| Monday, March 06, 2006 |
| Jury Duty |
For me. Again. Tomorrow.
This will be my fourth appearance in the courts of Baltimore City in as many years. Each time, I have been selected as a juror on the first go around, and all but once, I was then dismissed by either the Defense or Prosecuting Attorney after being selected.
All it takes to be selected is to know absolutely nothing about the case or the people involved and be confident that you could make an unbiased decision based on the evidence presented. Once they seat twelve folks that can do this, the Attorneys then have a chance to review the jury "mix" and request changes. All they are told about you is your age, occupation, and years of education. Using that, the attorneys then play with age, race, gender and educational mix until they get a panel that they feel will be fair and sympathetic to their case. So, 2 out of 3 times, I wasn't the right cuppa for one attorney or another. One was a murder case that lasted 10 days, so I was just as happy to be dismissed.
Last year was a car theft case against a 19 year old punk. I was made jury foreman by the judge for some inexplicable reason, and the case took 2 days because we didn't get started until after 4:00 PM the first day, and then there were three separate charges to consider. The State's prosecuting attorney was a 20 something Ally Macbeal right out of law school with an older lawyer coaching her. She completely failed to make the case for the State despite the fact that this kid contradicted himself on the stand repeatedly, and she failed to follow up on any salient line of questioning. It was as if she had a list of ten questions to ask him, and regardless of his answers, those were the only ten questions she was going to ask. In the jury room, we all agreed on the first round of voting that the kid was clearly guilty, his story simply didn't add up, but the problem was that the attorney utterly failed to prove it beyond a reasonable doubt. She simply did not give us enough to convict on, and we had to vote not guilty in accordance with the law. When the verdict was read, this kid smiled and pumped his fist like a football player making a touchdown, and was clearly relieved he got away with it. Luckily for us, they took him straight back to jail because he was facing other charges in another case.
Afterwards, Ally Macbeal came to speak with us for feedback for her training, and we told her, question by question, where she went wrong and where she missed giving us the evidence we needed to convict. I'm sure she learned from it, but sheesh! We don't "practice" like that in medicine with interns and residents. Unless they consider prosecuting car theft cases like putting in an IV or a catheter, which, come to think of it - they probably do.
According to the Court House web site, they now have wi-fi in the juror waiting area, so expect some jury simul-blogging if I can get a connection and don't have to go into a courtroom right away. |
posted by Broadsheet @ 6:16 PM   |
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| 3 Editorial Opinions: |
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i have jury duty tomorrow as well. i'll be the blond in the white t-shirt and jeans, not dressed up in protest of them drawing me out of my job for the 4th time in the past 2 years!!!
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Hey km - thanks for coming out from the shadows. I'll be the 40 something
Kirstie Alley with red hair, Ipod, laptop goodness.
Let's do lunch sweetie....
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The last time I did jury duty was 4 years ago. One whitey (me) and 11 blacks (them). The defendant was clearly guilty and the state made its case. However, the rest of the jurors decided it was a clear case of racial profiling. They discussed the case during lunch among themselves before the case was over and came up with their own verdict...they just didn't count on me. I refused to alter my opinion. I was threatened but still didn't budge. Luckily I had brought two sandwiches, two apples and a big pile of puzzle books with me. I told them we were going to stay in that jury room till doomsday (or whenever they killed me, whichever came first). It ended with a hung jury. I now refuse to perform any type of jury duty due to safety concerns. Good luck and remember to bring extra food.
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i have jury duty tomorrow as well. i'll be the blond in the white t-shirt and jeans, not dressed up in protest of them drawing me out of my job for the 4th time in the past 2 years!!!