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.