What’s in a Word?

It is said “A picture is worth a thousand words.” Yet, as the joke goes, why is it only “a penny for your thoughts?” With this in mind, what’s a word worth? Sometimes a word can bring a picture to one’s mind that’s priceless. Such is the curious case of Miramar, Florida Commissioner Fitzroy Salesman. Mr. Salesman was on trial for pulling a gun on two youths at a local Winn-Dixie. I won’t get into particulars here because the charges against Mr. Salesman are irrelevant. The issue here is that the two-week court case ended yesterday when the judge declared a mistrial. I would have paid to have been in that courtroom to hear what went down.
It seems that author Robert Fulgham was wrong declaring All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten. They don’t teach you the definition of the word “imminent” in Kindergarten, much less how to spell it. Had Mr. Fulgham been on the jury for the trial of Commissioner Salesman, he most definitely would have needed both. You see boys and girls, that due to the fact that none of the six jurors knew the definition of the word “imminent,” a mistrial was declared. But there is so much more to this tale of intellectual incompetence.
After reading an article by Todd Wright in this morning’s Miami Herald concerning the aforementioned trial, I was curious as to how many members there were sitting on the jury. For statistical purposes, I also wanted to know from how large a jury pool these possessors of frontal lobe superiority came.
Let me give you a little background to the jury selection process in Broward County Florida. I won’t get into the specifics, because after a visit to the website that explains the ins and outs of those of your peers fortunate enough to get paid $15.00 a day to miss work; the legalese alone could take up an entire blog. So, I won’t bore you with the details. Let’s get to heart of it shall we?
A call to the Broward County Clerk office, (after the treatment I received, “clerk” does not deserve a capital) proved nearly fruitless. Silly of me to think that two harmless questions would result in answers so vague and so guarded, that you’d have thought I was asking for the classified documentation regarding the Kennedy Assassination.
The call started innocently enough with me identifying myself by giving her my real name, a classic covert ploy. But the tide quickly turned against me. The county employee, a public servant, who is paid with taxpayer dollars, was shall I say curt, brusque perhaps? Yes, I shall say. When I asked the veritable ray of sunshine what her name was, she paused, then flippantly said “Tie.” I asked how she spelled that; she stated “it doesn’t matter.” My guess is that someone walked by at the precise moment I queried her, who was wearing a tie, hence my spelling. I am quite sure it wasn’t her real name. You never know who might find out who leaked such sensitive information as to the size of a jury pool, and how many jury members there were for the Salesman Trial. The ramifications could be catastrophic if that knowledge fell into the wrong hands. Here I had placed my call with absence of malice, yet “Tie,” the shrewd inquisitor that she was, turned the tables on me. She caught me off guard, wanting to know “who I worked for?” “Was I from the Sun-Sentinel?” Ha! Little did she know I had Miami Herald home delivery!
I had led her down a dead end street. Foiled, she feigned stupidity when I asked her to whom I might place another call within the County clerk’s office who may reveal such delicate correspondence? In a moment of weakness, when I put pressure on her to give me a nugget, a morsel; she told me that on Monday’s, the jury pool was somewhere in the neighborhood of six-hundred and fifty to seven hundred members. If I wanted to know more I needed to call the newspaper. I rhetorically asked if we were living in Russia and hung up. (Since she said her name was “Tie,” I couldn’t resist the Caddyshack reference.)
Dutifully, I called the Herald and asked to speak to Todd Wright; we had a delightful conversation. I told him of my dilemma, and the reason for my inquiry. He astutely surmised that no subterfuge was behind my inquiry, and he cheerfully supplied me with the necessary information; which brings us back to the whole point of my story. Had you fooled, you thought this whole thing was pointless I bet. Well fear not, you may very well still think it’s pointless by the time you’re through.
Six men and women served on the Salesman jury, out of a pool of, for arguments sake, around six hundred since the trial began on February 23rd, which was a Monday. That means that at least 1% of the jury pool did not know the definition of “imminent.” I can safely assume that the percentage of people from the jury pool who were equally flummoxed by the word’s meaning was considerably higher. C’mon, what’s the likelihood that all of the lifelong dictionary avoiders wind up on the same jury? Based on the figures given, this small sampling reflects that at least 1% of America’s population doesn’t know the meaning of “imminent.” That means that approximately 3.6 million adults don’t know, not including individuals below the minimum jury duty age. But this gets better.
After two weeks of testimony where the word “imminent” was frequently used by attorneys when referring to the danger faced by Mr. Salesman; the jury finally decided to succumb to the adage that “the only stupid question is the one that goes unasked,” asked. According to Mr. Wright, “Circuit Judge Matthew Destry told the jury he could not define the word….” Mr. Wright also reported that “Eric Schwartzreich, Salesman’s attorney, asked Destry to instruct the jury not to look up the word in the dictionary. Destry declined.” I’m perplexed that none of the six could understand the word based on frame of reference, or the context in which it was used. I guess I’m giving the jurors too much credit where none is due. Hey maybe they thought “imminent” meant eminent? Can someone ever be in danger of being well known? Wait, these jurors are.
In keeping with the rampant self-absorption in American society, where individuals will do whatever they please, whenever they please, because they live by their own set of rules, ignored the judge’s edict.
Juror John Fanning eventually fesses up. I can hear him now. “Hey Judge! Remember that thing you told us not to do, well tough shit, we did it anyway. We know we could have asked what “imminent” meant the first time we heard it two weeks ago, but we didn’t want anyone to think we were stupid.” Too late. Cat’s out of the bag now, and in print to boot!
There is an underlying reason Mr. Fanning brought the dictionary into deliberations. It wasn’t just to find out the definition. Instead of looking the word up at home, this former genetic micro-biologist (only kidding) needed to bring the dictionary to the jury room because he needed assistance spelling “imminent,” then he could look the word up. Swear to god.
This jury was entrusted with the determining the fate of an individual’s life. Serious jail time rested on the verdict. Wrap your brain around that. The jury wasted countless manpower hours, thousands of dollars in taxpayer monies, all in the name of not appearing ignorant, which is exactly what wound up happening. The costs are undoubtedly going to escalate, with a new trial, and perhaps even a special election since Mr. Salesman is an elected official and has been suspended. There are other consequences of a less dire nature as well.
There have been six movies made and at least nineteen books published, with the word “imminent” in the title. Based on the guesstimated figures, all have lost out on considerable market share because of the amount of folks who don’t know what “imminent” means. I’d like to take this opportunity to drum up some business for one of those books, Dr. Maria M. Shelton’s American K-12 Public Education: Its Imminent Demise. Take note Mr. Fulgham.