The Chronicles Of Jessica

It was nothing like this.

Three weeks ago I was called for jury duty here in Washington. I got called once for jury duty in NYC, right before I was headed down to Shenandoah Shakespeare for my first contract there, so I had to show up and explain that I was headed out of town for work for nine months, and by the time they called me again I didn't live in NYC anymore. So that worked out. This time I was fairly certain I wouldn't get picked because, well, who gets picked? It seems like no one I know ever gets picked. I think I can sort of see that - why would you want an actor on a jury anyway? You know they're just going to be making Law and Order and John Grisham movie comparisons inside their heads the whole time.

The whole thing reminded me of like a compulsory day-long audition for a play that's going to be produced at the DMV. You don't have anything better going on but you really don't want this part. First I got on the wrong train to the courthouse and wound up at the Pentagon at 8 o'clock in the morning. I loooove when that happens. You're reading your little commuter paper and looking at cute pictures of the Obama's dog and suddenly you realize you're going above ground and entering Virginia, at which point there's nothing you can do because you're over a body of water. I don't know which one. The bay, maybe, or it could be a river. This isn't a geography lesson, people, it's a jury duty anecdote.

It took 15 minutes for another train to come in the opposite direction by which time I was late. I thought this would be a big deal and it wasn't at all, because even after it took another 15 minutes to pass through the metal detector, I joined the ass end of a line that had at least 150 people in it. I found this strangely comforting. "No way am I going to be one out of 12 with alllll these people here," I thought. So I waited for a very very very long time and then they gave me a badge of some kind and sent me to another area to wait for a very very very long time. It was a big conference type room with rows and rows of chairs and two big screen tv's. After they showed a brief video about the justice system and what a privilege it is to serve, blah blah blah, they put on a movie. It was "We Are Marshall", which is a football movie. I don't know anything about football, but it seemed like it wasn't a bad movie. Some guys died on a plane, then they had to put together a brand new football team out of the like 5 guys who didn't die on the plane, and they hired Matthew McConaughey to be the football coach and Jack from LOST to be the assistant football coach, I think. I didn't get to see how it ended, but I'm sure it was poignant and triumphant.

So they called a bunch of numbers (I was 826) and then they took those people into a hallway and lined us up, and then someone else came out and put us in different lines, and then finally we were herded into the courtroom with the judge. The courtroom was a big disappointment. Judge Judy has a more austere courtroom than this. It was all beige and faux wood panelling and the judge didn't even have a gavel.Boooo-ring! How are you supposed to call people to order if you have no gavel? Just ask them? Pffft.

We all had to go individually in front of the judge and the attorneys and defendants in this separate room while they questioned us. There were two defendants and the charge was armed robbery and murder in the first degree. You know, light fare! There were probably sixty of us in the courtroom and I was about halfway down the list. Every now and then someone would come out of the separate room and grab their coat and bag and just leave the courtroom, but most people came out and sat back down in their seat. What did the people who got to leave say? I wish I knew. So, we sat there for a million years, then they sent us to lunch, we sat there for a million more years, and then finally I went in to see the judge. He asked me some pretty vague questions but he didn't give me any openings to say anything incendiary like, "I don't care 'bout no laws but God's laws!" or "The goverment are imperialist pigs!" That might have worked to get me sent home. But you can't just start yelling "f*&% the police!" without a cue of some kind.

Finally everyone came back out and then they started dismissing people and conferring at the bench and dismissing more people. The people they wanted they were sticking in the actual jury box area. And when they would confer they would press a little button that created this white noise over some speakers so you couldn't hear anything they were saying to each other. A brilliant invention! I wish I had one of those in real life. I could be out to dinner with Paul and a bunch of people:

"Excuse us a moment.. (presses button) Is it me or has Jeff's ass gotten huuuuge?"

"I know, and his neck looks like a ham, huh?"

"It really does. He must be depressed. (presses button) Yeah, let's get another calamari!"

It was like watching a game show where you feel really really sorry for the winners. Eventually they had 14 jurors in the box, after they had done their mixing and matching, and there was this one woman in seat number two who had been there the whole time. I thought she was toast. And then, at the absolute last minute (it was going on 5:45 at this point) they dismissed her and said, "Juror number 826 please take seat number two." And just like that, I was on a jury for a murder trial.

What happened next is a whole separate entry. But two things are clear: A.) I was right not to pursue a career in law, and B.) I must have a metal plate somewhere in my body that I don't know about, because I set that detector off every damn day for the next two weeks.

None of us was really all that angry.

I was supposed to show up on the first day of jury duty at ten am. There were fourteen of us at first, which included two alternates, but we didn't know who the alternates were until the end. My seat was one away from the witness stand in the first row, between two guys, a young-ish doctor and an older retired government fellow. They gave us these steno notebooks to take down our observations and they told us that no one would look at them, which wasn't really true, because I found out later they scan the pages of the notebooks into some database which was the reason we were only ever given black pens. If I'd known that I might have used better penmanship and doodled less.

The prosecution (the government) gave the first opening statement. This was the first surprise of the process, to me. They laid out, like, the entire case in the opening statement. They told about exactly what happened to the victim, every witness they were going to have and what they were going to testify to, the whole shebang. Obviously these people have never been in the theatre. You're not supposed to bury the entire plot in the prologue! So each side had two lawyers, only one was a woman (she was for the government). The two defendants each had their own public defender, so they each got to make an opening statement too. The one public defender actually went through his whole spiel and at the end he goes:

"Ladies and gentlemen I am confident that at the conclusion of the evidence you will have no choice but to find my client guilty. Thank you."

I almost cracked up. I didn't, because I think it's frowned upon. The judge called all the lawyers up for a pow-wow, and he pressed the magic button, and then that same attorney came back in front of the jury and had to tell us that he had meant to say "not guilty". How embarrassing. I felt really bad for him and I wanted to lean over and whisper, "You're doing good, dude, don't even worry about it", but again, frowned upon. I nodded reassuringly though. I think he felt supported.

So, here was the deal (I'm not going to use real names because I don't want anyone googling the case to wind up here, even though I'm allowed to blog about it, according to the judge): According to the prosecution's theory of the case, Victim Guy had gone up to Defendants 1 and 2 late at night in the middle of February to try to sell them a gun and instead of buying the gun they took it from him and killed him. Victim guy was probably early forties and D1 and D2 were in their early twenties, more or less. This all happened three years ago; I didn't even live in DC when it happened, as a matter of fact. It took them about a year to even make an arrest and then I guess nearly two years to actually bring the case to trial.

Anyway, the whole premise seemed fishy. The victim wasn't known to carry guns or sell guns. He was known to sell cd's, dvd's and cameras around the neighborhood, but that was about it. And he was supposed to be like kind of a good-time jokester type that was always cracking wise and that type of thing, thus earning him the nickname "Bozo". They referred to him by his nickname almost exlusively throughout the trial. In fact, nicknames were a big part of the trial; pretty much everyone who testified or was testified about had a nickname. Most of them were not all that endearing, either. Let this be a warning for you - if you have an unflattering nickname you should do your best to dissuade it now because it could actually outlive you and you'll be known for all eternity as "One-Ball" or "The Tongue".

Also, the victim was out riding around with his nephew in his car, late at night, when he got out to "relieve himself" behind a dumpster, and that was when he sort of disappeared and wound up dead like a half a mile away. Late at night. In February! And the nephew never went to look for him where he had gone to "relieve himself". He just sort of waited around a while and then left. Now that seems strange. If I was driving my drunk uncle around and he disappeared behind a dumpster, the first place I would think to look for him is behind the dumpster. (Incidentally, a more implausible scenario I really cannot envision. To my knowledge all my uncles prefer indoor plumbing.)

They presented a bunch of witnesses who had seen the defendants together over the course of the evening, (they were brothers so it's not like that's something out of the ordinary), and they presented some different police personnel who showed some various things. And they presented maps. Dear lord, did they present maps. I could draw the 6 block radius where this crime took place by heart at this point. They had photos, they had diagrams, they had like five different aerial views of this neighborhood that they pulled out over and over and over again. They made the witness draw marker lines with arrows to show where they lived and where they walked and where they had their pcp stash on the night of the murder (more on that later).

I was really surprised by how some people conducted themselves in court, especially the way they dressed. One of the jurors wore an honest-to-God sweatsuit every day. Sweatpants and a sweatshirt. They were the same color, so that lent a certain dignity to the ensemble, I suppose, but I was just always under the impression that you dress up to go to court. Some people wore jeans, sneakers, t shirts. I kept waiting for one of us to be held in contempt of dress code or something, but no one ever said anything! Feh, they were probably just glad we showed up and were sober.

The same was true for a lot of the witnesses, at least the ones that weren't Metropolitan police. I don't think one person bothered to take their coats off while they testified. One girl actually had a raggedy scarf tied over her hair, as though she was in the middle of doing a deep conditioning treatment when she was suddenly and inconveniently called into a courtroom to testify. Another one sat down before she took the oath to tell the truth (you know, the whole truth and nothing but?) and when the clerk asked her to stand she gave this huge put-upon sigh like she was being asked to push a station wagon up a hill to a filling station or something. My mother would have died.

Stay tuned for Part II!

In which: The government calls its star witness (a convicted drug dealer)
Juror # 8 has some sort of personal breakdown
And defense attorney number 2 overcaffeinates!

Read Part I here

Our judge handled some things differently than other judges do, according to the other jurors who had served before. For instance, he allowed the jurors to submit questions to each witness, written on slips of paper that he would then review and choose whether or not to pose the questions to each witness, after consulting with counsel. If something was unclear or you needed clarification you could submit a question about it and as long as it was in line with the testimony or whatever, the judge would allow it. Not all the questions did get asked, in fact most of them didn't, I don't think, unless maybe a lot of us asked questions that were kind of the same. Of course it was anonymous so we have no idea who asked what. Then this one guy, juror number 8, got really really weird about it. I think he took it personally that the judge never asked any of his questions, because by about the 7th witness he actually stood up when turning in his slip and said loudly and sternly, "I expect to have these questions answered!"

What is the matter with people? I mean, seriously? To stand up in a court of law and, like, demand something from the judge like that? Was the man on something? I couldn't believe it. This guy was really really strange anyway; I kept hoping he would have a real freak out and get dismissed. When we weren't in the actual courtroom he was always either eating or sleeping. He had these padded envelopes with all this food in them, like ham sandwiches and convenience store fruit pies and stuff, and he would just munch away all the time. So it stands to reason that his questions were probably totally bizarre and irrelevant. He probably wrote stuff like, "Ask him where he got that jacket" and "Is the witness allergic to wheat?" "I will have answers!!!!"

The judge took it in stride. He said mildly, "Sir...?" and that was pretty much it. It's amazing how much economy judges can get out of so few words. All he said was "sir" but the implied meaning was, "Don't be a dipshit. There are 5 guys in here with tazers who work for me and can drop your troublemaking snack ass at the snap of my fingers. Sit yourself down so I can dispense some 'effin justice."

Anyway. Finally the government presented their star witness: A convicted PCP dealer! Ta daaaa! He is in fact still in custody; they had to bring him in from prison for the day to do his testimony. So this guy claimed that he witnessed the shooting (and recognized the gun) from a decent distance, late at night, after he had slipped behind a row of houses to retrieve his stash of pcp. Like you do! But it was all pretty...muddled. Like, in the grand jury he said he saw the victim go down to the ground, then in the courtroom he said he didn't. (The victim was actually found a few yards from where the dealer would have been able to see him, and according to the medical examiner, it would have taken a few minutes for him to expire, leaving him time enough to stagger a few yards away.) And of course, the defense made much of the fact that the dealer had been questioned about this murder on two other occasions and claimed not to know anything about it both times. It was only after he was brought in for parole violations ("I don't know, I guess I was just doing wrong") that he offered up the information, hoping for some leniency from the parole board, presumably.

I couldn't decide if I believed him or not, really. It seemed just as likely that he might have heard the information somewhere and then repeated it, as opposed to actually having been there. He couldn't actually give any specifics on what anyone was wearing, what size guy the victim was (he was pretty tall), or much of anything else. I kept waiting for them to introduce some other evidence but they apparently just didn't have any. They never found a gun, they had no shell casings, no fingerprints, no nothing. One weird thing was that they found some hair braids, like extensions, in the area, and they introduced those into evidence and went to all this trouble to have them there, then later on they stipulated that the braids had belonged to a woman and no dna evidence was found that connected the braids to the defendants. I didn't get that at all. "We found this and it has nothing to do with anything but we're showing it to you anyway." It's a murder trial, not show and tell! Are you going to be bringing in gum wrappers and stray kittens next? Focus, focus!

In case it's not obvious at this point, my whole impression of the government's case was that it was pretty weak. In a way I was surprised they even had enough to bring it to trial. On Law and Order (yes I know it's the fifth time I mentioned it but it's my only frame of reference!) the DA is always telling them the case is too weak to stick and they can't bring it to trial if they don't have enough evidence. These guys were basically trying the whole case on the testimony of this one eyewitness, and he was no Wally Cleaver, let me assure you. If you didn't believe him then you had nothing else to really go on.

Well, finally they wrapped up all the testimony. The defendants didn't testify on their own behalf, but we were instructed at the beginning not to hold that against them. Personally, if I was accused of a murder I didn't commit, I would insist on testifying, but this is what's sort of interesting - the defense didn't really put forth the idea that their guys didn't do it. Their defense was more - well, it was dark, this guy couldn't really see, there's no other evidence, it was three years ago, etc. etc. They didn't present an alibi or any character witnesses at all. I guess all they have to do technically is refute the evidence that's put out there; they don't really have to go any further than that, as long as they can create reasonable doubt. But it certainly didn't give you the strong impression that these fellows had been wrongly accused and they were actually reading to the blind after the completion of their weekly Meals-On-Wheels route at the time the murder took place.

Having said that, the defense attorneys did their best with what they had. Defendant # 2's attorney was actually really spirited; he sort of woke up the whole courtroom every time it was his turn. He was an older guy with a white beard, he reminded me a little of Santa. If Santa had like a younger brother with a slightly faster metabolism who went to law school. (At one point during his closing statement he actually got so carried away that he kind of did this little jump into the air. I think it was when he was impugning the credibility of the drug dealer as a witness, actually. "A criminal, ladies and gentleman! (hop) A common criminal!!!!!")

The next day was some kind of DC city government holiday, so court wasn't in session. The next day was Friday, when we were supposed to hear the closings and then start deliberations. I really thought that would be the end of the whole shebang. Oh, no nononono. There was SOOOO much to it. First the government gives their closing. Then the two defense attorneys give their closings. Then the government gets to rebut the defense's closing. Then the judge has to give instructions. He has to read out all the different charges, and what's part of all the charges, and what they mean, then he has to explain how the deliberations work and all about the reasonable doubt and the burden of proof, and blah blah blah. This part really was so boring. I think the reason there are twelve of you is in case 50% of the jurors fall asleep then there are six other people who can report what actually was said.

At this point there were still 14 of us though, because both of the alternates had yet to be dismissed. Turns out it was the guy to my right and a lady who sat behind me. Their numbers had been drawn out of a hat or whatever back before the trial started, so they were alternates the whole time, they just didn't know it. I was of a mixed mind about this alternate business. Initially I was sort of peeved because here was a second opportunity to actually get back to my life that I was totally missing. On the other hand, I'd seen this thing through all the way to the end and I'd feel kinda gypped if I didn't get to weigh in with the deliberations. (Since I had no choice I decided to try to go with that group of feelings.) Unfortunately, the two people who were dismissed were two of the most rational, level-headed of the group. They should have let US decide who they were going to send home, like on Biggest Loser. I would have sent Snacky Joe packing first thing. He scared me.

I'm in a post lunch coma so there'll just have to be a Part III. Hey, this trial sucked up 2 weeks of my life, if I can't get three blog entries out of it I'm just not trying hard enough.