Categories: all aviation bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Sat, 06 Jun 2009

Jurisprudence

If you've been following me on Facebook, you'll know that I've been in jury duty for the last few weeks. Since May 20th, in fact.

The first few days were uneventful. The most interesting thing that happened was that I was selected for a 5-week trial (yikes) but was dismissed for not being able to reasonably take 5 weeks off work. For all I know, they're still looking for jurors on that one.

Then I was selected for another jury on the morning of the second day. I was kind of hoping not to be selected, but such is life. I went up to the courtroom, and ended up sitting in the box. That was Thursday. A bunch (maybe 75%) of the jury pool was dismissed for various hardship reasons, most to do with precarious job situations. There were perhaps 20 of us left by the end of the day, and the judged called an end to things a bit early. We didn't have to be back until the next Tuesday, since Memorial Day fell on the Monday.

Tuesday arrived (after an interesing and eventful trip to Spokane for racing, a story which is currently underway, don't worry, I haven't forgotten it), and I was still sitting in the box -- in the jury box proper, and so definitely on the jury unless bumped for some reason. However, by my reckoning, I was also in an excellent position to be bumped. I was undecided whether I wanted to sit on the case. We knew it was a criminal case, so at least it wouldn't be two greedy jerks suing each other for a gazillion dollars over some worthless trifle.

Finally, we started on the Voir Dire process, which is where the lawyers ask questions of the jurors to weed out those they don't want to sit on the trial. This was done with the Donahue method, which doesn't actually involve walking around a TV audience with a microphone, but the method is somewhat similar.

Each lawyer asked questions of the whole group of jurors (all 50 or so of us, the 12 in the box, and the rest of the pool sitting in the audience). For instance, since the trial was (we now knew) at least related somehow to rape, we were asked about how we'd feel if a man was falsely accused of rape. The defense attorney in particular spun crazy, hard-to-follow theoretical situations then tried to pressure jurors into making judgement calls on them. One such situation was that a given juror had a really nice pen, and another juror decided to take it, then he asked a bunch of questions which were so off-kilter that I don't even remember what they were, but they inspired everyone on the eventual jury to label him as a douchebag, and worse.

The attorneys were interesting, in and of themselves. Aside from presenting this douchebag persona through the trial, the defense attorney reminded me of a combination of two Simpsons characters: Lionel Hutz (incompetent lawer), toned down to about 50%, and Dr. Marvin Monroe (a doctor who was killed off in the first few seasons). He looks like the doctor, and acts a bit like the lawyer. His arguments were objected to regularly by the prosecutor, and mostly upheld by the judge. His presentation was somewhat pandering and could be quite condescending. Fortunately, although we agreed in our sentiment for him, the jury didn't let this influence the facts of the case.

The prosecuting attorney reminded me of the women you see on local news channels, presenting the weather or anchoring -- blond, skinny, but strangely unattractive. She even had the perfectly straight, bottle-blond bob. Appearance aside, she presented a much more competent-seeming case, and the defense's occasional and clumsy objections were usually overruled. We agreed in the jury room, once we were allowed to discuss it, that her case could have used improvements too. Still, she seemed much more professional and upstanding than the defense attorney.

You may have noticed that I've mentioned no names, and I don't intend to. Obviously, some of what I'm writing is not complimentary, and I don't see any reason to connect unkind words like these with people who are doing their jobs as well as they can. I also don't want to refrain from describing the full experience, so this seems like a good compromise.

Finally, we reached the point where the dismissals for cause (ie, "I can't be unbiased where rape is concerned") were done, and we got to the pre-emptory challenges. This is basically where a lawyer says, "I don't like that juror," and kicks them off the jury. This was the phase where I expected to be dropped, as I had talked a great deal, including at one point calling back to the defense attorney, in a plainly annoyed manner, "Your question is misleading!"

And, this is a long story. I'll be breaking it up into parts. Up next, getting selected, and opening statements. Maybe the first few witnesses if I'm feeling up to it.

Posted at 02:57 permanent link category: /misc

Categories: all aviation gadgets misc motorcycle theater

Written by Ian Johnston. Software is Blosxom. Questions? Please mail me at reaper at obairlann dot net.