By Bahar Azhdari

In St. Joseph County, Illinois, those who are called to jury duty can only get out of serving due to, “hardship, extreme inconvenience, or necessity.” That sounds like a pretty high hurdle to me.  Putting myself in the position of one who were to shirk her civic duties, I have tried to come up with some good excuses.  I don’t think that catching up on the past four episodes of the final season of “LOST” carefully saved to my DVR would count in the court’s mind.  Other than that, I am at a loss.

It looks like Railton Loy, however, has a better excuse.  Mr. Loy doesn’t believe he should have to appear for jury duty – and Judge Roland Chamblee Jr., the person who gets to make the call – agrees.  What is Mr. Loy’s hardship?  What is the source of his extreme inconvenience?  Well, it ends up that he is a little bit of a racist.  And by “a little bit of a racist” I mean that he is the Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.  Oh, and he apparently planned to show up for jury duty wearing his full KKK regalia.  And, in case that was insufficient, he called and left a message with the court pointing out that he couldn’t be fair “unless the defendant was white.”  Judge Chamblee wisely allowed Mr. Loy’s deferral.  According to Judge Chamblee, "I saw no reason to subject the criminal justice system to Mr. Loy as a juror." (subscription required).  Truer words were never spoken.

Still, while Mr. Loy is not going to be serving on a jury any time soon, it seems that he is no stranger to the inside of a court room.