Facing the jury

[elfs]

I am spending this morning as an involuntary day guest of the King County judicial system. I have been summoned to jury duty. Again. I mean, come on, I've done my time, paid my debt to society already, do I really have to come in here and do this yet again?

I took my usual bus into the city and found a ride over to the courthouse. I managed to get through security without an eyebat despite carrying just a ton of electronics: MP3 player, radio, cell phone, PDA, laptop, camera, power cord for the laptop and MP3 player. Apparently, none of that twigged the security system.

So now I'm sitting the Jury Assembly room which looks like an airport lounge and is full of lots of other people who, like me, would much rather be sitting somewhere else. Despite the 8:00am assembly time, the cattle call was actually begun around 7:30.

8:15: Judge Trickie (sp? - CHECK) stands at the lectern at the far end of the room and gives us the spiel. He tells us that in 1930s jurors were placed into the jury pool for four weeks; in the 1970s, this was revised to two weeks. In 1992, they changed it to the one trial system; you're called to the courtroom and go through voir dire. He gave us the rah-rah "Seeking justice under law is the highest calling we can have." He's very practiced at this.

8:30: They're showing us the video. It's very repetitive. "You will determine the credibility of witnesses." The terminology: plaintiff, counsel, defendant, judge, clerk, reporter, bailiff,

I'm paying attention to the jury room part. They confiscate your cellphones. They give you a copy of the judge's instructions. "Everyone should understand and follow the judge's instructions." Nothing in the constitution of the judicial system is there any right or power of the judge to instruct the jury in anything. The judge is free to advise the jury but his instructions are not covered by law. Jury's are a law unto themselves. One of the "Jury advice" newsletters reads "It is improper for the jury to determine compensation by averaging the juror's individuals assessments of damages." Snort It might be awkward, but it's legal.

9:30: Lovely, I'm selected for the first pool of the day. I look through the "confidential juror questionaire" and it starts off with this warning: [Edit: redaction removed] "This case involves sexual misconduct." I went through the questionnaire and tried to be as impartial as possible. There wasn't that much there to twig me. Let's see if it comes of anything.

Woah, cool. Someone brought an AlphaMate typewriter. It's basically a souped up Tandy microcomputer that does one thing: be a writer's tool.

11:00: My hunger gets the better of me. I walk up to the vending machine that's plastered with stickers that read "Healthy food choices help maintain good health!" I get a bag of Doritos.

11:30: They let us go for lunch. I wander down to Waji for a browse through the bookstore and a bowl of Pho. I find several books I want, the cheapest one of which is $26, and no books on Japanese instruction that I can't already match with my Lampkin series of textbooks and a couple of manga. I don't think they'd appreciate my practicing my Japanese back at the jury pool by pulling up Kimi Kiss. There's no place here to really sit with one's back to the wall.

I managed to splash hot sauce into my eye. Ouch! Is in inappropriate to read rough sex gay porn on your ebook reader while waiting for the jury manager to call you?

1:30: Okay, they have taken part of my jury pool out for special interrogation, and they have dismissed other members based solely on their answers to the questionnaire. I seem to be in a third camp: neither called nor dismissed. I'm a juror. I'm not supposed to know anything.

2:30: They dismissed all non-assigned jurors. I'm still in the pool. I still wait. I should have brought a pillow or something. It's really hard to write knowing you're in interrupt mode and at any moment they might pull you out of flow to ask you embarrassing questions.

3:30: After joshing with a couple of guys in the back of the jury pool (including pulling down the "dun-duhn!" sound from Law & Order onto my laptop) we get called up to the front. While we wait in line, one lucky man is set free.

4:00: They seat the jury. I'm sworn in. I can't say anything more about the trial after that until it's over or I'm released, so don't ask. It's been a crappy day. I'm gonna go get a frappe.

4:30: After taking a bus back into downtown, I get onto the 121 heading out of downtown going the correct direction and I even catch it at my usual stop. There's a woman sitting across from me and my first reaction upon seeing her was that she hot in a scary sort of way. Maybe early 50's, ragged, rough-trade look, soft and big. Cursing up a storm about the bus being like an oven. Then she gets a phone call and spends the rest of the bus trip crying her eyes out. It's hard to bear, listening to her, wondering if I should do anything. Say anything. No one else is, and the bus is half-full. I'm not the only person aware of her misery. She managed to pull herself again before she left the bus, but it was still painful to deal.

Comments

[solarbird]

Holy crap! They let you on a jury? I've never gotten onto a jury. Woah. ^_^

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

I was called once, but got the notice forwarded to me at my new out-of-state address the day before I was supposed to show up. Haven't been called up since.

[solarbird]

I've been in jury pools five times. My butt hit Seat 12 once, but I was immediately punted by the prosecuting attorney. I can't see how elfs gets through!

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I've been called four times, and been on one. Those aren't the best of odds. And the one I was on was a petty vandalism case, hardly the stuff to warrant Law & Order level resources.

[srmalloy.livejournal.com]

I've been on one jury, a case where a prison inmate -- representing himself -- sued a pair of paramedics for denying him medical treatment... during a prison lockdown... for a preexisting condition (sizeable tooth cavity) he'd already declined treatment for... twice. Paramedics don't get to make that decision; it goes up to the prison doctor, who wasn't named in the suit. And the plaintiff was quite lame during jury selection... one of the seated jurors was a retired fireman, who would have been at least passingly familiar with what a paramedic could and could not do on their own, and I work at a Navy hospital. I found out after the trial had started that the plaintiff had an open-and-shut ejection for cause on me if he'd done even a passing amount of research on the two people he was suing -- they were both only part-time paramedics, and were both Navy corpsmen at one of the branch clinics of the Naval Medical Center San Diego, where I work. Five days of sitting through the plaintiff incompetently trying to demonize the two paramedics while the only real facts in the case -- a) that the paramedics did not have authority to grant medical treatment, b) the condition for which the plaintiff demanded treatment was preexisting and he had declined treatment for it twice, and c) the prison doctor did not feel that the condition was sufficiently life-threatening to justify breaking a lockdown to treat immediately.

Talking to the defendants' lawyer afterward, I found out that there are a constant stream of lawsuits like this filed by prison inmates, who spend their 'free' time in the prison law library researching their next suit, because win or lose, it gets them out of the prison for the duration of the trial, and if they keep trying, eventually they may win one. The jury's opinion during the deliberation was that it was a pity there was no effective way to award damages to the defendants for having to participate in this farce.

[elfs.livejournal.com]

I'm trying to figure out what kind of pretrial maneuvers one could do to limit the damage cases like this do to the justice system. This is obviously a case that clogs the courts and wastes everyone's time and money. I can't come up with a gatekeeper procedure that would prevent stuff like this and yet wouldn't impact the process of justice.

[mothball-07.livejournal.com]

Ok..so did you blacken the redacted statement just to see who would highlight it to read it?!

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

Guilty.

*hides*

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

*blushes*

[ladyerin.livejournal.com]

*whisles a no-couldn't-possible-be-something-I-would-do tune*

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Only sorta. I wrote down the details before realizing that I couldn't really discuss them, and when I sat down to post it I decided to redact that sentence. But every knows how to deal with ordinary redacting, so I changed the sentence as well.

[vik_thor]

Lucky you.
I have wanted to be on a jury for years.

Good luck.

[kengr]

Weird. Here in Portland they don't confiscate cell phones.

As for that Alphamate, it may cost more, but I'm quite happy with my Dana Wireless.

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

Is in inappropriate to read rough sex gay porn on your ebook reader while waiting for the jury manager to call you?

My immediate thought was that it's better than you writing it while waiting, but then you covered that later in the post.

Oops. :)

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Actually, I was writing romantic gay robot porn. But that's different, ne?

[halloranelder.livejournal.com]

Of course, completely different. No comparison at all. Worlds apart.

Actually, if it's not set anywhere near Ken, then it would be worlds apart. :)

[valarltd.livejournal.com]

Isn't jury duty fun?

Our judge gets the non-serving pool out by about 11:30 and gets on with it.

[emeric1120.livejournal.com]

My favorite line from the last time I was in the jury pool... "You're here to determine whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty, not whether or not the law is fair or good." Not a smart thing to say when it's one of those controversial new laws. :-) (Video speeding tickets, IIRC; it's been a while. They'd just been started in the slime pits, I mean suburbs surrounding Hell, I mean Chicago.)

[sarekofvulcan.livejournal.com]

Heh. That's not right...

http://www.fija.org/

[ladyerin.livejournal.com]

11:00: My hunger gets the better of me. I walk up to the vending machine that's plastered with stickers that read "Healthy food choices help maintain good health!" I get a bag of Doritos.


Yea! for nutrition....

I'll see your bag of Doritos and raise you one fudge round...


I have a friend who has been called 4 times for jury duty and I never have...how unbalanced is that?

~E

[elfs.livejournal.com]

Do you vote? Drive a car? Those are the two rolls from which they take names. If you names appears on neither, then you're not likely to ever be called to jury duty. If it appears on both, then you're twice as likely as someone who's name appears on one. That seems to be true, at least for King County, WA.