Will "Where You At?" Disqualify One As A Juror?

A friend called me the other day and said: "How `bout meeting me down here for lunch." To which my answer was: "Where you at?"

His answer totally stopped me. "You will never be able to serve on the jury using English like that," he said. And then it struck me what he was talking about. The recent work on the jury pool, in which jurors were selected according to race, gender and whatever also said a juror had to be fluent in English. "That was aimed at the Latinos in our midst who speak Spanish and may or may not be able to understand enough English to give a fair decision in a trial," I countered "and anyway you remind me of the Winston Churchill thing when he made the comment 'I'm not going to put up with that" and a colleague pointed out that was had English. So Churchill said: "Okay. That is something up with which I will not put."

"That's better," he said, "but did it ever occur to you that they did not add a bunch of Latinos to the jury to give it whatever quotas they wanted. They threw 80 percent of the present jurors off the pool. Now why do you reckon they did that? I'll tell you why. We Americans have never been known for being purists in the use of the Enolish language, so if one of the criteria for serving on the jury is the proper use of the English language, then throwing 80 percent off the jury pool for not being fluent in English is probably about right. It means you and Churchill will never have to worry ab out being called for the jury."

"Aw, c'mon," I said. "Where you at?"

"I'm out at Longstreets," he answered. "See you in a few minutes.

This is Gordon Sawver. from a window on historic Green Street.