Another post got me thinking about the weird and funny of serving jury duty. I have been called twice, both within a 2 year period. Being as I work for a large aerospace company, we are paid regular wages while serving jury duty. The first time I was never selected for the one trial scheduled that week and was sent home Monday afternoon.
The second time was in Pierce County Superior Court, Washington. The first trial I was selected for was early Monday morning. It was a drunk driving case and I slept through part of it. The guy claimed he could drink 12 beers and drive normally even with a BAC of .27. We found him guilty.
The second trial I was called to was an assault case between a man and his wife. He was in the Army and had served for 14 years. He was also a big man, about 6-5 and 250 lbs. His wife was from Korea, they met while he was stationed there. She was maybe 5 feet tall we guessed 80 to 90 lbs. Her lawyer was also of Korean descent and acted as her interpretor. Both lawyers used their opening statements claiming each was a victim, her punched in the stomach and pushed into a door with enough force to break it, him as a gentle giant that was sexually frustrated.
The facts as presented, they had been married for just over a year, she had only been in this country for 7 months and knew nobody except her husband. It was also brought up that the two had never had sexual intercourse. Just lots of oral sex and watching each masterbate. One night he decided it was time, she said no and he got violent.
The young lady was called to the stand and the first question the defense lawyer asked her was why she did not want to have sex with her husband. The questioned was asked to her in Korean and she immediately blushed and shook her head no. Her lawyer said she could not answer the question. The judge said she had to. The question was repeated in Korean. She must have been told she had to answer. She held up her hands about a foot apart and in probably some of the little English she knew, “Mr. Pleasure too big.” The court room went dead silent. Then she made a circle out of both hands like she was holding a something round, made a large ‘O’ shape with her mouth and said “Mr. Pleasure like mouth.”
Almost everyone one of the 30 or so in the court room started laughing. The judge ducked down behind his desk. Everyone on the jury was in hysterics. The bailiff started snorting and sounded like Muttley from the Dasterdly and Muttley cartoons. It took at least 5 minutes before the judge even attempted to restore order. She sat there the whole time with a smile on her face while he hid his face and smile sheepishly. It was determined that he was 12 inches long when erect.
He was found guilty but the jury was excused before sentencing. All 6 of us on that jury were dismissed later that day. That was 14 years ago and I haven’t been called for jury duty since.
Oh yeah. I got called when I was unemployed and living with my parents. I didn’t have anything better to do (I know, sad), so I didn’t make any attempt to get out of it. I knew jurors got paid and I figured it would be an interesting experience.
It turned out to pay $5.00 a day plus $1.50 for transportation…and the bus cost a buck each way. But like I said it was better than nothing. They paid the .50 in Kennedy half dollars too.
Anyhow, I was hoping for a nice juicy criminal trial. Didn’t have to be the murder of the century, but maybe a good bar brawl or something. But no. I got a civil trial. Probably the most boring lawsuit ever: asbestos litigation. A bunch of old guys were suing an insulation company over asbestos exposure they’d received in the 50s and 60s. At the outset we were told that it was expected to last three months. I’ll spare the stupefying details, but let’s just say I learned more about applying insulation than I ever wanted to know.
The whole thing did teach me a valuable lesson. Court is a lot like on tv…but much, much duller.
This one didn’t happen to me, but to a friend of mine (hence, the disclaimer that I have no idea how reliable this is!). The defendant was a relatively little guy, maybe 5’6" and 140 lbs or something, accused of stealing a TV from a bar. Earlier testimony had established that he’d gotten disorderly at said bar, had been asked to leave, and threatened to do something the exact nature of which I’ve forgotten.
In any event, the prosecution called the officer who made the arrest to the stand. The policeman had been coming home from a fishing trip, late at night, when he saw this guy riding his bicycle down the road with a TV under his arm. The officer thought this was a little suspicious, so he went home, got into his squad car, and came back… the guy was still riding down the road, so the policeman flashed his lights at the guy to get him to pull over.
Prosecutor: “What did he do then?”
Policeman: “He pedaled faster.”
Eventually, the guy made it to some apartment complex, where he hopped off the bike, took off running, and was caught. But something about the entire “he pedaled faster” has always really amused me. Maybe I’m just weird?
Never served on a jury but there are some cases here that would make it worth it.
Example:
Guy goes to a gay bar, dressed rather flamboyantly. He is not gay, his buddies are and he wants to ahh, fit into the decor. Walks out of the gay bar, 2 scumbags see him and beat the living daylights outta him. Poor guy is in a coma for a while and is STILL not walking normally.
Turns out these 2 jerks have jumped total strangers before and beat them up.
I don’t care if the guy was gay, straight, bi, whatever, nobody deserves that.
it was a petty criminal case. the jury pool had one person left (me). 11 jurors had been impaneled. It was Friday - if they didn’t get the 12th juror out of that pool, the 11 would thanked and sent home, and juror selection woulld begin anew, with new pool, the next Monday.
The Judge made a point of stating “If we don’t impanel Mr. Heathen, we’ve wasted three days. LET’S NOT WASTE 3 DAYS.”
Me: “Are any of the Officers involved in this case current or former members of the Tach Squad (local term for S.W.A.T.)?”
Asst P.A.: “The Prosecution would like to thank and excuse Mr. Heathen”.
I was an alternate on a murder trial. Two guys got into an argument over $20, one went into his house, came out with a gun, and shot the other in the eye and killed him.
What amazed me was the amount of obvious witness intimidation. One of the witnesses was 10 at the time of the murder. He went to police headquarters with his mother and made a statement. During the trial (he was 12 at this point), he denied going to headquarters, denied that it was him on the tape, and said it wasn’t his mother’s voice on the tape. There was similar testamony from other witnesses as well.
Unfortunately, the alternates were dismissed just before deliberations began. We all rode home on the subway together, and we agreed we would have found him guilty. I wanted to call the judge’s office the following week and find out the verdict, but I didn’t have a chance.
A friend of mine claimed to have tainted the entire pool for one case.
During voir dire (did I spell that right?), the defense attorney was talking about how ‘sometimes loving couples get into arguments over trivial matters, would you agree?’ and the pool were all nodding their heads in agreement. The defense attorney then extended it to 'and sometimes these arguments could lead to the people yelling at each other, would you agree? - again, the pool agreed. The Defense then said ‘and sometimes, it could be normal for someone to get a little frustrated and slap the other person, true?’ and my friend said in response - ‘If you hit the other person, it’s no longer an argument, it’s assault.’
I was called for a blackmail case up in Charleston. This was federal court, since it involved the US Mail. It lasted a week. I’ll try and remember the salient points:
Woman was head of all nurses at a local teaching hospital. She was either married or in the process of getting a divorce when she met an older man who needed a heart transplant. In the course of the affair he took pornographic pictures of her. He also kept EVERYTHING she gave him, down to the Xmas tags (you know, the To: You From: Me stickers on presents) that she put on his Xmas presents.
Anyway, the affair ended, and she met and married another man. An anonymous letter arrived with color copies of the pornographic pictures, demanding money.
The evidence was pretty overwhelming. A secretary of heart transplant man said she found a huge sheet of all these porno pictures copied on to it in his office, except that some of the pictures had been cut out. HT man never testified, but he did some weird things. At one point he got out and walked out the courtroom in the middle of the trial. The judge told the defense he couldn’t leave, and she argued that he was older and that he was on rejection medicine for his new heart, blah blah blah. At another point he’s crawling around on the floor underneath the defense table, and another time I look over, and he’s holding two styrofoam cups to his ears, rocking slowly from side to side.
The defense tried to claim there was some other man at the hospital responsible for sending the pictures, but there was no evidence to that, and they said HT man was afraid of the woman because he needed a heart and she had a powerful position at the hospital. Turns out she had nothing to do with deciding transplant recipients, and couldn’t prevent him from getting a new heart even if she wanted to.
We got to eat lunch, look at all the porno pictures (I was actually very embarrassed for the woman) and found him guilty in an hour and a half.
At the same jury selection, there was another case involving sexual assault on a child that they were seating. I made sure I got out of that one…no WAY I was sitting through that.
The very first time I was called for jury duty I was selected for three different juries (at that time in Chicago you served for a two-week period). One case was settled overnight after the jury was selected and the other was so unremarkable that I can’t remember any details of it after all this time.
The third case involved a motorcyclist who was suing a road contruction company for damages; he had been driving at night and apparently after going through an intersection hit a patch of unpaved road which (he claimed) was not properly lit and barricaded. The interesting point was that we ended up as a hung jury; all but one of us were in favor of damages being paid but one juror refused to go along, stating that he felt that motorcycles were too dangerous and that anyone who rode one was risking his own life anyway. Now during the jury selection the respective attorneys and made a point of questioning each of us on our attitudes toward motorcycles; I remember one person being excused by the construction company’s attorney because he rode a motorcycle and another being excused by the plaintiff’s attorney for saying that he felt motorcycles were dangerous. I always suspected that the guy who got on the jury had lied about his attitude toward motorcycles after seeing someone else excused for saying the same thing.
When I got the jury duty notice in the mail, I thought I could get out of it for sure. Afterall, my father’s been a cop in Elizabeth [NJ] for more than 30 years. But, I still had to go for the first week before I could be dismissed. I figured, no problem I go for a week and be done. Boy, was I wrong.
I was bounced from a criminal trial on the third day within 2.5 seconds, and I thought I get bounced from a couple more over then next two days and would then be able to go back to work. Wrong again!!
I ended up on a jury for the world’s most boring civil trial. I was furious not only because I had to sit on a jury, but because the judge excused about 2 dozen people before he got to me for work or family obligations. I was 23 at the time, and was waitressing for a living. I explained to the judge that I couldn’t afford to lose a month of work since I wouldn’t get paid and couldn’t just take someone else’s shift. He was not impressed. So, I got stuck on this jury for a month, at the cost of about $700 dollars. Somehow the $5 a day they paid me didn’t cut the mustard.
The case itself was ludicrous. This guy was the tennis coach at a small private college and sued after he was fired for allegedly not doing his job. What was painfully obvious to those of us on the jury was that the guy was gay, and believed that’s why he was fired. But no one, not his attorney or the defendant’s attorney would come out and say it.
Long story short, I sat through a month of this nonsense, only to be chosen by the judge as an alternate when testimony had concluded. The only thing worse than sitting on this particular jury, was waiting in the hallway reading a book while the others deliberated. They decided to award the tennis coach $100,000 in compensatory damages and the two sides settled before they could delibrate on punitive damages. No one ever told us how much he got in total.
