As you may have heard, Michael Jackson passed away recently, and a memorial service for him was held on Tuesday here in Los Angeles.  (I am normally located either in San Francisco or in my underground lair, but am in Los Angeles at the moment for a case.)  Officials had been expecting as many as 750,000 people to show up in the area around the Staples Center, where the memorial was to be held, but through a combination of a surprisingly well-run ticket lottery and begging people to stay off the streets, they kept everything under control.

This is not to say that the city or its legal system were completely unaffected by the tragedy.  For example, if you won or lost a trial in Pomona on Monday afternoon, and the jury seemed to reach a verdict with surprising speed, you might want to check into this:

Those who streamed into a cordoned-off area
around the Staples Center included [name redacted], 42, [who] said he almost missed attending because he was serving as
a deliberating juror for a trial in Pomona.

He told his fellow jurors Monday morning that he had gotten a ticket
from a friend who won the lottery. "I went in and was like, I have a
ticket so I hope we get outta here today."

It looked like a long shot, but after lunch "there was kinda a breakthrough and we reached a verdict," he said.

Hope it wasn't a death-penalty case.

Link: Los Angeles Times (July 7, 2009)