Story of the Day 5/10/2011

At 7:23 PM, I texted Sarah: “I’m FREE!”

I had been held in a small over heated room down at the City-County building for hours.
They let the guy who had been arrested and convicted of public indecency go.
They did keep the woman with the public intoxication charge.
And they kept me, because I am a slightly overweight, middle-aged mother who is currently unemployed and therefore likely to be a very liberal juror.

One young woman was actually excited to be there. She said that all of her friends had been called down to do jury duty, and year after year she had never received a summons; and had felt “ left out”. So when she finally did she felt as if she was finally part of the “in crowd.” The rest of us looked at her as if she was nuts.
Of course, well before 7:20 PM she looked back at that cheerful attitude she’d come in with and cringed at her younger, more naïve self.

I spent 11 and half hours down at the courthouse.
Of course, not all of it was for the trial. Some was in the assembly room being given information on where to park inexpensively. Of course, that information would have been a lot more useful 30 minutes earlier, when I parked in a more expensive lot. And we were told where the bathrooms were and how to line up in the order in which we were called. They must think that none of us ever attended kindergarten. I want you to know that we all showed great skill in the lining up part of the day. And some of the time was spent being questioned by the prosecuting attorneys and the defense attorney as to the nature of the crimes for which we and out close family members had been arrested ,and if we or they had been convicted ,or in which we or they had been victims. Oh yes, and if we felt the system had treated us fairly.

Then we were asked if we had read about or watched the news and heard about this case, which happened over 2 years ago, but no one actually remembered anything specific.

And then the 7 of us, 6 jurors and an alternate, got to spend a lot of time I the jurors’ room. Apparently, most of the juror’s rooms have their own bathrooms, but this was the throwback room, and it didn’t. And it was small, and it was hot. And we were offered drinks, and then they realized , after offering, that they only had water. Tap water. And it got to a point that we were knocking on the door with more frequency than absolutely necessary and asking to be let out ( and escorted to) the bathroom because it meant a few minutes out of the over heated, cramped room.
At around 3 PM, a comment was made about stripping down . Yes, it was that hot.
At around 5:40 PM, one juror had hit her limit and asked to be excused from jury duty. She had to take someone to work and she had enough of the room’s décor and the fragrance of 7 people packed into a little overheated room for hours.

She was taken out by the bailiff to speak with the judge, and deposited back with us about 10 minutes later. He told her, “Too bad!”

At about 7:08 PM they asked us if we wanted them to send out for dinner, and that it would take about 45 minutes for the dinner order to arrive. At this point we were actually all a bit sick to our stomachs since the fare had been some candy bars and chips from the canteen downstairs ( that had closed by dinner time) and this health food mixed with eth overly warm room was not….appetizing.

A quick glace at everyone and we demurred. After all, we thought it was a very clear-cut case, which you would probably not have guessed from all the time we spent sitting in the juror’s room.

And you probably would not have guessed from the fact that all of us felt that the two main characters were not the sterling truthful witnesses we would have preferred.

You see, we spent all that time in the jurors’ room because we kept being sent to it during the trial, for 30 minutes to an hour at a time, while the judge listened to arguments about what evidence we could and could not hear or see. And we would sit in the juror’s room, whose walls were not all that well insulted, and play tic-tac-toe, do crossword puzzles, and kind of overhear the 911 CD that we ended up not being allowed to hear. Although, we just heard it as the phone ringing and indistinct voices, through the wall, not the actual spoken words of the multiple 911 calls.

And we all wanted to hear what the guy in the army fatigues had to say, but neither the defense nor the prosecution called him as a witness.

When we were finally sent to the jurors’ room to deliberate the evidence and determine a verdict, we all felt pretty much the same way about everything we had heard. We just had to figure out what the meaning of all the different levels and terms were, so we could decide which applied. So, when the offer of dinner came, about 8 minutes after we had been sent back to deliberate, none of us felt we were anywhere near 45 minutes away from a decision.

We all learned a great deal from this experience: wear a tank top under your other clothes, and shorts, and bring one of those personal fans. And a conviction for public indecency might not be such a bad idea.