Thoughts on Jury Questionaires

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Jury Duty

I follow the issues around being a juror.

I started with the most likely question people would ask – “How do I get OUT of jury duty ?” as  a young man with a budding career.    And as the years passed, that morphed a bit into admitting that it’s probably not a big financial/career killer after all, and how might the process go.    I’ve been worried by what I’ve found out.

There’s the case of the lady who didn’t want to fill out her jury questionnaire completely, and was found in contempt of court, back in 1995.    If you’ve never seen a jury questionaire you may think, what’s the big deal ?     Take a look at the Conrad Murray trial questionaire, which just might make you nervous.

You sign this document, under pressure to just get through the whole thing, under penalty of perjury.   If you’re involved in a high profile case, you can bet people will scrutinize every morsel of information during, and particularly after, the trial is over.    You don’t want to be found to have made inconsistent statements, or heaven forbid, forget something.

In the age of Facebook, blogs, and tons of unintended information creation, it’s easy to see how searching for your name might reveal a lot about you, and give attorneys a way to attack you.

Dennis DeMartin is a 70-year old guy from Florida who claims to have forgotten that his ex-wife was involved in a DUI.    His case is unfolding now, and he’s going to trial over that question.    It irks me that this guy is dragged into court to move the justice process forward, he makes some mistakes, and gets prosecuted.

Now, if for whatever reason DeMartin is crazy and literally lied and ignored the legal process, he should get some kind of penalty.   That may be going on here.

What seems more likely is he’s an elderly fella with not a perfect memory.    I ain’t elderly, but I can sympathize with the imperfect memory problem.     Imagine filling out some strange questionnaire and ultimately saying something that wasn’t true.    And you find yourself stuck in court, facing time in jail over that.    This is a good reason to avoid jury duty, for sure.

A lot of information is claimed to be kept secret, such as jury questionaires.    Not in exact words, but in essence, all the forms say nobody is going to read this stuff.    The problem is, that’s not true.    You’re not just dealing with the judge who takes care of the case you sit on the jury for, you’re also dealing with the whole justice system – prosecutors, defense attorneys, the press, and probably people I haven’t thought of.   All of whom will review every morsel of info you write down, and look for a way to nail you to support whatever it is they’re doing.

In a lot of ways, I sure hope I never serve on a jury.   Just putting keyboard to blog here helps ensure I never will, I bet.     Even with all of that, I hate the thought of normal people being caught up in the justice system which is a nasty vicious machine, and needing someone like me who will be fair and not immediately vote them guilty – or just let them go for no reason.    I think that dichotomy is the reason I keep reading about this stuff.

And watching the mail, with dread.

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Quite happy it was so boring

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Jury Duty

I arrived at San Fernando Court for jury duty and was pleasantly surprised at the quality of the jury room.   It was comfortable, well lighted, and temperature controlled.    I waited around inside for three hours and digested some changes in the jury system.

It used to be they would call in a lot of people, and select some to go to a case.    No, not any longer.   If you show up at the court, you are going into a courtroom.    Even crazier, because of budget cuts, they don’t have jury coordinators at every court.    We would be assigned to one of two courtrooms, San Fernando or Santa Clarita based on the luck of the draw.     I got Santa Clarita.    So first I drive to San Fernando, and next I get to drive again to Santa Clarita.    That was annoying.

Waiting in Santa Clarita was much less pleasant.    70’s era plastic chairs bolted to the floor, with about 40 people crammed into a space that fits 50 – I was lucky to have one seat beside me empty.    And they let us wait for an hour and a half in those chairs.     The bailiff was nice enough to let us know they were talking… “Could be good news”.     Anytime there’s a jury waiting in the hallway, before getting officially assigned, I figured it was good news for us.    Just having a jury present helps people accept plea bargains or whatever machinations go on in court.

Finally, we were called into the courtroom.   I got a bit of that “star power” feeling as I walked in, goggling like I’d never been in a court for the last 30 years, which I haven’t.    And the judge is a smoking-hot fortyish lady with the most friendly and chatty disposition, and she lets us know that we are free to go, since the case has “been resolved”.  I’m off the hook for a year at least.

I managed to get in dozens of Scramble With Friends games and onto another 20 leaderboards in Life is Crime before the battery on my Droid died.    I wasn’t bored in the least.    My fears of having something “interesting” happen remained only fears, and I like it that way.

It’s my blog, I’ll mix Gaming and Jury Duty if I want to.

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Jury Duty

Over the last 10 years or so I developed a peculiar interest in jury duty – I’ve read a lot of blog posts about it, heard about some controversial notions, argued the pros and cons of the current system, and heard a lot of ideas about how to change it.    Perhaps, tomorrow, I’m going to be experiencing it first hand once again.

Tomorrow, instead of going to work and (literally) taking care of very important business, I’ll be doing jury duty.     On the off chance that there’s a story to tell, I’ll chronicle it here.   Carefully.   There are specific rules about when to talk about things related to a trial; not so much related to just showing up in the courtroom and before being selected for a jury.

I’m joking around with all my coworkers about how to get out of jury duty.   I’m not going to really try and do that; although, this is about the most inconvenient time.   I’m involved in a big struggle over computer systems, which has long range implications.    So we’ll see what happens.

My last time at jury duty was sometime in the late ’80s, when I was a poor young man, and I didn’t have a car.   I rode my Panasonic 15-speed road bike to the courthouse, took out my two U-Locks, and locked it to a handicapped sign pole in front of the handicapped space.      We all went inside, and I killed about an hour before we were told to take a break.     As I walked back to court, after our break, I noticed there was a big truck parked in the handicapped space.

Some huge, old Ford with a homemade camper was pushed really far against the front of the space.   I checked, and sure enough, the idiot who drove this car crushed my bike slightly with his horrid parking job.    Car meets bike meets handicapped pole.

I started making noise, demanding that the deputies help me out.   I got varying degrees of “Not my problem”, “I don’t know whose car that is”, and “Let me see what I can do”.    After perhaps 10 minutes the owner ambles out and tells me he’s sorry – “Ahhhh didn’t *mean* to scratch yoooor baaahhhk laaahhhk that”.    He pulls his truck forward, and I have scratches on the bike.    Thinking about my prospects of suing this guy, I simply shrugged it off and decided this was a life lesson.    So I went back into the courtroom.

I waited around some more, and my name was called.   Time to go into court.   We all sit down, and the first question the judge asks is “Do any of you potential jurors know anyone in the courtroom?”.    I look around.    Guess who the defendant is.    Yep, it was him.    This was my chance to get out of here.   My hand shoots up.

“Uh, your honor, I had an…. altercation….. with the defendant in the parking lot this morning.”

“Would this affect your ability to be fair and impartial to him ?”

“Yes, I think so.”    What a load of BS.

“You are dismissed.”

And that ended my first jury duty.   I got another guy out who witnessed all the arguing as well.

That was at around 25 years ago, and I’m a different man.   One thing is for sure – Anything could happen tomorrow, at least according to all my internet sleuthing on jury duty.     Just going to have to find out.