The Chronicles Of Jessica

You can catch up on Part II here

After they dismissed the alternates and had given us all the instructions it was finally time to start deliberations. Only problem was, by this time it was 3 pm. I was pretty sure there was no way we were going to be able to arrive at a decision in two hours or less. I had no idea at this point where the other jurors stood because we weren't supposed to discuss the case at all until deliberations officially began, and we all had to be in the room any time deliberations were going on. The first thing we did was elect a foreman; ironically he was the quietest guy in the group and the youngest. I think he was 25. He ended up doing a good job. I think quiet people command more respect because people always assume they're thinking deep important thoughts all the time instead of chattering on inanely the way, for instance, I do. I always try to remember to keep this in mind when meeting new people yet I never seem to be able to and I wind up running off at the mouth about old Seinfeld episodes and stuff like that.

We basically decided at the outset that the key witness was the drug dealer and we had to deal with the believability of his testimony in order to arrive at a decision. The first thing we did was go around the table and give a brief idea of our general impressions of the case and what we had seen. This is really where you get an idea of who in the group hasn't had a captive audience to share their thoughts with in a really, really long time. Myself, I have had many chances over the years to blather on in front of people, both personally and professionally, so it's not such a lure for me. Snacky Joe and Crazy Old Lady were the two who seemed, unsurprisingly, particularly keen to hear themselves talk. Snacky Joe is one of those people who is completely oblivious to the social cues that come out in the course of normal conversation. He would just talk until he didn't feel like talking anymore, and no amount of polite gesturing or gentle admonitions to let the next person have their say would derail him from his musings. I don't know if anything would have, but we should have tried lobbing Fig Newtons at him to see if maybe we could distract him long enough for someone else to get a word in edgewise.

Crazy Old Lady had nothing to offer but complete non sequiturs. It was kind of amazing:

"Well, I didn't find the defense witness credible as far as her testimony went."

"Beach ball. Thumbprint. Publisher raisin peanut fabric softener sheets. Mmmm hmmm."

We had to break for the weekend after the two hours were up and we were back at it Monday morning. By this time I was truly ready to kill myself. I had seen pictures of dead bodies, bullet wounds, blood stained clothing (not a photo, but right there in the courtroom). I had listened to testimony on bullets ripping through lungs, dead bodies frozen to pavement, not to mention hookers, drug dealers and guns. I was so sick of these other jurors I wanted to push them all out of a window and if I thought this had to go on for one more day, I would have thrown myself out a window.

Luckily, it turned out to be pretty cut and dried. We all agreed in the end that the drug dealer's testimony was too vague and had changed too much since the grand jury for him to be a credible witness. And in the complete absence of any other evidence at all, we just couldn't send two guys to jail for murder on the basis of that little nugget of testimony. We couldn't even really come to a consensus on whether we thought the guy was even there. After going around for another ninety minutes or so, we took a vote and unanimously found not guilty.

We had to wait around for a while and then we filed back into the courtroom. The judge had to read out the charges against each defendant and our foreman read out "not guilty" after each one. (The one count we did find them guilty on was a charge of bail-jumping, which basically was the fact that they failed to show up for their arraignment and had to be picked up by the police.) As the foreman started calling out "not guilty" the two guys literally started crying. One of them crossed himself, which surprised me, because he didn't immediately strike me as a staunch Catholic. (Maybe the teardrop tattoo doesn't mean what I think it means?)

All I could think was, if you guys got away with this, or you got away with anything, or even if you didn't, I just hope you take this chance to change your lives. You're young guys, and life is long, and there's a lot that's good that you can go out there and have in the world and a lot of good you can do, so Get. It. Together.

That was that. Just to put a nice cherry on top of the shit sundae of the whole experience, a woman approached me outside the courtroom after we had been dismissed. I had seen her in the audience a couple of times but there were always different people watching and you never knew who they were. Well, I guess she was a relative of the victim or knew him somehow, because she was crying when she came up to me and wanted to know if she could talk with me about the verdict. I was very polite but I got away from her as fast as I could. What could I say to her that would make her feel better? Her friend was still gone, and even if she knew something I didn't there was no way to go back into the courtroom and do things differently. It was just over.

Well, life is made up of experiences, some good and some bad. I know a little more about myself now, and that's never a bad thing. Turns out I was right not to pursue a career as a medical examiner, evidence technician, lawyer, judge, court reporter, court clerk, or bailiff. And even though the last time I moved I had the misfortune to pick one of the worst apartments in the history of the universe, I didn't rent a place in the neighborhood where all this went down, so I can feel good about that.

I know all this heavy duty subject matter isn't exactly my forte, but I would like to leave you with this: There's a whole big piece of our population that most of us don't see or think about on a daily basis. They're poor and they're addicts, in a lot of cases, and drugs and crime are the foundation of the economies of their communities. They don't know anything else, and they're never taught to expect anything else. And as a society, we seem pretty content to let them stay in their ghettos and do what they're going to do as long as they only commit violence on each other and not on "us". And I think we can do better. And I hope we will.

Paul and I are moving out of our apartment exactly two weeks from today. We haven't packed a thing yet, but I have collected a grand total of FIVE boxes, which should just about cover half of one bookshelf. Reading is such an overrated habit, people. Take up business card collecting or staring into space instead; the real estate required is much more minimal.

Obviously we're thrilled to be leaving because this has been, as I believe I've stated on several occasions, the worst apartment in the history of the universe. In fact, once we're done with this nutjob and we never have to go back to the building again and we have our deposit back and all that, I'm going to change the title of the post to the address, so that anyone searching for it on Google will be brought straight to this entry and they will know to run far far away as fast as their little legs will take them. Ryan K. says we can't get sued for libel if it's true, and he is not a lawyer, nor did he go to law school, so I'm just going to believe him.

I've been pretty detailed in these blog entries about our various woes with this apartment, so I'll just recap them briefly here. Zombie fly infestation. Mice. Smell of rotting garbage from downstairs neighbor. Constant cigarette smoke smell in the bathroom from downstairs neighbor. Windows that were installed somewhere around the turn of the century (not the aughts, I mean the other one.) No outlet in the bathroom. Electricity that goes out if you try to make toast and coffee at the same time (or make toast and do ANYthing else at the same time). Washers and dryers constantly breaking and/or leaving soap crust on all your clothes. Pathetic heating and air conditioning that never reaches to the bedroom so you're either roasting or freezing. You get the gist.

But the landlady is really the key to the whole thing. If she was a sweet little old lady who loved us and made us baked goods and treated us like one of the family, it would be different. The place would just seem quirky, instead of like the seventh circle of hell. But she's terrible. The only facet of being a landlord that she's competent at is cashing the checks (and she can't even be bothered to do that half the time until a couple of months have gone by.) For instance, she promised to replace the rotted out windows before winter came (both of the last two winters) and she never did. When we approached her about it she came up with the helpful suggestion of stuffing plastic grocery bags into the cracks and crevices to keep the windows from rattling in the frames and to cut down on the drafts blowing through. Classy! And thrifty, no? I thought for sure that she's have the work done before she tried to move new people in - but oh no. She's trying to get someone in for the day after we vacate. And as a consequence, our lives are being inconvenienced to an alarming degree.

Apparently in DC there is no law governing the amount of notice that a landlord must give before they can enter your dwelling (in a non-emergency situation.) They can come in any time they want. In other (normal, actual) states, it's a minimum of 24 hours or in some cases 48. In any case, you would think that a courtesy call or post-it note saying, "Hey I plan to show your apartment today" would be benificent to both parties. We know she's coming and we can tidy up, put away our adult props and that sort of thing. (I kid!) But no. It's more convenient for her to just come in, whenever and however the urge strikes her. The first time she did this, Paul was home but the bed was unmade and the laundry was divided into color groups on the floor, where I had sorted it the night before. We had planned to actually wash the clothes after sorting them, but then we got our dvd of The Wire from Netflix, and you'd be surprised how much energy it takes to make 3 - 5 trips up and down four flights of stairs to wash ones clothes on any given night.

Anyway, she poo-pooed his apologies and said it made the place look "lived-in", so who were we to argue? The second time it happened, I had been at a yoga class and came home to find her yappy dog in my front hallway, yapping at me while the LL ran around our apartment like some crack-addicted home organization show hostess. Apparently she had shown the apartment (again without telling us), found it lacking, and decided all on her own to just...fix it! She stuffed clothes under a desk, she shoved books and magazines under beds and into closets, she scooped jewelry and picture frames into drawers and cubboards. She stashed the dishes from breakfast under the sink (with the bleach and ant spray - well done!) and tossed clean silverware into the junk drawer where we keep the super glue and saran wrap. She even took our garbage, which wasn't half full. By the time I came in she had pretty much concluded the spree and even though I was fairly shocked and horrified by our personal belongings having been manhandled by a lunatic, I barely had the presence of mind to say anything to her. In hindsight of course, all sorts of things come to mind. "Stop touching my things, you lunatic", for instance. "Why are you so effing crazy?", for another. "Have you ever heard of Prozac?" You always think up the retorts on the way home though, right?

A word about the dog: I love dogs. I've had two dachshunds in my life, which in some circles are the yappiest of yappy dogs, and I love them and I think they're great. I would never hurt an animal and I think there's a special place in hell for people who would. But this dog? I literally want to take my foot and punt it out the window in a hilarious display of cartoon violence. It's not the dog's fault. She's only had it about five months and in all that time it hasn't been taught anything. It's never even been on a leash, she just chases it down when it runs into the street. She lets it run around the building and in and out of people's apartments and she lets it up on everyone's furniture (you know, while she's making empty promises about fixing things). It's really rude and it drives me up a wall. If she actually deigned to ask, "Hey do you mind the dog being in here?" of course I'm going to say no. But that would presume so much, concepts like normalcy, manners and common sense. Cripes.

In any case, last week I wasn't feeling well and went home from work a little early one day to lie down. I'd been asleep about an hour when all of a sudden I woke up with this stupid dog on me. Apparently she had let herself in to show the unit and because I was sleeping soundly I didn't realize anyone was in the apartment with me until the devil hound hopped on my bed. Well I screamed bloody murder, which I'm sure impressed the hell out of the prospective tenants (curiously, they decided not to take the place). I heard her spluttering around in the living room and then she left and she didn't come back. After that incident I literally begged her to please PLEASE just call us when she was going to be coming in there, and that seems to be working so far. Since then she's marched through with about three different couples, none of whom have ESP, because I have been sending them really strong, really urgent brain messages to run, run for their lives and not one seems to have picked up a thing.

But in exactly fourteen days we'll be free. And this will all be one of those hilarious anecdotes that middle-aged people tell at parties about their newlywed salad years. That's what I'm aiming for, anyway. If anything else happens I'd have to go to jail for murder, which I guess would dampen the hilarity.