Immunized and Released By Order of the Judge

The County Clerk's office requires those summoned to jury duty to log in to the clerk's website the evening before the scheduled date in order to determine if attendance is really required. Out of curiosity, I logged in early and caught the requirements for last Friday. Numbers 1 through 81 were to show up Friday morning at the court house, numbers 82 and above were excused.

My number was 374, to check in Monday evening for a possible Tuesday call up. I figured my dry run last week paid off and I was as good as home free. Dutifully, I checked again after 5 p.m. for my cohort. The new instructions were: Numbers 1 through 891 to report. All higher numbers excused.

891?!

How many notices did they send out for today? I wasn't even close! I went to bed early, slept fitfully, got up in the dark and arrived with time to spare.

After going through security (slightly more efficient and less intrusive than the airport) I arrived in the large jury room which was hung with landscapes and already almost full. A quick count revealed fewer than 300 seats. The folks running the show explained that there were outside phone lines we could use, restrooms in the room and a cafeteria down the hall which they now decided to use as an overflow room. They moved close to 50 people down there and our room rapidly filled up again.

Just after 8 a.m., they began registering us by hundreds. They were extremely efficient but there also seemed to be a lot fewer than a hundred people in each hundred called. The man in charge kept repeating the phone, restroom and cafeteria instructions and asking if everyone had registered as some folks were still straggling in. One woman said she wasn't registered yet, but when she went up to the desk they discovered she was at the wrong court house.

Just after 8:30, they announced that at least one of the judges wanted to "get started early" and that the bailiffs would be coming down any minute for the first group. We would be assembled by our numbers and sent out with the bailiffs in packets of eighteen. When the first jury was assembled they called the numbers randomly so, once we were in the waiting room, high or low numbers meant nothing anymore. My group was the third or fourth called and, for some reason, had 25 in it. We speculated that was because we might have an important or controversial trial with a possible large number of challenges. The order we called was the order we lined up and left the waiting room and the order in which we entered the courtroom. The trip between, however, was akin to herding cats and required a third elevator when two of our stragglers missed the one they were supposed to take. I felt a little sorry for our bailiff who was an older gentleman.

We were each handed a questionnaire at the entrance to the courtroom and warned that the judge would go through it with maybe the first three or four potential jurors but, after that, the rest of us should just expect to rattle off the answers when called on. In addition to personal information (name, residence, occupational and marital status), it also asked whether we'd ever served on a jury before, whether we had family in law enforcement, and whether we or anyone close to us had been a victim of, or accused of, a crime. I was appalled to find almost half my fellow potentials answered, "Yes," to these last two, some with multiple incidents on both sides including, shootings, armed robberies, auto thefts, home invasions and one arrest for theft of chocolate milk. I hadn't realized I led such a sheltered life.

The judge introduced everyone in the freezing court room, including the uniformed bailiffs, the court reporter, the state's attorney, the defense attorney and the defendant, who was a young man looking very respectable in khakis, an Oxford shirt with tie, clean shaven and hair cut. Who knows what he might have looked like on the date of the alleged crime, but his lawyer had him spiffed up and he tried to keep an embarrassed "Hey, I don't know why we're all here, either, it must be some kind of mistake" look on his face. With some success, I must say. He was charged with three counts: On the 4th of July last, 1. Breaking and entering a dwelling, 2. Breaking and entering a conveyance, and 3. Petit theft (less than $100). So much for the important, controversial case.

The judge explained the general workings of the system and the legal definition of Reasonable Doubt and interrogated us in turn from the questionnaire. The gentleman one over from me really didn't want to serve and claimed he was biased against the entire system and didn't believe the state should even have prosecutors but should leave everything up to the police. The judge was exceedingly skeptical. I thought the guy was trying too hard and expected it to backfire on him. When asked if he could turn up the thermostat, the judge explained that the county works on some sort of Stalinist centralized HVAC system involving a large facility somewhere in the county resembling a NORAD or NASA launch control center and if the one guy who controls that is happy it doesn't matter what anyone else feels.

Then the state's attorney questioned us individually, generally on the theme of "Do you hold any sort of grudge against the state or the police that might prejudice your judgment?" (The gentleman one over from me claimed he did by virtue of a previous arrest.) He ended with an explanation of the minimum he had to prove in the case using a hamburger analogy (if the judge defines a hamburger as bun, patty and ketchup, the fact that you prefer bacon, cheese and mushrooms is irrelevant as long as the prosecution provides a bun, patty and ketchup) which was unfortunate as it was getting on toward noon and breakfast had been a good seven hours ago.

The defense attorney then took his turn questioning us. He had fewer questions for select people but ended by expanding on the DA's hamburger, explaining that even if the state did give us our bacon, cheese and mushrooms, if they left off the ketchup we must acquit. I think even the bailiffs were salivating at that point.

We were ushered out of the court room while they made their selection, which took less than half the time they warned us it would, and then back in again to hear the results. Seven jurors were chosen, four white women, two white and one black men. No explanation was given for their selection. They were sat down in the jury box, sworn in then and there with promises to "truly and faithfully try" right out of Gilbert and Sullivan's Trial by Jury, and the rest of us were sent on our merry ways with the declaration from the judge that we were "immunized from this date for the next 364 days" from any further summons to duty.

We broke out of there into the hot sunlight like kids on the last day of school. I hope the kid really is innocent of the charges. I'll have to check the newspaper over the next few days.