distractions of the court

I got the jury duty last week, which, for a lot of people is like saying I got the Swine Flu or a case of the Clap.  No, they don’t make it “fun,” but fret not, the skirblog will make it fun for ya!  At least twice as fun as actually sitting there yourself!  So, don't ask to see my briefs, here's the long version: skirblog’s meditations on the Jury Duty.

This was my first time in the inner sanctum of the court. Usually getting called for duty means a phone message telling you you’re not needed; or maybe having to go down to whatever courthouse and wait in a jury room while others are called. This time I thought the same would happen, and was a tad disgruntled by that thought.  Why? Because I’m actually interested in serving on a jury, mostly out of curiosity, but also knowing that as the calm, rational, worldly person I am, I’d make a great juror! And of course that has probably what has kept me out of the pool, until now.

The jury assembly room:  a cattle call for sure. Nobody looks happy here. People don’t move their legs when stretched out, or their purses and other shit from empty chairs. However the clerks who run these rooms are like the best people ever. Funny over the microphone, encouraging, sympathetic. Why can’t all public servants be like them?

Oakland jury room is HOT! Sun streams in, yet when I go to pull a blind I get looks of utter astonishment from several dozen people.  Sorry, I sweat!  Really weird lady with a mess of papers and hair and broken down briefcases is, I don’t know, pretending she’s a lawyer or somebody important? She immediately gets to the loud cell phone yammering (old school flip model, no iPhone nor bluetooth) drowning out the other type A important dudes on their own more expensive cells. Glasses down on a chain, grey wisps of hair everywhere, she announces her name to the caller as Rita Goldberg or something. Right outta the lower East Side. Maybe she really is a lawyer, as all the lawyers I've noticed so far have insanely weird and outdated hair do's. But god help her poor clients.

Jovial loudspeaker says all Federal and school employees are excused. They don’t get paid for being on jury duty.  So good, lets let these poor slobs go. Even though as teachers and perhaps educated workers they'd make semi-intelligent jury choices, no? Can't have that.

As I ponder the elitism of thinking this, I almost miss my own poor last name being mangled by the jovial loudspeaker woman: Lee "Scree a bible?” Mr. "Skryburble?" Skrewboil? Screwball Scribble Scrabble, Scra-bopple, Scap Apple, Skee Ball five fucking plays for a dollar?"  Lots of laughs from the assembled assembly.

I’m actually the last one called. I get the packet of names to take up to the court. so now I have a "job" and that makes me o' so special. We are lead to courtroom, or the "department" as it is called, about 80 of us.

This room is even hotter.  A big, linebacker of a deputy is waiting for us. Takes my packet of names. Tells us the various don'ts and don'ts including no reading, talking, whispering, eating, cell phone talking, messaging, texting, or game playing. Even so much as displaying a got damn cell phone and you are toast. Also no sleeping, yawning, nose blowing, coughing, nor horseplay.  Just sit there and stare at something. Very few comply.

Lawyers and Defendant and Judge and Clerks and Stenographer are all staring at us.  Stuff is explained. Its to be a DUI case.  I sag at this. DUI? That's a bullshit waste of my time, I think.  Why do I want to hear some slob try to get out of a DUI?  (See how good and impartial juror I'd be?)

Judge is very pretty, and likes to explain things.  Jury selection will now commence.  The great winnowing. The weeding. 12 random names are called and these people occupy the Nice Chairs. Then six more occupy the not as nice chairs below.  The rest of us hang in the cheap seats.

Each person is to answer a sheet of about 15 questions.  15 basically "yes" or "no" questions I'll add.  Yet it soon becomes distressfully clear that nobody will answer yes or no to any of them. Suddenly, in our purportedly madly private society, strangers cannot wait for the opportunity to disclose as much personal detail about themselves as is possible to a roomful of other strangers. And after a few hours of this, it starts to make those of us in the “pool” insane. The woman next to me slaps her own forehead each time a person does not answer yes or no. She writhes in agony the entire day. The lady on the other side of me is snoring.

    “Have you ever been the victim of a major crime? One thats nnot a traffic stop or property theft.”
    “Well, once, when I was 9, my bicycle was stolen from our garage… 
    "Were the police called?"
    "No."
    "Anything about that experience that would prevent you from making an impartial decision on this case?"
    "Well, it was my favorite bicycle and it had a banana seat? Remember those? So I was real upset. Still am..."
    " ** "
    “Are you related to any police officers?”
    “Oh yes, my cousin lives next door to a dispatcher from the police. Oh and my niece was gonna marry a cop once.”
    " ** "
And on and on like this. Judge tolerates all this patiently. And if she didn’t happen to be so beautiful and calm and sweetly voiced I wouldda started to get quite irritated with her.  Person after person offers up full, full and fuller, totally unnecessary disclosure. Imagine 18 people doing this. It takes all day, plus half of the next. It’s a weird mix of too much information and a transparent desire to be dismissed.  Like if they can prove, by even the slightest long and circuitous path that they are on the side of the cops or the defendant, than maybe they can go home. Never mind the fact that we all have to listen to this, and after everybody makes all their claims and sad stories so much time has elapsed that we coulda just had the damn trial already and been done with it.  So, really, if people put as much effort into trying to get out of jury duty into just getting the job done…

After I get done being irritated by this I start to feel bad for us a group, as a society. Most people do not have an outlet or avenue to talk about themselves! So finally when a judge or a lawyer asks them a bit about themselves, where they went to school, what they studied, what job they do and they let loose 25, 30, 50 years of suppressed information. Sad. More people need blogs.

BTW my back and knee were killing me the whole time, but I was so put off by the shirking and lame-ass moves by these peeps that I decided to not ask for my own deferral.

And of course I got called. Cause after all the sad stories (I’m a Jehovahs Witness and we cannot judge another person!) and outright bullshit (I believe that the consumption of alcohol is wrong and eveel under any circumstances and its evil and from the devil and that’s what I think and no, I can’t be impartial about it.) I found myself moved up to alternate, not-as-nice seat Juror #15.

And more were called to fill in the gaps of those dismissed and they, too, told their long assed stories. Even the lady who sat next to me in the pool, who slapped her own forehead when people didn’t answer directly, got up there and went on and on about every episode of Court TV she ever saw and every summons she ever got in the mail.  By the time they got to me I was like this: “yes, no, yes, no, yes, no, no, no, no!” I was done in about four seconds.

And then I found myself as Juror #1.

Juror #1 doesn’t mean anything except an excellent view of the lovely Judge, and a comfy seat with a little ledge to place my water. Take what I can get.

The court reporter was also rather cute, in a kind of freaky secretary kind of way. She was definitely smiling at me, and Juror #2 was way jealous.

Trial would finally start.  Tomorrow.

To enter the Alameda Superior Court in Oakland, you pass through security, a metal detector and screening of your belongings. You can leave your shoes on but you have to remove your belt. ??? This felt far more invasive to me than the shoes. Next day I eat giant croissant for breakfast and gain five pounds so as not to have to wear a belt.

The Clerk of Court may have been a female to male sex re-assignment ? Or a guy with a beard and breasts. I dunno. These clerks have to work their day with a bunch of people staring at them since there is nothing else for us to do, so you have to stare, and break down the person into unfair and minute points about their looks and mannerisms.  At least that's what I did. The other clerk, a young woman, seemed kinda bitchy and high falutin if you know what I mean. Poor girl, she’s probably a saint.

Finally the trail itself starts. and immediately a moment of hilarity: two highway patrol cops are called as witnesses, the ones who arrested Mrs. innocent DUI. They are almost stereotype for stereotype the exact two cops from the movie Superbad! Seth Rogan and the other dude. The Seth Rogan guy is first, and he be-bops into the court, grinning like a complete asshole, the whole time wearing every piece of State patrol gear imaginable dangling from his belt, and has wrapped himself in his big winter Trooper jacket with the fur collar and all. And its, no joke, 75 degrees in this courtroom cause the AC was broken. He slouches and grins and can’t be more than in his early 20s. God help us, I think. Though admittedly he has a shitty job, trolling the highways at night looking for drunk drivers. I imagine if he had pulled me over and acted like that I'd-a maybe driven over his toe with my car.  He could give a giant shit, it is clear, can't remember anything and would rather go home and get some sleep. Yet through all his smirking and attitude I can see he actually knows his shit, the rules, the procedures and that makes me feel just a tiny bit better.

Other dude, also like one year out of the academy is sporting the '70s stash so nobody's taking him seriously either,  and he's almost completely worthless to the DA or the defense.

Then a witness is called for the Defense. And I am again distracted by her looks, although this time because she purposely it seems, has made herself as unattractive as is humanly possible. Shit I hate to always comment on people’s looks, and if it weren’t for a lack of other places to direct my attention, I could have ignored her looks I guess, and sure, it isn’t fair, but I gotta report on what I saw.  This woman had the most severe, triangular widow’s peak I’ve ever seen. Forget Ruth Buzzi as the old lady with the hair net on Laugh-In, this was ultra severe. She enhanced it by pulling her hair back as tightly as she could get it, and pinning it back with silver clips in some sort of Frankensteinish affair, making sure our complete attention was on her giant forehead and the aforementioned widows peak.  Again, not to be mean, but I mean her forehead looked as if second complete forehead had been somehow grafted onto her own, with this crazy widow’s peak plastered on later, and the whole effect was to make it almost impossible to listen to a word she was saying.

Their story was unusual: coming home from a party, a party where the driver had one teeny tiny glass of wine when she got there, I mean a half a glass, or a sip maybe. A thimble is more like it, it was a mouse party and they were serving wine in thimbles so one thimble just to be social. The passenger, the widow's peak woman, had perhaps four drinks. And I don't know if it was four bottles of wine or she's saying she has an allergy or some kind of chemical thing, but wine can really, you know, go to her head. Like shit, four wines and she was out. And sick.  So while driving home passenger becomes sick and needs to vomit.  They have just driven through the giant Bay Bridge toll plaza at about midnight, and decide to pull over to the shoulder and stop and open the door so passenger can vomit. Lesson #1: as my intelligent wife commented (even though I did not discuss the details of the case with her): “somebody in your car needs to vomit at midnight on the Bay Bridge? Open the damn window!”

They’ve got their flashers on so up pulls the cast of Superbad and there the fun begins. Some sort of passion play takes place which, depending on who's side you're on is either a routine and well founded field sobriety test, or an exercise in humiliation and trauma worthy of the dungeons of the Spanish Inquisition.  There is no video tape, we don't know why. There is also no blood alcohol test cause driver refused to take one.  And this gives everybody pause.

But maybe she was not on something, but ONTO something. Because apparently you can indeed be arrested for not taking the test, but it will then be almost impossible to convict you.  ESPECIALLY if you weren’t actually driving the car when the superbads approached you, and may have actually passed the field sobriety tests pretty well for conditions and circumstances, and have never been pulled over before for as much as throwing an apple core out the window in your life.  That's the case. Can the People (you and I and a pimply, young kid from the DAs office) prove BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT that this driver was impaired. The answer is no.

But it aint gonna be that easy. We must deliberate.

We are corralled from 75 deg. court room, to 83 deg. jury room, a tiny room that smells of people and sweat and those who ate onions, curry, garlic, chives, shallots, fish, or aged cheese for breakfast.

Foreman’s name is “Rory.”  Coincidentally, I’ve been listening non-stop to the Vaseline’s comp “Enter the Vaselines,” and you’d have to be numb not to immediately get the song “Rory Rides Me Raw” stuck in your fool head, as I have had for months now.  So every time Rory, who’s a rather straight laced, upstanding type chap speaks, I go straight to Vaseline-land, the last place ol' Rory probably goes.

People want to play Court TV. Even though it is abundantly clear that the People have not proven beyond a reasonable doubt that our driver was under the influence, there are jurors who are clamoring for a complete transcript of the trial be brought in, and also on sending several written questions out to the court. This means calling the Deputy, getting word to the Judge, who may or may not be around, getting the court reporter, printing out the record and delivering it to us, so a few of us can finally play Law and Order in real life. This will take crazy long, and will possibly extend our deliberations past one day.  And I says to myself I says, no way that's gonna happen. I askthem why, why do you need transcripts?  “because I need to understand the emotional state of the defendant and the witnesses.” 
      “Yeah?” I say. “Well check this emotional state out:  we are not coming in here tomorrow, ok? I’ve already spent 3 of my last precious four days off for the last two weeks on this trial, and we can futz around all day today if you like, cause today is already a wash, but believe me, we will not coming in tomorrow. Is that clear?"  And with that, skir took over the proceedings.

Before I got jumped, our guardian/jailor Deputy comes in and tells us he’s taking us all to lunch. Huh? Plus he’s not suggesting a hotdog from the cart downstairs, but taking us to a nice place up the street: Le Cheval, the delicious French/Vietnamese place famous in Oakland. On them. Dang. Best part is filing out of the court house and walking up to Le Cheval with an armed Deputy in front and another in back.  They guide us to a special seating area that Le Cheval has for jurors, pretty much the same 12 person round table that we had back at court. But this time with a lazy susan…

Lunch is delicious, even though Juror #2 somehow manages to drop a broccoli from a great height into his plate and  splash me with a wave of brown sauce. No matter, I’ll have food on my shirt whether from him or my own smutzing.

Escorted back.  Deliberations continue and clearly half of us have lives to get back to and half of us do not. I press pretty hard to cut the bullshit and vote not guilty already. Understandably a bunch of dudes in there are not digging my scene. But I donut care.

Its fascinating really, how 12 disparate people with diverging opinions and no guidance somehow coalesce by the end of things into agreement. There are no rules really. You just start talking. Some wanted to dwell on procedure, should we write on pads or on a big board? Should we raise our hands? Make a list? Others played the same bad kid role they played in school, cracking wise and slouching in the seats.  I pulled back from my obnoxiousness several times just to let the flow flow. We started to inch toward a verdict.

Rational people emerged from the group. Idiots emerged from the group. People who would sit there and talk gibberish unimpeded for 15 hours if you let them emerged from the group. At points I wondered how anything would get decided. But group dynamics has its ways. Rory didn’t ride us raw, but I did, aided by a few fellow barebackers… we polled. We agreed. Not Guilty.

We filed back into the now refreshingly cool by comparison, 75-degree court room. Took our places once again in our comfy chairs. And before the pretty judge, the transsexual clerk, the misshapen and perhaps not altogether truthful defendants, the cute but predatory stenographer, the pimply young DA (turns out he was just a student, this was his first case!), and us, now 12 best friends and confidants who will never see each other again, read the verdict.

“Not Guilty.” And the defendant smiled for the first time ever, her lawyer looked genuinely surprised and the judge, in her sweet, calming tones thanked us, and dismissed us.

On the way out Rory said: “I guess even liars can be sober.” And Juror #2 and I decide on that note to go and have ONE BEER to shake it all off. And we had made the right decision.

Comments

[ju ju pongo]

ooooh,
just how pretty was that judge?

[Michael Butscher]

Thanks for the insight