Jury selection trip report (long)

[ddubois]

I got pinched for jury duty this week. Me and 70-ish civically responsible people showed up Monday, from which 12+2 of us will be chosen to sit at a trial for approximately two weeks to listen to a case I'm legally obligated not to discuss, but will anyway.

Monday I went in around noon, and we collectively answered questions from the judge about our ability to serve. I've never heard so many pathetic excuses.

1) Anyone traveling out of state and have travel documentation?
"I just graduated college, am starting a new job on the mainland mid-July, and want to spend my last few weeks with my family and friends."
Hey [censored], the 5 people next to you are actually employed and their ability to put food on the table for their family is being impaired, I think you can manage to be content bumming around your house watching TV and drinking beer "merely" from 5pm to 11pm for ~9 days.

2) Anyone have severe medical condition and documentation from their doctor?
"I had some chest pains, and this is my prescription for some medicine from my doctor"
"What effect does this medicine have on you?"
"It's helped the pain"
So the problem is dealt with and will have no impact on your ability to be a juror then? Gee, thanks for speaking up and wasting everyone's time.

3) Anyone know someone from the list of witnesses?
"I've been to so-and-so's salon."
So, the fact that someone he employs has touched your hair impairs your ability to evaluate his testimony? Obviously.

4) Is anyone here not comfortable with the English language?
"I was not born here."
"When did you come to America?"
"1959. <old lady proceeds into a 5 minutes speech telling us her life story>"
"Have you understood everything that's been said in court?"
"Yes."
How this judge avoids laughing in people's face, I do not know. For every excuse, he just sort of nodded sympathetically, said something about "taking that under consideration", then moved on to the next person.

Almost none of the people who offered excuses were absolved on the first day. A few people were deferred, so that they would be re-scheduled after their travel arrangements had them arriving back. They are the suckers, because now they will be inconveinenced twice. Deferral is just that, it's not a free pass. Enjoy your trip.

Monday concluded by picking 12 people at random, and subjecting them to an hour long-barrage of questions from the prosecutor, half of which were inane, rhetorical or both, and clearly delivered not in order to elicit any information, but rather to strategically foster a particular mindset. Hey lady, give your opening remarks when less than 20 people are stuck listening to you, not 70. Now I know why people hate lawyers.

Then the day ended, and all 60 of us non-chosen had to come back Tuesday. [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img] BBV: If we lived in California, there's a law that says the courts have one day to "use you or lose you". That's not the case in Hawaii apparently. Why they don't just grab a random 20 or so, instead of everyone, I have no idea.

Tuesday:
We get there at 10:30, and the defense does his little interrogation. The highlight of this session was the old man juror #10 telling the defense attorney with sincerity: "You are a very good actor!" He was a real ham, a real slick willie, with the overly dramatic inflection of voice like a bad made-for-TV drama. Now I know why people hate lawyers.

We come break for lunch at 11:50, come back as instructed at 1pm, and sit around in the hallway until 1:50pm until we actually go back into court. Now they start kicking people out. At some point during questioning the college student whined some more about how he'd be unable to focus on the trial "with everything going on". He was one of the four let go for cause (along with the unemployed-for-one-year lady who was starting a new job the next day, and the two guys who said they were uncomfortable with gays, which is relevant for the trial). That pissed me off. Apparently, you just need to shamelessly whine louder than everyone else to get out of jury duty.

Then they each question the four new random people, and begin the preemptory challenges: Boot a person just because they feel like it, pick a new person at random, judge questioning, prosecution questioning, defense questioning, rinse repeat. We got through four of these before they called it a day. BBV: Now all 50-ish of us have to go back Thursday for a couple hours - hopefully no more - to fill merely two preemptory slots and two alternate slots!

On the upside, the second lawyer for the defense, who handled the questioning of the replacement jurors, is unbearably hot. Not just a great face (hapa) and a great body, but that whole look with that suit, those intellectual lawyer-esque glasses, and her mannerisms - oh man, I wanted to whip it out in court. In fact, there are quite a few hot chicks in suits at the courthouse. I choose the wrong career for sure.

There was alot of questioning and talk about presumption of innocence, and "Can you presume my client innocent?", which is of course a crock of semantic BS. The guy is clearly not truly innocent for sure, but rather, he's just not convicted yet. He is Schrondinger's cat. He is both guilty or innocent with some probability of each (the conviction rate?), and we don't know which one he will be found until we open the box at the conclusion of trial. Fortunately (for eveyone), I wasn't in the box and didn't have the opportunity to waste everyone's time with my estoeric philosiphizing.

Some of the questioning asked "Do false accusations sometimes occur?", to which everyone agreed. Also, there was talk about the difference between "reasonable doubt" versus "beyond all possible doubt", while asking people how they felt about the possibility of convicting someone when the only evidence was one's person testimony. A few people said "No way, we need more evidence than just one accuser!". To this, the prosecutor countered, "What if someone confronted a victim in parking lot with a weapon, demanded money, and then the defendent was later picked as the assailant? There's no other evidence, no other eye witnesses. If you believe that victim is telling the truth, is that enough to convict?" at which point these people relented and said they probably could convict, if they believed the accuser. Of course, that situation isn't analogous at all to a "he said, she said" rape-accusation. It's not just the credibility of witness that matters, but also the plausibility of the scenario, the likelihood of the individuals involved to act a certain way in certain situations, the array of the possible mitivations for the accuser, and the fact that accusing a stranger is quite different than accusing someone you know. But court doesn't seem to be a forum for deep thought.

I thought it kind of strange how much was said about various levels of proof, without anyone trying to operationalize what it means to be "beyond a reasonable doubt". If I am 99.9% sure the guy is guilty, is that enough? What about 90% sure? (51% sure surely seems insufficient.) If the conviction rate is 70%, and 10% of those found guilty are actually innocent, 7 innocent people go to the slammer every year for every 63 offenders. That seems like too much to me, I guess. (This reminds me of those "Would you bet everything you own if someone was laying you 9:1 odds?"-type of threads.) So what do you think reasonable doubt means? Seems like even the courts don't really know, and definitions I'm seeing on the web really don't provide any mechanism by which you could confidently make a decision. Of course, the average person probably isn't rationale enough to properly gauge the difference between a 90% or a 99% likelihood anyway, so my point may be moot.

[d-baggery]

god i'm so glad i never went to my jury summons.

[Punker]

Getting out of jury duty is easy. The trick is to say you're prejudiced against all races

[young Nut]

wow...reading that was about as boring as I would imagine jury duty would be. Sorry to slam your trip report a little, but lets face it, it's hard to make jury duty interesting.

Perfect example:

[ddubois]

Sorry to hear. I was reasonably confident the excuse lines had comedic value, but maybe they need oral delivery to be funny.

Damn - if I had a camera phone, I would try to take pics of the hot defense attorney, as that would surely save the thread.

I was kind of hoping to hear what EV-cogniscent people think about the meaning of reasonable doubt.

[MelchyBeau]

About the california law, that is not correct. I went to jury duty on a thursday to be told I have to come back friday, to be told I have to come back in 2 weeks for a 7 week trial. then I get there and there is a note on the door telling me I've been dismissed. They made me drive 30 miles, pay 12 bucks for parking, just to read a [censored] note on a door. ugh.

Melch

[ddubois]

[ QUOTE ]
About the california law, that is not correct. I went to jury duty on a thursday to be told I have to come back friday, to be told I have to come back in 2 weeks

[/ QUOTE ]
Based on what you say, presumably the obstensible law in question only protects those jurors who get to the selection process. And/or it may be recent than your incident.

[MelchyBeau]

my incident was this month. I didn't get to the selection process the first day, they called me back friday so I could fill out a questionaire. Each day it actually cost me money to go there, due to gas cost and parking cost in downtown San Diego. In fact the last day someone hit my car in the parking lot and didn't leave a note. now I got a small dent in one of my doors and white paint on it.

[jaffa]

haha, isn't it illegal to talk about the case?

But

if you're going to mention little details and take pictures from inside, you might as well tell us any good bits about the case.

what crime? etc

[Warik]

Umm.... so you didn't get dismissed?

That's pretty sad man. I got called for jury duty and had to show up ON MY BIRTHDAY. I was effortlessly dismissed and had fun doing it.

There were two cases, both dealing with automobile insurance company not wanting to pay.

First case:
defense - "does anyone here feel that they would be biased against my client without knowing anything else about the case?"

nobody raises his hand

except me

defense - "sir? you're saying you would be biased against my client without even hearing the evidence?"
me - "yes i would"
defense - "why?"
me - "I had a bad experience with my auto mobile insurance company, so I have a bias against insurance companies in general."
defense - "but surely you can't hold every insurance company accountable for what your insurance company did, can you?"
me - "sorry... human nature i guess."

Dismissed.

Second case:

Different judge. Same question from defense. Again I'm the only one who raised my hand.

This judge was smart. She told the attorneys not to ask me anymore questions. After they were done with everybody else, she sent the jury pool outside and it was just me, her, and the attorneys. She said she wanted me to answer privately because she didn't want me to influence the other potential jurors.

I gave my same spiel about how insurance companies suck and got dismissed.

If you are serving on a jury for any reason other than "I really wanted to," then I feel sorry for you. [img]/images/graemlins/smile.gif[/img]