A jury of your peers

Puzzle me this. You're standing trial for a crime, and let's work on the assumption (reasonable or unreasonable depending on who you are) that you're innocent of the charges.

Which of the following would you least object to having on your jury:

(a) Someone who sleeps through most of the trial.

(b) A member of Stormfront.

(c) Someone who's secretly made a deal to sell his story.

(d) Someone who plays Sudoku during the trial.

Call me naive, but I'd go with option (d). The way I see it is that if you're intelligent enough to handle the game, you're at least potentially able to multitask. Sleepers are obviously out of it, and neither of the other two is remotely unbiased.

This is not to say that having Sudoku players on a jury is ideal. But in the case described at the link, the jurors were playing it starting in Week 2 of a three-month trial until they were caught. How could that possibly have happened? It almost makes you wonder whether the judge, the lawyers, the witnesses, the bailiff, and the defendants themselves were all asleep.

(via How Appealing)