Jury duty, some reflections
To my dismay, I received a jury summons in the mail about a month ago. My mother was envious, as always, and I was unsure of what to do. I read as much as I could find and asked questions of people who had done it before so I didn't feel like a complete rookie when I went in.
Technology pretty much rules. They have installed some new gadgets in recent years that made the whole thing a lot more bearable (or so I'm told). The TVs were nice, as well as the barcode system that did pretty much all of the work. All I had to do was pay attention for my name. The girl behind the glass had some DVDs and started one of their "fine cinematic masterpieces" also known as "The Incredibles".
About halfway through the movie I was called upstairs and went into the courtroom. They picked an initial jury of 12 plus 5 alternates. I was number 5, odd how whenever I get a number its usually 3 or 5. I was easily the youngest person in there. I thought that would get me off the hook...no such luck. I even invoked my mothers employment at the Department of Corrections from a few years prior, also no such luck. I sat in seat number 5 through the selection process. Then when the Lawyers were doing their dismissals I started thinking "please pick me please pick me please pick me" again, no such luck. Seat number 4 was dismissed four or five times and seat number six was dismissed once. Then I heard the D.A. say "The People pass" and I knew my hope for dismissal was slim. Then immediately I heard the Defense lawyer say "The Defense passes" and I thought to myself "Crap, I'm skrewed".
One alternate was picked, and she took a seat in a comfy looking swivel chair next to the jury box. I kept thinking of how they (the two lawyers and the judge) kept picking on me. The judge pointed out my age and asked if I would be able to hold my own with so many people older than I. Each Lawyer made a crack as well, cant remember what they were were though. Little did they know I would end up shocking them all.
The trial started immediately, opening statements came about 10 minutes after the jury selection was finished. The reason for the delay was because the judge called a quick recess.
On a side note, the judge was pretty damned awesome. He was one of those people who was very level headed, fair, and honestly good people. The type of people that should be admired.
So I am sure you are all dying to know by now, heres what happened: Theres was this guy, he was sitting in a car with this lady and another guy was standing outside the car and chatting with them when whats called a "P.O.P." officer drove past. Don't ask me what it stands for, I can't remember anyway. Just know its like a "Beat cop", thats what the Officer who testified said. Anyway, he drives by and sees this girl, and he knows her because he has arrested her before, and shes on probation. This isnt just any probation though, this is a special kind of probation known as "Searchable Probation" or something like that. In their stupidity, they never explained what that meant exactly. As I understood it, it meant that if a cop saw her and knew she was on searchable probation they could search her without any reason and also her home and any vehicle she was in.
The cop and his partner saw her, flipped a bitch and started searching her. They found nothing. So they gathered the three in front of the police car and he went and searched the car. Inside they found an open container of beer and a Meth pipe. Nothing else, no drugs at all. The pipe was stuck in the car between the drivers seat and the center console. So the cop saw that and arrested the guy who was sitting in the drivers seat. This is where I come in. He was on trial for possession of of narcotics related paraphernalia. That was the only charge against him.
To be convicted of this "crime" three things need to happen.
1) You must have in your control a device or tool used for the consumption of narcotics.
2) You must be aware that the object is there.
3) you must know what the device or tool is for.
"Being in control" of something is kind of tricky. Two or more people can have control of something and you dont need to physically touch it, ever.
After the D.A. (from here on out I will be calling her "Bitch", trust me...she deserves this title) finished asking the arresting officer a bunch of questions about his conduct and how the thing went down the Defense guy got up and dropped several bombshells on her case. The biggest one was "Hey, guess what...that car he was in? its not his. The car is registered to some other guy." There was also "There was no testing done whatsoever on any of the items or even a drug test done on the defendant. No fingerprints or residue tests, nothing."
The bitch kept bringing up an example of a kid with a candy bar. In the example the kid was given a candy bar by his mother to hold on the way home from the store. The kid was also told that he wasnt allowed to eat that candy till after dinner. The mom never saw anything, but when they got home the kid was covered in chocolate and there was an empty wrapper on the floor. Her point was that there are several ways that all of that evidence could have gotten there, but it was probably caused by the kid eating the candybar. One of the prospective Jurors (who was dismissed) shut that bitch down during selection by saying "What if it was a hot day? It could have melted"
One witness, and a few pieces of evidence later that day was over and we were told to come back at 9:30 AM the next day.
I rushed in to court the next day, I am so not a morning person, to discover that the start time had been pushed back. w00t. I went to the cafe and bought a mediocre breakfast then came back. They did their closing statements and we went to the deliberation room. The guy that led us there was a rookie and he didnt know where our room was, we all had a good laugh about it.
When we got to the room the guy who led of there placed a large envelope on the table and told us how to get in contact of him. He was not waiting outside, we had a phone and called his pager. As he was leaving I noticed the envelope was quite thick, bout 2 inches. It was also labeled as the envelope containing jury verdict forms. I thought "wow...thats a thick envelope for some 'we the jury find blah blah blah...' stuff, is there really that much paperwork?". So I picked it up and looked inside, a woman at the table said "HA! you touched it first so you have to be foreman" and we all laughed. I just played it off and thought it would be cute if I actually was named foreman. Some people came back from the bathroom and said "who's foreman?" and one guy said "this guy already touched the envelope" there was another giggle and joke about control over the envelope so I said "give me some fingerprints" we laughed some more. To my surprise, no one complained about me being the foreman. I even asked if anyone objected. So I got to be foreman and continued to shock people throughout the day...IT WAS FUN!! At one point I needed to talk to our middleman and he had this great "deer in the headlights" expression for about half a second when he found out I was foreman.
So I did my best to lead things, made sure people didnt get out of control...that sort of thing. On our first vote it came out to 10-2 in favor of not guilty. So I respectfully asked who it was and we quite calmly went through it all again. The word "agitated" kept coming up to describe the mood of the defendant when he found out the car was being searched. So we assumed this guy was pissed off and yelling at people, that sort of thing. It was the one thing holding the two on the "guilty" side. They thought that the reason he was so pissed about the car being searched was that he knew they would find his pipe and he would get busted for it. If that was the case he would have met the standard of "#2" above and would have been guilty. To their credit they kept a firm but open mind. Later there was so much confusion over what the officer said we had to pull the court recorder in there to tell us what he actually said. Turns out the one who said "agitated" was the bitch-ass D.A. and it held us up for three hours.
The officer used the term "visually upset". That lead us to believe he was more upset about the car being searched for what appeared to be no reason at all than being upset about what they may find.
The woman to my right dug the proper form out of the envelope and I signed it. We then called our middleman and he went to gather all the people up. We got a break and walked around a bit. There were lots of nervous looking people in the courtroom when we got back in. We all took our seats and came to order. The judge look out at us and said "Have you selected a foreman?" I said "Yes" and raised my hand. I only saw the judges "deer in the headlights" thing, but im sure the Lawyers did it too.
I passed off the verdict when asked, I almost messed up when I took it out of the envelope. I was able to put it back in quickly and get things moving. The verdict was read, no reaction was given from either side and the bitch said she did not contest. After that the judge gave us these "thanks for doing this" award things and we were on our way.
I went to work for an hour and sat around doing mostly nothing. All and all the experience was pretty enjoyable.