I have been summoned to jury duty or, as New Yorkers think of it, lunch in Chinatown, and I am torn: On one hand, I want to avoid it because sitting in a room for five hours is simply not that interesting, no matter how recently the room has been painted; on the other hand, I cling to the hope of being able to put someone behind bars for life.

I know the A.C.L.U. will come down on me for this, but my feeling is if someone has been dragged into court, they’re guilty. If they’re not guilty of what they’ve been charged with, like slugging a tourist who gave them less than $20 when they were dressed up in their Minnie Mouse costume, they’re guilty of something else, like leaning on the subway door during rush hour and being so big and intimidating you don’t dare snarl, “Move it,” and they should be locked up. I dream of an assistant district attorney who will make that case.

“And I submit to you, sir, that everything you said is a tissue of lies. You were not in a Martin Heidegger costume in Times Square on the morning of Wednesday, June 21, posing with intellectually insatiable tourists; you were in the Union Square subway station blocking the entrance of the fourth car of the uptown 6 train. Are you aware that because of your callous indifference a 69-year-old woman en route to the Semi-Annual Saks Shoe Event was unable to board that train and by the time she arrived all that was left were mules? Have you ever tried to run for a bus in mules? You’d snap your ankle, it’s a joke shoe.”

Then the D.A. would call for the maximum, three years in Dannemora, and I, as jury foreman, would make this happen.