury to have understood his acts as perjury. I suspect many juries would view this man’s prosecution as a frivolous waste of their time and recognize that he did not so much perjure himself as to show an adolescent sence of humor at an inappropriate time. Likewise he is not guilty of murder as he has not been tried and convicted. Further, since no victim identity is posited, it is impossible to determine yet even which court properly has jurisdiction for the determination of guilt.
The point is judges have enormous discressionary power to ‘convict’ a person on personal whim and sentence them to at least short blocks of jail time with no due process or judicial review available. Therefore judges must show extraordinary restraint in jailing people just because the judge is mildly irritated by a sophomoric prank.