Being dead is an acceptable excuse for getting off jury duty – unless you come back to life.
A woman being interviewed in Bronx Supreme Court as a potential juror in the cop-slay trial of Steven Armento – the alleged accomplice of “Sopranos” star Lillo Brancato – tried to get out of serving by saying she’d once been a murder victim.
When asked if there was any reason she couldn’t serve, she said that her husband stabbed her so severely last year that she died and came back to life.
“I expired, but the doctors revived me in the operating room,” said the woman, who also took the opportunity to complain that her husband wasn’t charged with murder.
Prosecutor Terry Gottlieb told her, “To bring an indictment for murder, you have to – fortunately for you – stay dead.”
Although her near-death experience was not enough to get her off jury duty, Justice Martin Marcus let her go for another reason – she said she was so traumatized by her husband’s attack that she had memory problems.
Brancato and Armento are charged in the 2005 shooting death of Police Officer Daniel Enchautegui during a botched burglary near his home.