Claimed bigotry to skirt jury duty backfires

Coming up with creative excuses to escape the dreaded call to the courthouse for jury duty is virtually as old as Lady Justice, observes CBS News correspondent Seth Doane.

But, he reports, one prospective juror took it to new extremes.

An Asian woman in her twenties, Doane says - juror number 799 at the Brooklyn, N.Y. federal courthouse - had a particularly combative and unique approach, calling New York cops "lazy," and listing who she "least admired" as "African-Americans, Hispanics, and Haitians."

"She seemed to be hostile, and the judge didn't like it, and it's his courtroom," remarked "In Session" correspondent Beth Karas.

The judge then took an extraordinary step, ordering her to return to jury duty -- indefinitely.

"The judge," says Karas, "was sending a message that this is serious. Jury duty is an important responsibility."

Juror 799, says Doane, may have drawn her inspiration from Larry David's often offensive character in the hit cable show, "Curb Your Enthusiasm." While in a jury pool, the character was asked by a lawyer whether he'd ever been the victim of a serious crime and responded, "My cousin once stole an Almond Joy from me!"

But after a sentence of just one day, Doane says, the judge let the real-life juror go, saying he hoped she'd learned her lesson.