The Chronicles Of Jessica

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!