Egg Juror

This morning, I listened to the arguements from the South Carolina Supreme court about whether Alex Murdaugh should or shouldn't get a new trial in the case where he was convicted of murdering his wife and son.

One of the points of contention is that the clerk of court during the trial would occasionaly buddy up to the jurors and shoot the shit about what she thought of the testimony. I'm not real clear to what degree this happened, but if it happened at all, it's really beyond the pale.

Nothing funny about this yet, but stick with me.

I had tuned in to the original murder trial pretty religiously. It lasted forever (6 weeks), and when they were finally winding down, the officers of the court had to pull one of the jurors because it had come to light that she was posting about it on Facebook.

Although I can picture it in my mind's eye, I can't find a picture of the egg juror being questioned by Judge Newman. This one will have to do.

They called her in to the courtroom to tell her that she was being relieved of her duties, and the judge asked her if she had any personal belongings in the jury room.

Her answer was something like, "I'd like to get my eggs and my purse."

Since then, she has just been known as "the egg juror." And by that, I mean justices on the bench of the South Carolina Supreme court refer to "the egg juror" without any trace of understanding how funny that sounds. I don't know how to search court transcripts, but I don't imagine that there's ever been a supreme court in any state where justices discussed the "jelly bean juror" or the "tomato aspic juror" or any other type of food juror on the permanent record.

I wonder if she would just prefer to have bought a dozen eggs that day.

My interest is in the nickname, but the clerk of court fucked up 10 ways to Sunday. If I were one of the justices, I think I would have to support giving him a new trial.