Jury duty update: It’s done! It went ok!
Thanks for the advice, folks. I was lucky, and security didn’t give my knitting a second glance, so I knit a whole sock during jury duty.
The case: A local fellow drank about two liters of beer at the bar, then got in a fender-bender while driving home. No one was hurt, thankfully, and the charges were misdemeanors (driving while under the influence of alcohol, driving with a BAC over 0.08, and hit-and-run property damage), so hopefully the defendant ends up ok in the long run. He looked quite miserable, as I’m sure you can imagine.
My personal read is that the defense lawyer was very young and new, and determined to fight the case tooth-and-nail. She spent a lot of time during voir dire… almost trying to make her opening statements, rather than simply selecting the right jury. She asked every member of the prospective jury for their personal definition of the word “fair”, for instance, among half-a-dozen other questions. On the other hand, there were about four people excluded from the jury because they said that they couldn’t abide by “innocent until proven guilty”, and they would need affirmative evidence of innocence to acquit. Go figure. Maybe she was onto something.
The district attorney was also quite young, but seemed much more polished and businesslike. I think this was considered a very clear-cut case with relatively low stakes on all sides, so more inexperienced lawyers were given the case.
I ended up on the jury, probably in part because they were literally running out of people in the jury pool. Lots of scheduling conflicts in December, and lots of strong emotions about DUI.
The first day and a half was jury selection, which was… a bit interminable, though that was mostly for me because the pew-style wooden seats really tweaked my hip. Ouch. I was limping pretty badly, between that and the requirement to leave the room and come back in frequently – there was a jury assembly room, but it was across the building and down a flight of stairs, and I was not up to limping that far.
Once I was on the actual jury, things went much more quickly. I didn’t feel like the defense had a very clear theory of the case; it seemed like she was just trying to throw spaghetti at the wall, while the prosecution felt a lot more polished, and was the only side to bring witnesses or evidence.
(Attempts to raise reasonable doubt included:
– The defendant secretly threw up in his mouth, in the five seconds while an officer had their back turned to demonstrate heel-to-toe steps, and that made the breathalyzer test invalid.
– The defendant had consumed about 60 oz of beer so quickly that he was not yet drunk when he got in a fender-bender. (How big is this man’s stomach, and why would he chug two liters of beer?)
– The driver of the other vehicle was at fault – which doesn’t matter in a hit-and-run property damage case, the problem is that he left without exchanging information.)
It was a pretty clear-cut case in my opinion; I was actively looking for any possible scenario where the defendant wouldn’t be guilty, and I couldn’t think of anything that made sense. Definite mixed feelings about the American judicial system, and carceral punishment in general, but… this seemed pretty fair. We weren’t told about sentencing/punishment, but it sounds like the penalties for first-offense DUI in my jurisdiction are typically a few months without a driver’s license or with an ignition interlock device, several hundred dollars in fines, and informal probation. Not fun, but probably not life-destroying – which seems fair for a dumb mistake. (Seriously, in our town we have on-demand busing that will take you anywhere in the city limits for $3, which was available at the hour he drove. He had options.)
The jury pretty rapidly found the fellow guilty on “driving with a BAC over 0.08” and “hit-and-run property damage”, but we hung on “driving while under the influence of alcohol”, because one fellow … well, he was absolutely convinced that a 0.12 BAC is not ipso facto evidence that you are not safe to drive, especially when you DID get into an accident and then drive across town on a metal rim, sparks flying everywhere, and try to hide from the cops. Perhaps the defendant is the one guy in a million who can drive safely while drunk, and the traffic accident had nothing to do with whether he was drunk!
I don’t understand it either, and literally everyone else was baffled and frustrated; we spent over two hours trying to convince him on that point, before giving up and reporting a hung jury on that point. Since all three charges were misdemeanors, and it was clearly a case of “this one juror is a loon”, they let us go home.
I *was* able to knit through the whole trial; the judge had no issue with it – he made eye contact, watching for a bit (probably to make sure I was paying attention), and then smiled and looked away. He actually complimented me on being a fantastic jury foreperson at the end.
It probably helped that I was very visibly paying attention and taking notes, and my knitting was visible but pretty unobtrusive and in my lap. I can knit with my eyes closed, and “I’m doing something with my hands but making eye contact the whole time” was apparently acceptable.
Doodling would actually have been much more conspicuous; we didn’t have a surface to write on, just clipboards and notepads, so looking down the whole time would have seemed strange, and almost any other fidgeting or movement would also have been more visible!
I had imagined that especially during jury selection, we would have more of a … lobby-area, before being called in either in small groups or solo for the attorneys to ask questions.
That was when I thought a book or craft would be most needed – but I think that part is actually done virtually in my jurisdiction. We had a zoom call on Friday where they called out about 250 names, and people had to announce whether they were able to serve or if they had a reason they were unavailable (like a financial hardship or prepaid travel). Other than the first 15 minutes, we were in a courtroom or sitting in the hallway for all three days.
So, lessons learned:
1) Not too bad! Tedious, but really interesting to see first-hand.
2) Court is the one place where *everyone* will make a careful note of your preferred honorific (Mr.), and consistently use it.
3) Knitting is a great icebreaker in the courthouse hallway. I liked most of the folks I talked to, and it was neat to see a random cross-section of the county.
