Work Release

As a citizen who has been called for jury duty every other year, I took a personal interest in your recent expose on the Sheriff’s Department work-release program for convicted criminals. In view of the immense burden that the legal system imposes on jurors in Los Angeles County, jurors ought to feel the same outrage that several judges have expressed in your excellent articles.

Perhaps it is time for jurors, in an act of civil disobedience, to refuse to serve in cases in which uncontrolled work release is the likely outcome of a conviction. Of course, if we jurors expect such creative defiance to achieve personal jail time--the celebrated consequence of civil disobedience--we are likely to be disappointed, since we, too, may be fitted for orange vests.

GERALD RANKIN