In his closing arguments in the trial of Nevada v Clermont, defense attorney Mace Yampolsky said something that struck TruTV legal commentators as masterful, but which struck a nerve in me, a former juror.

He asked the jurors to imagine themselves at a cocktail party in a year or so where they discuss the fact that they served on a jury in a kidnapping case. He intended to contrast the common-sense understanding of how heinous a crime kidnapping is with what his client did.

Instead, I felt he highlighted the impropriety of his client’s behavior. No juror in a trial involving the exploitation of a child wants to be told to imagine themselves at a cocktail party—even jurors in Las Vegas.

Furthermore, no juror wants to imagine having to talk about the experience in casual conversation. Being a juror is a stressful experience. A conscientious juror has no desire to gossip about the experience or to bask in the lurid glow of a trial’s notoriety. No matter what the verdict, someone will always fault the jury.

Mr. Yampolsky’s rhetoric tells me he has no idea how it feels to be a juror, especially a juror who has never before been inside a criminal courthouse.

However, I blame defendant Elaine Clermont for inspiring her lawyer’s inappropriate rhetoric. I suspect she’s the one who wanted to bask in a lurid glow of notoriety. Her intent from the get-go (as the prosecution pointed out in its closing) was notoriety. In her bizarre blog, Clermont likens herself to Martin Luther King and styles herself “an activist.”

The problem with Clermont’s rhetoric is that she doesn’t understand what civil disobedience is: she needs to read Thoreau. You have to be willing to take your punishment to make your point. It isn’t ethical to exploit a child to make a point. It isn’t ethical to use the justice system as a soapbox. Stand on your soapbox and then go to jail to make your point.