Jury Duty

In California, we have something like a "1 day, 1 trial" system, which means that you've honored your civic duty for the year if you a) sit for a whole day at the courthouse and don't get picked or b) sit on one trial.  Or (allegedly) the courts could have all the jurors they need and you could potentially call in every day for a week but not be required to go in.  Anyhow, my week started Monday, August 4th.  I called in Sunday and found out that I didn't need to report for that day.  YAY!  Then I called in Monday evening and was told to report to the Los Angeles Stanley Mosk Courthouse at 7:30 am Tuesday.  Ugh.  The recorded message stated that doors opened at 7 am, so I decided to arrive right at 7 so I could get a seat by a power outlet and pray for wireless so that maybe I could get some work done and the day wouldn't be a total waste of time.  

So the next morning I got up super early and braved rush hour traffic to get downtown.  I arrived a few minutes early and noticed there was already a line of potential jurors waiting to get in.  Opposite that line was another line, a little longer, of the people waiting to be seen by the court.  Plaintiffs, defendants, lawyers, whatever.  I say they're all guilty!!  We stood in line until about 7:30 (apparently the courts lie to people to get them there early) when a security dude motioned us to move forward.  Turns out it wasn't for us to come in, but rather to walk around the building to another entrance where we would stand behind another group of people.  After about ten minutes, they finally let us in through security (bag x-ray and metal detector) before pointing us to the jury room.  It wasn't as bad as I'd expected.

It was a large room - maybe 40'x50' - that kind of reminded me of a church.  Maybe 20 or 30 rows of seats, airport waiting area style, with an aisle down the middle and chairs lining the perimeter.  Could probably seat 150 people.  All rows faced an office where the 4 jury coordinator people (I don't know their titles) sat and spoke to us over a PA system.  After being given the basic instructions, we were left alone.  It was pretty quiet - except for some dumbass who thought we all wanted to hear him talking to his office - so I plugged in my computer and tried to get me some wireless action.  Turns out they *do* have wireless - and 5 computers that we can use (for free) to access the internet - but they were out of service.  All of them.  And the wireless.  Right.  I think they just CLAIM to have those things, and know that since people are there for only one day, they can just put up an "out of order" sign and we wouldn't know the difference.

So I was bummed.  I busied myself with figuring out the odds of getting dismissed that day.  With every name called I got a little more confident, excited about getting closer to 4:30, when the courts closed and I could be excused.  But it was barely 10 and the nice clerk informed us all that the room was cleared the day before by 10:30.  They pre-screen a lot of people based on how many days their employer will pay for jury duty.  Mine pays 10.  That means the court will try to put me only on cases that are estimated to be less than 10 days.  That's still a long time.  But the first few cases that came up were for 15-20 days.  I wasn't called.  Then a couple that were a little shorter, like 8-10.  I could potentially do them, but I really didn't want to.  THEN they announced that they needed more of the jurors at Glendale.   I cringed as I heard "Audrey Hanson" over the loudspeaker.

Glendale is in the Valley, near Pasadena.  North of downtown LA.  Not far, maybe 20 miles from my house, but that's an hour and a half in traffic so I've only been there about 3 times in the 13 years I've lived here.  It's kind of a small-town feel, quaint, but still a good-sized city.  

I checked in to the jury room at 1:30 as directed.  This one was much much smaller.  L-Shaped with a bunch of chairs, magazines, books.  TV in the corner.  Little handmade arts & crafts decorations and a "welcome jurors" sign on the wall.  Cut-out paper stars hanging from the ceiling.  Plastic flowers on a little bookshelf of Readers Digest and romance novels.  Someone really spent some time trying to pretty it up for the jurors.  I found it kind of sad.

Anyhow, jump to 34 of us are pulled into a courtroom for voir dire (jury selection).  Don't ask me how to pronounce that.  I'm in the first group of 18 that sits in the jury box.  We are told the case is about a car accident - the plaintiff Mr. Moron is suing Mrs. Stupidhead for running a stop sign, crashing into Mr. Moron's car and causing him injury.  YAY!  Car crash.  I was in a bad one (broken femur, cracked pelvis and 3 months in the hospital) a while back, so I figured it was an easy out for me.  WRONG.  Long story short, they released about 6 people for various reasons including a lawyer, a woman who doesn't drive at all (never has wtf) and a dumbass who introduced himself with, "I can't be impartial because my wife was in an accident once."   Before I knew it I was sworn in as juror #8 and directed to come back in the morning to begin the trial.  And thus I found myself on a jury in Glendale.

The trial lasted 2 days.  Overview:  

Opening arguments where each lawyer set a scene for us, explaining with painstaking detail how the other side ran the stop sign and caused the accident.  Accident?  Ha.  There are no accidents.  Only collisions.  

Prosecution Witness #1:  Plaintiff - Mr. Moron (Language:  Armenian)

He's 80, doesn't speak English and needs an Armenian translator.  Oh joy.  My only knowledge of the process comes from Dick Wolf, Steven Bochco and David E. Kelley.  This was way different.  Without intending to be too rude, the lawyers seemed so amateurish and the plaintiff and his witness were so unprepared and ignorant and annoying.  Through the translator, the plaintiff claimed to stop at the stop sign while the defendant cruised through it and plowed into him.  Throughout the PAINFUL hour of testimony where the lawyer asked a question, the translator translated english to armenian, the plaintiff replied in armenian, the translator translated armenian to english.  It took too long to explain just now - imagine how long it was in the courtroom.  Ugh.  He went on to stumble through an explanation of how his back was hurt, his son recommended a lawyer, the lawyer recommended a chiropractor, the chiropractor recommended an orthopedist.....  Eventually the defense cross examined and was annoying.  He was nervous and had shaky hands.  Funny.  But he totally badgered the witness and asked the same questions in different ways to try to elicit certain desired responses.  He turned the plaintiff's words around on him and completely misstated things to confuse the 70 year-old man.  By the end I kind of felt sorry for the old guy.  It was as if his lawyer (a Boss Hogg wannabe with the ruddy complexion of a long-term drinker) conned him into everything after the "acccident".  Unreliable.  By the end I'm just confused and pissed off.

Prosecution Witness #2:  Chiropractor - Dr. Shady McScammer (Language: Broken English)

Formerly a doctor in his native Iran, he moved here to avoid religious persecution, couldn't afford the medical license, and went to chiropractic school.  Defense tried to paint the Good Doctor as unreliable, shady and a bit of a con man, and suggested that the plaintiff wasn't hurt and (even if he was hurt) the "treatment" offered (some massages and a massage bed) were shams and (even if the treatment was okay) the doctor overbilled.  The doctor's accounting of what treatments he gave the Plaintiff (adjustments 1x week, massage by hand 3x week, etc.) differed from what the Plaintiff claimed to have received (no adjustments, machine massages only).  Seriously folks, if you're gonna lie on the stand, at least coordinate with the other losers on your side.  The shaky defense lawyer asked some crazy-slanderous questions ("Have you ever used cocaine while treating a patient?"), ostensibly to make us think of him as a drug using pseudo doctor.  None of us needed that push - and later we discussed feeling confused and misled by his questions and comments - because the poorly organized "evidence" of an injury and lack of any type of notes during the alleged visits had already proven him an unreliable witness.  Prosecution rests.

Oh - I forgot to mention that the Good Doctor's testimony carried over to the next day.  They sure have short work days.  I love that.  We get in at 9:30, 15 min break at 11, hour and a half for lunch, 15 min break in the afternoon, and out by 4:30.  

So the prosecution actually rested at about 11 am on the 2nd day of the trial.  Now the defense:

Defense Witness #1:  Mrs. Stupidhead (Language: Arabic)

She's probably 60.  Needs a different translator, but does seem to speak some English.  She would start answering the question before her interpreter was done, and it really confused the court reporter.  Ha.  Eventually the judge directed her to wait for the translation before replying.  She was much more organized and had her facts together.  She didn't offer anything really interesting, just seemed to be a more credible witness, driving her 3 kids to the same school, on the same route, for 10+ years.  She regularly left 30 minutes early and drove in 10 minutes what would take most folks 8.  I believe her but, still, through all of this, we haven't seen any photos of the damages to the cars.  I could have easily skipped all of the talky-talk to just see those pics.  I mean, that's how you can really determine who hit who. 

Defense Witness #2:  Mrs. Stupidhead's 18 y/o Son (Language: Perfect English) 

Whoohoo!  Finally!!  English!!!  The kid is the most composed and most credible of all the witnesses, and he's only 18.  He was 14 during the accident, and I still believe his account more than all the others.  He didn't have a whole lot to add, but just continued his mom's testimony that she is a cautions (read: slow) driver and she doesn't listen to music in the car, comes to a full stop at stop signs and was not distracted that morning.  He claimed the plaintiff came out of nowhere and hit them.  Defense Rests.  I wanna see the pics!!

It is now 3:30 pm.  The judge reads us 15 minutes worth of instructions ("If I told you to ignore certain testimony, then you may not consider it as part of the facts.") and we struggle to stay awake.  Side note - the judge is the Honorable Gus Gomez.  I did a little research and apparently he's a former Glendale City Mayor.  Good for him.  He has no personality in the court but, then again, I think I was expecting Judge Harry or Judge Judy (both would have had a field day with the incompetent prosecution witnesses).  He told us that we need to go into the jury room for deliberations.  Said we'd get to see the exhibits - pics (yay!), chiropractic bills, depositions, etc and said that the Plaintiff is asking for $4,000 for chiropractic bills and $4,500 for 3 months of pain and suffering and diminished quality of life and all that crap.  We are dismissed to the jury room.

The jury room is a small room attached to the courtroom.  There are separate men's and women's restrooms on one side, and a large square table with 12 chairs in the center of the space that nearly completely fills the room.  We all sit around the table and the assistant court clerk, Dennis, gives us the rundown.  1) Select a jury foreman, 2) wait for the clerk to finish typing up our instructions, 3) fill out the jury decision card, 4) inform the clerk that we'd come to a decision.  Then he handed me the exhibits (yay pictures!) and told us to delay any major decisions until we received the instructions.

Long story short(er?) I became the jury foreman, we looked over the photos and took an initial vote.  We all agreed that we didn't believe the Plaintiff or his witness.  Then Dennis brought in the jury forms and I read them over.  Something like "Question 1.  Do you believe that the defendant was negligent?  If yes, proceed to question 2.  If no, stop here and inform the judge."

So I marked the "no" box, signed the form and sent it around the table for the other jurors to read and approve.  Then we pushed a little buzzer twice (not 3x - that's for emergencies only) and the clerk came in, asked if we really had a verdict, had us wait a few minutes while he checked with the judge, then led us back to our seats in the jury box.  The judge asked if we had reached a verdict and I, as the presiding juror, replied "yes" and the clerk came over to take the jury form from me.  Then she read it out loud and it was over.  Defendant won.  Good times.

We ran into the defendants in the hall and they all thanked us.  All in all a good experience.