Woody Allen Shirking His Civic Duty

Manhattan County Court Clerk Norman Goodman has the most celebrity sightings of anyone I know:

As county clerk, clerk of the State Supreme Court and commissioner of jurors for Manhattan, Mr. Goodman is responsible for every jury trial in every Manhattan state court, whether civil or criminal. He supervises about 180 employees who do everything from filing cases to collecting the $210 fee for the index number needed to start a civil action.

But his true talent is for sniffing out malingering jurors and prodding and cajoling Manhattan’s many prima donnas, from Hollywood stars to titans of Wall Street, to do their civic duty.

He has been honing those skills for 37 years, since May 3, 1969, when he was appointed to his job by the appellate division. He is now 82, which makes him four years younger than Robert M. Morgenthau, the Manhattan district attorney, the other well-known gray eminence in the Manhattan court system. Mr. Goodman is fairly tall, with a full head of white hair, a courtly manner and a wardrobe of conservative suits. He is cautious to a fault, the consummate clerk.

Manhattan jury pools are rich in celebrities, and Mr. Goodman can summon a deputy, Vincent Homenick, to provide a comprehensive list of those who have been called: Kevin Bacon, Roberta Flack, Henry Kissinger, Walt Frazier, Harvey Keitel, and so on, scores of them.

Naomi Campbell, the supermodel, responded to a jury summons by saying that she was willing to serve, but had a past assault conviction and, in any event, was a British citizen. (Records show she pleaded guilty to assault in Canada, but her record was expunged. She is due in Manhattan court on June 27 as a defendant, accused of throwing a cellphone at her maid.)

Celebrities are usually dismissed without being chosen, because lawyers fear they will have too much influence over other jurors. Still, Mr. Goodman asks them to return for juror appreciation day to talk to schoolchildren about the beauty of the jury system, and sometimes throw in a performance. Once he lined up Wynton Marsalis and Joel Grey on the same day. “I could have sold tickets to that,” he said, beaming.

Mr. Goodman, a strong believer in equal treatment, insisted that [Woody] Allen show up, bad memories and all. Mr. Allen arrived wearing what Mr. Goodman describes as “army fatigues and a Fidel Castro cap,” surrounded by his lawyer, his agent and a bodyguard. Mr. Goodman escorted him to the jury room, where Mr. Allen insisted on standing, rather than sitting like everybody else. The rest of the jurors gawked at him.

“We eventually offered him the opportunity to get out of there,” Mr. Goodman said. “Frankly, we were glad to get rid of him.”

Then again, it seems everyone wants to get out of serving on a jury:

Hemorrhoids are a perennial excuse, and one evidence-minded man mailed back a used box of Anusol as proof.

A Murray Hill woman wrote that regretfully, her husband could not serve because he had jumped off the Queen Elizabeth 2 and drowned. The Health Department later confirmed his death.

Another woman sent in a photograph of her battered face, with a note saying, “Thank you for understanding my chaotic situation.”

One man wrote a five-page treatise in medieval-looking script, explaining that his spiritual beliefs prevented him from sitting in judgment on the guilt or innocence of a fellow human being. He ultimately agreed to be part of the jury pool in a civil trial, where he would only have to determine liability; he was not chosen.