With the trial of Fred Flintstone set to begin in a couple weeks, lawyers for both sides are frustrated by the inability to find 12 impartial jurors to decide  his fate.

“Everybody has an opinion about Flintstone’s guilt.  It would be crazy to pretend otherwise” says the District Attorney. “The first day we had 500 potential jurors rejected.  I knew it was going to be a long process when the first potential  juror we interviewed stood up and shouted ‘Fry the guilty son-of-a-bitch.’  We  had to reject him because he was Irish. “

After a few days of frustration where every juror was rejected it was decided to create a questionnaire for jurors to answer.  Depending on the answers they would then actually be called in to meet the defense lawyers and assistant district attorneys. The unwieldy questionnaire which reached  83 pages was designed to test the emotional stability and intelligence of jurors.  Questions included the basic “Can you objectively judge the guilt or innocence of the defendant Fred Flintstone”, “No seriously.  we know he’s guilty but we have to ask anyway – can you be objective”,  to the more esoteric questions such as “If you found a wallet with 1000 dollars on the street would you bring it to a police station or use the money to hire a hit man to kill your wife?” (The D.A. who is going through a rough divorce insisted on this question), and “Ginger or Mary Ann.”  “We didn’t want any Ginger fans on the jury since we all like Mary Ann and Tina Louise is such a bitch” said one of the defense attorneys.

Still, after 3 weeks of this the only juror seated was a deaf dumb and blind pinball player named Tommy. After a meeting with the judge, D.A. and defense attorneys it was decided to broaden the jury pool.  Instead of using only citizens of Bedrock it was decided to use people from further away. This too didn’t work as no matter how far away jurors came from they still had an opinion on Flintstone’s guilt or innocence.

People from other planets were even brought in but even Klingons and Romulans could not be objective.  “We had one Romulan tell us that everyone on the Romulan Home World watches ‘Access Hollywood’ so they were all familiar with the case.”

When it appeared that finding objective jurors would be hopeless a marine biologist from Bedrock University suggested the use of dolphins.  “It turns out dolphins are smarter than humans.  They are more logical and objective.”

To add balance to the jury it was also decided to use a few elephants.  “Elephants passed the mirror test.  They recognize their reflections in mirrors.”

So finally after weeks of  haggling a jury was finally seated consisted of one deaf dumb and blind boy, five dolphins and 6 elephants.  “It isn’t perfect but it’ll do” said the D.A.  “It is what it is. The deaf dumb and blind boy is stuck in his quiet vibration land.  But strange as it seems his musical dreams ain’t quite so bad.  The dolphins keep trying to hump the bailiff and the elephants really really go to the bathroom a lot.  I mean a lot!”

(To be continued)

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