Juror # 6

I was vastly surprised at getting my first summons to jury duty after decades of voting, but never being called to serve on a jury. Consultation with experienced jurors gleaned the universal suggestion: "bring a book, you'll do lots of waiting." I didn't really assume much more about the experience than that.

There was indeed waiting, lots of waiting. I'd prepared myself with a paperback in my purse and a totebag full of embroidery project-in-progress and a back up bit of beadwork as well. While they expect us all to be there by 8:00 am, we weren't shown the introductory video till later,(amused to find the model for handicapped access was a friend of mine) and it was even later in the morning before they started calling folks for jury selection. I had the serendipitous pleasure of finding a folk music friend there, already seated on a jury, waiting to be called for the day. Nancy introduced me to the men she was sitting with, an Irishman and a Scotsman, and oh, wasn't I pleased! We started in to talking about the varieties of Celtic Music & Michael turned out to be in the production end of making CDs. I mentioned that I'd a number of LP records that I was egar to get transferred to CD format, some quite old. I said my first ever "Irish" album was Arthur Godfrey Presents Carmel Quinn. I was stunned when he said he knew her, startled to hear she was still alive, and tickled completely when he said he'd bring me a copy of that CD the next day.. and he did, the darlin man, as well as additional tracks. It had been decades since I'd heard that album and had forgotten how "big band" it sounded - like the sort of arrangements you'd hear behind Bing Crosby in that era (1950s).

The WAIT was over shortly before lunch when a batch was gathered to go up to a courtroom. A pair of us thought it profoundly funny that two teachers from the very same small highschool should be on the same jury. We go up to the court room, and WAIT. We get told to go to lunch, then go back to the assembly room, and WAIT to be called back. And WAIT.

In all the waiting, in all the week, I saw one other person doing needlework of any sort besides me. Perhaps half of the folks picked up some of the newspapers or magazines provided in the jury pool room for part of the time. Perhaps 10% of the folks there had books with them. A few played cards. one or two did some work. Many talked. Some did the jigsaw puzzles on the tables. I should have expected it, but it still appalled me that a large portion of the folks in the jury pool, jury, selection group, wherever we had to WAIT, did nothing.

Nothing.

I shouldn't be shocked, should I, but the idea of letting yourself just sit doing nothing, or watching endless soap operas "Price is Right" or even gawdhelpus Rachel RAY was compltely foreign to me. I'm not kind enough to assume they all came thinking they'd be jurors every second of every day and be so busy they'd not have the time for anything else.

Jury selection meant lots of instructions about what they were going to ask us, why we had to answer and why we should listen to those before us. We were also told, in a number of different ways, that it was not going to be like on TV. Our judge was a very young looking woman, very Irish name and a very merry soul for the most part. On that jury selection day she'd a friend who was in serious health problems & that's why we'd been kept waiting even after we'd come up to the courtroom, yet she kept a very upbeat way about her all the while, even after explaining the reason for delay. In her questioning, we got nearly the whole life story of the first lady sitting in the #1 juror chair. I'm muttering to the woman next to me my assumption that it'd take to the middle of next week if EVERYONE talked at such length. So we have TMI from this woman, who was dismissed in about round three of the challenges from the lawyers. Some of the answers to the questions about previous experience in court were answered as sidebars so they wouldn't have to tell traumatic tales in open court. Which would have been fine, if they'd bothered to whisper - the folks closest to the Judge heard most of the gory details. When they were doing that, I could whip out the embroidery, since I wasn't supposed to be listening. It took us from right after lunch till 5 pm to get the 12 + 1 alternate picked. We're instructed not to watch the channel 8 news.

Tuesday Morning we get there early and WAIT. Get called up to the jury deliberation room and WAIT (lots more embroidery done...) Opening arguments begin at last, midmorning, and there's a newscamera throughout the morning in the courtroom. The fuzzy, academic looking defense lawyer lines out the image of his client being a hard working home repair contractor from Guatemala, and that all the evil deeds were done by the cousin he was kind enough to give a place to stay and employment in his business, that he'd merely gone into the grocery store to get a chocolate bar because he was having a diabetic episode.

The prosecutor spelled out the sordid tale of the two guys working together to rob a Mom & pop Korean grocery store, with the defendant being the one who went in to scope out the place and drive the get away van. The cousin had plea bargained down to one count of felonious assault and one of aggravated robbery for testifying against his cousin. Korean Mom and Pop testify. Her English is minimal, His is somewhat better. Diagrams help. The story starts to take shape. We see the recording from the security cameras. Lunch, return to the jury pool room and WAIT.

After lunch, the cousin testifies, sitting there in handcuffs with a burly officer in a char right behind him. Our gallant defendant shows the only emotion by smirking at cousin while he testifies. According to cousin, it's the defendant's idea to rob the store. Why? well because they're both crackheads and really need to get high, and they owe their dealer $200. so their credit was stretched a bit thin, and it was cash and carry for the crack. Cousin kept calling it "intoxicated" when he meant "high" and the defense atty kept calling it their "connect" rather than "connection." I didn't know if this was a street jargon I wasn't aware of, but judging by some of his other remarks, I'm guessing he was a bit more clueless than he ought to have been, all things considered.

The story that unfolds from testimony of Mom & Pop Storeowners, Cousin, Officers Who Arrested Them, Officers who Went to the scene & the Detective who came cause he knows Mom & Pop, as well as what was perfectly visible from the security cameras was thus: Defendant goes in, buys a candy bar, leaves, drives his van outside the parkinglot and stays on the street, heading away from the store with the engine running. Cousin gets out of the van, puts on a very distinctive "hoodie" that is silkscreend with a skeleton, and includes a skull hood, that zips all the way up the front with nothing but mesh eyeholes as openings, once zipped. He has a honking big (that's the technical term for a 12 inch blade, I think) knife that he pulls out of his belt. He enters the store (On camera), goes directly to the window seat where Elderly Disabled Granny is sitting., grabs her, puts the knife to her neck and starts hollering "give me the money." E. D. Granny understands no English. Mom, behind register screams and bolts to the back of the store where Pop is working on his truck, in the parking lot behind the store. Cousin in distinctive hoodie, seeing he's NOT gonna get the money, dumps E. D. Granny on the floor, turns to leave, then stops, reconsiders, and stabs at her with Honking big knife. He exits out of camera range.

Cousin runs for the car, runs into Pop Storeowner half way down the parking lot, not quite even with where Getaway Van is located. They jostle each other, the knife is brandished, but does no harm, and he responds to the drivers "get in get IN" shouts. Pop Storeowner, thinking quickly, whips his belt out of his pants, swings it like mad and smacks the belt buckle into the driver's side window, shattering it completely. The two nasty cousins zoom away, leaving Pop the opportunity to take down their license plate accurately. Mom has called 911, but her English is not the best even when not rattled so much, Pop gets on the phone, gives description of the van, plate number, details. 911 dispatcher gets a wee bit condescending when Pop starts getting aggravated - his English ain't THAT bad. But the radio call goes out. Cops respond to the scene, other cops to the address listed on the van registration, one Detective comes to the scene. We get to hear the 911 tape. Just as the police arrive, the pair are backing out of their drive. They're stopped, returned to the scene and identified, as stabbing cousin was dim enough to unzip the hoodie before he got in the van, so Pop could identify both of them, no sweat. The defendant gives them permission to search his house, and the dramatic hoodie is found, but they can't tell which of the dozen kitchen knives was used because, fortunately, E. D. Granny was wearing a thick fur coat that deflected the knife, and she was barely scratched.

On Wednesday morning we did considerable WAITING before being called up to the courtroom. I'd been concerned about getting there late, because of multiple detours due to flooding from tremendous rains the previous day. Even after getting there we WAIT, this time in the court room. The defense atty is over an hour late and, surprise surprise, no defendant. His atty doesn't know where he is. We proceed with him in absentia.

We get a considerable raft of instructions before going to deliberate & are sent 20some pages of the instructions & definitions to the deliberation room, along with the dramatic hoodie. While we've no doubt the pair did the nasty deed, we were a bit uncertain about how guilty the defendant was the point of law, more than point of morals. The "in for a penny, in for a pound" nature of being in this criminal escapade together didn't sit well with some of the jurors who wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt: "perhaps he did NOT know his cousin had a knife...." The rest of us talked them 'round, with some additional answers from the Judge (and the lawyers on both sides, they had to be consulted too, for form's sake) which we had to WAIT for. We're ready with the verdict by 4pm, but the judge isn't ready to take it till 5pm- she's in the middle of picking her NEXT jury, so we

WAIT (more embroidery) and WAIT some more. We give the verdict, get polled, get thanked and sent back to the deliberation room to, well, WAIT. While most of us were egar to get out, we were curious enough to want to wait till the Judge comes in to answer our questions and fill us in on the background. HERE is where the real drama starts. It seems our fine upstanding defendant wasn't the man they thought he was. He'd indeed skipped out, and when they went to the house to look for him, they found that he'd stolen the identity of an elderly man in the cluster of houses they lived in, used his identity to register the contracting business with the State of Ohio. Our Dear Defendant, under his actual name, is wanted in the Dominican Republic for murder. Moreover, if skipping out on bond, murder in another country and identity theft aren't enough, he's also wanted for trying to contract the jailhouse murder of the cousin. By this time we're not even sure if they ARE cousins. The guy he wanted for a hit man ratted on him, and so there's one more thing to hit they guy with when/if they find him and truss him up for deportation. I'm thinking we did very well as a jury, convicting Dear Defendant on all 7 counts.

We were not to watch the news because that channel was covering the story of Mom & Pop & E. D Granny being robbed yet AGAIN (seems to be a neighborhood pastime) and this time Mom was pistolwhipped, E. D. Granny took her cane and whacked the pistol wielding robber, who then pistol whipped Granny, all about 2 weeks before this trial, and that was the third or fourth time in a year they'd been robbed (or attempted robbery, as in our case).

Day 4 -back into the jury pool, a whole day of embroidery & beadwork. I finished both projects just in time to be excused for the rest of the week. It was rather neat for a first adventure wading into the Jury pool, but I'm just as happy waiting quite a while for the next swim.