I narrowly escaped jury duty this week. I had already postponed my service twice this summer before I committed myself to getting it over with. I had received my first notice before the end of the spring semester and had initially rescheduled my service to start the Monday after we turned in grades. However, a hiring committee obligation offered a potential conflict, so I postponed my service again until after the summer school session had ended for me. I figured the three weeks between summer and fall semesters would be sufficient; the odds are against a person being chosen for a jury, and if you are, most trials are five to seven days long.
In Los Angeles County, you have to call in to "register" before the first day of your service, and then each night for the week you have jury duty, you have to call in to see if you need to report to the courthouse the next day. The last time I was sent a summons for jury duty, I was dutiful the entire week and was rewarded by not having to go in at all. I was hopeful that the same scenario would play itself out again, and I would be able to go on with my preparations for fall classes. I was in the midst of finalizing my syllabi at the time.
This time, though, I wasn't so lucky. On Monday night, I learned that I had to report on July 27, the day before my 47th birthday. Los Angeles County is under the "one day, one trial" system, so I figured I would go in and spend the day and perhaps avoid being chosen for a jury pool. That's what had happened the second time I had jury duty. Yes, I've been called numerous times; the most recent was my fourth or fifth--I've lost count at this point. I didn't have the same luck as before, however. At about 11:30 a.m. that day, about twenty-five of us were given instructions to return on August 9, almost two weeks later, to be potential jurors for a trial on the infamous 9th floor. That's the so-called "high profile case" floor, the one where they hold celebrity trials and those that have achieved a great deal of press (serial killer trials, particularly gruesome cases, that sort of thing). I began imagining the horrors of having to serve on a trial that would be in the press and fighting my way to the courtroom through television cameras. I even began trying to remember which celebrities had been arrested recently, just in case it was going to be one of those notorious cases.
We were also told by the court clerks that the estimated amount of time for the trial would be twenty days. The only problem for me would be the start of the fall semester one week after the day we were given to report to the courtroom for jury selection. You can't really trust the court estimates for trials, by the way. The first time I had jury duty, I was stuck on a civil case (medical malpractice, to be specific) that was estimated to take four or five days of testimony. We were in the courthouse for three and a half weeks. Knowing that a twenty-day trial would likely last a great deal longer than estimated, I started to panic because I didn't want to miss an entire month at the beginning of a semester, not with five classes (and one of them an Honors Program class), so I asked about another postponement. However, given that I was already in the pool, the clerks said it was too late to change.
We all had to call in again the weekend before August 9 on the off chance that the trial had been cancelled because of a plea bargain or other reason, but of course, the message informed us to be there bright and early on Monday morning. Thankfully, we weren't expected to be in court until 10:30 a.m., so I did get a chance to sleep in a bit later than usual.
The first day was incredibly unproductive. The clerk for our particular courtroom (the same one used for the O.J. Simpson trial, if you're interested in such trivia) called roll three or four times because some of the jurors weren't present. She said the judge would not call us in until everyone had arrived, so it was almost 11 a.m. before we were allowed to enter the courtroom. After everyone was seated, the judge told us a little bit about the case: three defendants, each with a different attorney representing him, all of them charged with murder and charges of conspiracy to commit murder and a couple of them facing additional charges, and allegations of gang affiliation as well. Based upon just those details, I began to think that twenty days wouldn't be enough to hear all of the testimony and deliberate and return with a verdict. The prospect of starting the fall semester with my students began to seem a bit more distant.
The judge asked if any potential jurors had reasons--other than a financial hardship, which is getting increasingly hard to prove in the court system--which might prevent them from serving on this jury. Those of us who did were asked to write down our reasons and submit them to the judge for consideration. The rest of the potential jurors--about a hundred people or so--were given questionnaires to complete in the hallway. Only a couple of people who had conflicts were released from duty. The rest of us were told to fill out a questionnaire and report back the next day at 8:30 a.m. I'd spent half a day at the courthouse and nothing had happened yet with respect to jury selection. I'd just filled out two slips of paper and read almost a hundred pages in one of the books I'd brought.
On Tuesday, we all returned. Well, almost all of us. Naturally, when the clerk took roll, a few people were missing and, just like on Monday, the judge wouldn't begin until everyone had appeared. It was almost 9 a.m. before the last person showed up, and we were all ushered into the courtroom to begin. The clerk read off the juror ID numbers for twenty people, and they were the first ones subjected to questioning by the attorneys. Each of the defense attorneys got to ask questions, and then the prosecuting attorney got the same amount of time as the three defense attorneys combined. If you want to see the disparity in justice, watch jury selection as it unfolds. The three defense attorneys were inept in their questioning; one of them had to repeat his questions two or three times because they were so unclear. It wasn't as if they were trying to trick jurors--at least, I don't think they were--they just weren't very good at articulating what it was they wanted the jurors to answer.
Based upon the questioning, I began to sense some of the key aspects of the case. Apparently, the crime happened in an area known for gang violence, so the attorneys wanted to know who had had bad experiences with gangs and whether or not that would affect their ability to be fair. The key witnesses for the defense were apparently going to be relatives of the three men (mothers, sisters, etc.), character witnesses, in other words, rather than eyewitnesses. The prosecution's witnesses would, of course, including the police who investigated the crime, but there would apparently also be witnesses who had substance abuse problems and/or criminal records--both of which were the subject of questioning about the effect they might have on the credibility of a witness. And it became evident rather early on that none of the three men were likely to testify on their own behalf, and the attorneys, at least one of them, anyway, wanted to know how people on the jury would feel about that decision, if it would seem odd or questionable.
After dismissing several jurors for "cause" during the first round of questioning--apparently, anyone who didn't speak English well or had a direct connection to the court system was automatically out--the number of people in the jury box had dwindled down to just eleven. The clerk read off enough numbers to refill the jury box and then those potential jurors were questioned. This went on, with one brief break in the middle, until almost noon. At that point, the judge announced that he had another commitment and court would be dismissed for the rest of the day. We still had no jury, and another day in the week before school was to begin was almost completely wasted.
Wednesday's session was another early start, 8:30 a.m., again with one or two people missing when the clerk did roll call. We did manage to start before 9 a.m., though, and the previous day's pattern quickly re-emerged of confusing questions by the defense attorneys and sharp-witted questioning by the prosecution. Frankly, it wasn't hard to see that the prosecution was going to be far more effective and professional than the defense. Nevertheless, all of us whose names had not yet been called sat in the audience hoping that we wouldn't be one of those stuck on the jury listening to twenty days of this nonsense. It took quite a while to get to twelve people that both sides could accept as a jury. It was 3 p.m., to be exact, when the entire audience perked up as the clerk swore the jury in. Almost half of the people who had been there on Monday morning were gone, having been dismissed for "cause" or as a result of the peremptory challenges which the lawyers on both sides used rather indulgently.
I started to think that I was going to escape without being questioned. I would be free to go to the college convocation on Friday and then begin my classes on time on Monday. There were twelve jurors sworn in, and the attorneys still had six potential alternates sitting in the box for the three slots the judge felt was probably appropriate given the length of the trial. However, rather than merely choosing from those six people, he decided to fill the remaining seats with potential alternates from the remaining audience members.
Mine was the first number called.
The questioning began after the other two possible alternates were seated. The first attorney didn't ask me any direct questions, spending much of his time asking about the gang-related murder of the best friend of the poor guy sitting next to me and the murder by an ex-boyfriend of the sister of the third "new" alternate. The second lawyer asked his usual rambling questions, and then he made a particularly sharp comment to me that just because I am a teacher, I was not to act like a teacher in the jury deliberations. I was an equal to everyone else, he wanted me to know. I accepted his statement as graciously as I could under the circumstances and waited for the third defense attorney to start. He asked a very bizarre question about how I would vote in the case if it was sent to the jury for deliberations at that precise moment. I responded that it would be impossible to make a decision without any evidence being presented since that's not how trials operate. He fumbled in asking the question a different way before I caught on to what he was trying to say. He was trying to get to the point that if the prosecution didn't offer sufficient evidence in the case, we would be obligated to return a verdict of "not guilty." I finally agreed with him, but I couldn't imagine a more convoluted way to make that point.
It was for the prosecuting attorney that I was allowed to express myself the most. She asked me about the civil case that I had served on some years ago. She wanted to know what impression I had of the court system based upon that case. (I guess I was too transparent when she asked if we had reached a verdict and I said "eventually.") I told her that I thought the past trial had been rather tedious and time-consuming, that I had spent more time sitting in the corridor reading books than sitting in the courtroom listening to testimony, primarily because of delays by the judge in the case who stopped two or three times a day to handle other casework, including arraignments, and because of the inept scheduling of witnesses by the attorneys. I said that if all I was going to do was read books, I'd rather do that at home. It would be a more productive use of my time.
When she asked if my frustrations in that case would affect my emotions in this case, I answered truthfully that they wouldn't, but that's because I had a new set of frustrations. I noted that we had already spent three days in court and had just gotten a panel of jurors, and now I was added to a list of potential alternates and was spending more time worrying about my classes starting on Monday and what was going to happen with my students if I were stuck (yeah, I think I did say "stuck") on a jury for the first month of school. She thanked me for being honest and continued with her questioning of the other two potential jurors.
When the attorneys went to a sidebar--one of dozens they held over the three days of jury questioning, by the way--they and the judge quickly decided on the three alternates. All of them were men and all of them were in the pool of six alternates they had before they called the last three of us into the jury box, but at least, I wasn't one of them. I don't know if my impatience put them off or not, but I was very grateful to be allowed to walk out of the courtroom free from any further need to appear in that building.
I picked up my Certification of Jury Service upstairs in the general assembly room. Everyone else gets $15 for each day (after the first day) of service, whether you're picked for a jury or not. They also get reimbursed for their mileage to the courthouse (just one way mileage, though). They'll all be getting a check in a week or so. I get nothing. As a public employee and thanks to a decision by the governor a few years ago, I receive no compensation for jury duty and, rumor has it, no reimbursement either.
So what do I have as a result of all of this? I wish I could say that I feel proud that I did my civic duty, but I don't really feel that way at all. I feel like I just wasted a lot of time sitting around the courthouse waiting to hear if I had to tell my dean that he would need to start scrambling to find substitutes who wouldn't screw up my classes at the beginning of the semester. Well, actually, I guess that's not all that happened. I did manage to finish a collection of short stories by Nathaniel Hawthorne (who's far more mystical than I remember) and most of a book on the 2004 presidential election by a political reporter who followed the Democratic candidates that year. But that's it, really. Well, that and this story. I suppose that was worth four days of my free time this summer.
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