elfs | Jury Duty Day 2, in which much is revealed.

I realized after I awoke this morning that there wasn't enough milk in the 'fridge for me to have coffee and for the girls to have breakfast, so I left five minutes early and walked down to the Olympic, a small stand-alone roaster and coffee shop. It's sad to see the Olympic circling the drain so tenaciously. Their coffee is so much better than the two new Starbucks that have opened up just down the street, and their morning staff is far more cute, but now they've started a "free coffee before 6:30am" program and free WiFi. The latter is probably more crucial than the former.

After the bus dropped me off at the Seattle Art Museum I decided to walk to the courthouse. It wasn't that far and it let me walk down first Avenue toward Pioneer Square. As I walked I saw a motorcycle cop go by, whooping his siren, and he pulled over a jaywalker. Yeah, they ticket jaywalkers in this town pretty seriously.

There must be some kind of content filtering down here in the basement of the courthouse, because the bandwidth on some websites is fine and on others it just sucks.

They signed us in quickly and then we waited only a short time for the court to be called. We were seated and the judge proceeded through the process of voir dire on personal issues: "Do you know any police officers?" "Have you ever been arrested?" "Does anyone you know have a substance abuse issue?" and so on. The number of people who know of someone with a substance abuse problem was basically the whole room. Only three people claimed to have never been the victim of a crime. Lucky them.

10:30: Bathroom break.

Voir dire begins in earnest. We discover that three of the potential jurors are cops, military police, or retired police officers. Recalling

j5nn5r's recent work with the Seattle PD, I have to raise my hand about the "Do you have any close friends who are police officers?" The judge gives us the bad news: this case is expected to last three weeks. Ouch! There is no jury seating on Friday; we're free to spend that day at work.

There are sob stories about hardships. Sick mothers, "special needs" children (note, retarded children are no longer described as "special", they're now "children with special needs." George Carlin is right: we add syllables to distract and bleach tragedy out of reality), careers that will fail if the speaker isn't let go. One is a crab boat fisherman who can't miss the opening of the season. Another is a Federal Indian Law Attorney who can't afford to miss an upcoming conference. The fisherman goes free; the attorney doesn't.

12:00: We get a lunch break. I grab a pork sandwich at Hole-In-The-Wall barbecue, then go back to the jury assembly room. Hey, there's free bandwidth in there, and I've got a badge.

1:15 The jury re-assembles. Voir dire resumes, this time led by the prosecutor. One woman reveals herself to be a complete ditz: "Free will is more powerful than any drug. There's no such thing as addiction. People who say they're addicted are just using the language of The Man [I could totally hear those capital letters] to excuse their behavior." On the other hand, she's for the right of people to put whatever they want into their bodies.

One woman in her late 60's talks about having been in jail overnight for assault. Wowsers. Oh, this is lovely: after she says "You can't imagine what it's like to lose your freedom like that," she says, "Imagine what it must be like for the people of Iraq." Good grief, people, there's a time and a place for that kind of thing.

One man with a law-enforcement related job turns out to be a forensics expert, a latent print examiner for the Seattle PD. Coolness! Another one is a fossil preparer for the Burke museum. Double cool!

The defense attorney rises. Okay, I'm immediately prejudiced against him: I have the Han Solo "Where did they dig up this old fossil?" reaction as he launches straight into his questions with "I'll skip the Oprah Winfrey method of jury selection," and does not address the jury with either a "Good afternoon" or a "Ladies and gentlement of the jury," the way the prosecutor did. Him, but not his client.

Drug addiction, consensual sex vs. non-consensual sex, prison sex. Man, this is an ugly, ugly case. The prosecutor gets another round, asking about credibility. She asks me by number: I'm juror #45, "What makes you question someone's credibility?" My answer is simple: incentive. What do they get out of telling their story their particular way? Others talk about body language, and experience with the speaker. C'mon, people, incentive and consensus. Incentive is not motive.

Then she asks for reasonable doubt versus "the shadow of doubt." Again, I'm called on. "Beyond a shadow of doubt is when the matter is so settled that it would be perverse, an act of deception, to propose that an alternative explanation exists." She talks about the presumption of credibility even if the witnesses have felony convinctions.

Then it's the last turn for the defense. He starts to ask questions about the jury system. He starts with the presumption of innocence, and one juror comes forth with the notion that the presumption of guilt would be a more effective citizen. This time I volunteer my anarchic opinion that when the power of the state is arrayed against an individual in a criminal matter, the presumption of innocence is absolutely crucial.

Then he starts to ask questions about the jury system. One juror says she doesn't want to be a juror because she's an average citizen and she doesn't believe the jury system works: panels of wise men (and women, presumably, although she didn't say so). Yeah, that works.

And then the defense attorney asks two questions which make me really unhappy, really anxious. Remember that the system wants twelve people to agree either way. He asks why we don't have a jury system that takes a seven-to-five vote as sufficient, and another about why we don't have a system of judges rather than jurors. And as he's going around the room, asking individual jurors, I realize something: He's looking for a nullifier. He's looking for someone to either evangelize the jury or to hang it for his client. That's what he wants. He's buying time for his client.

And damn my conscience, now that I'm aware of the game, I don't feel I could play it out fairly. At the next break, I inform the bailiff. I talk to the judge and the two attorneys. I reveal my discomfort. I reveal my knowledge, the right of the jury to nullify, the responsibility a citizen has to the law before the judge, Scharf v. US 1865, all of it. The defense attorney looks shocked, but denies that he even knows what I'm talking about ("oh, bullshit, you old fart." I could see the judge thinking that). I tell them that I feel I could judge the case on its merits, but obviously everyone is really uncomfortable with the moment and the judge thanks me for not bringing this up in front of the rest of the jury.

And I feel really bad about it because I know it's gotten me thrown off the jury. Part of me is relieved: I get to go home. The other part of me wants to know what really happened next.

3:30: We come back from break, and sure enough, I'm immediately excused. And dammit, that's sad. My interest and knowledge of the law and its exercise should not exclude me from jury duty.

Anyway, if you want to know, and now that I'm free to look it up, the case involves a prison guard at the King County Correctional Facility accused of three counts of Custodial Sexual Misconduct in the First Degree, one in the Second. There seems to be some exchange of sex for drugs. There seems to be a question of consent.

What's more distrubing: that I'm curious to know if anything said during the trial would make for story material, or that I'm glad I got away because I have doubt that anything would?