Jury Duty
Last week I was summoned to Jury Duty for King County Superior Court. I think I got lucky as I was summoned to the Seattle Courthouse rather than the Kent Regional Justice Center. Getting to Kent each day would have sucked. Downtown Seattle was much easier. Erin would simply drop me off at work and I could take one of 3 buses about 10 minutes north to the court building on 3rd and James. Here is how my civic duty played out:
Monday
I showed up at 8am as summoned and stood in a very long line to check into the Jury Assembly room. After my badge was scanned I was given a bio form to fill out and keep until I was assigned to a Judge. I sat down and waited. At about 8:30am we were addressed by the jury assembly director and introduced to a Judge. I don't remember her name, but she gave a nice overview of the jury process and its importance to the justice system. We were then shown a video that was not made for King County court, but got the point across anyway. The theme was clear -- don't talk about anything, to anyone. I was starting to fret a little as most examples were referring to cases taking a week or more to be tried.
At 9am the director read the names of the first group of jurors. It was a list of 30 people and would e assigned to Judge Julie Spector. I was number 6 on that list. We each wrote our number on the bio form and got up to give it to the clerk. We were then asked to sit back down a wait. At almost 10am my group was called to go to the court room of Judge Spector. We met the bailiff and she asked us to assemble in the elevator lobby of the 7th floor. After we were put into order we were marched into the hallway and asked to wait. This was very much like elementary school. After about 20 minutes we were led into the courtroom by the bailiff. Since I was number 6, I ended up in the jury box! Everyone after #13 were instructed to sit in order in the spectator section.
It was now about 10:30am and the Judge addressed us for the first time. She went over what her role was, introduced her staff to us, introduced the defendant and finally council. She went over how important we are to this process and how we would not be referred to at any time by name. We each had a number already (remember, I was number 6) and would be referred to that number for all court proceedings. This was to protect us as well as to speed up the process. She then started in on a list of about 40 questions. The process was this; as the questions we read if anyone felt their answer as anything other than no, they were to raise their card which had their number on it. The court would record the numbers and I assume the attorneys would pick us based on that. Most of the questions were pretty tame, usually about keeping an open mind, not judging too quickly, and more like those. However, near the end there were a lot of questions about domestic violence and count ordered no contact orders. This whole process is referred to by the court as voir dire. One of the last questions was about undue hardships. The Judge was giving us an "out" if we could convince her of it. She of course had heard it all before and warned us of that fact. She also told us that this was most likely going to be a quick case, ending on Wednesday if everything went to plan. Should we be excused from this case, we could get assigned to a 4 month medical malpractice next!
Once all the questions were asked and our votes entered, we were excused for lunch. This was at about 11:50am. Lunch in the justice system is a very long 1.5 hours. I think I could eat 3 lunches in that time. I walked down to pioneer square and got a subway sandwich. I ate in the store and then went next door to the Starbucks for an americano. Coffee in hand, I walked back up to the court building and sat and waited for over an hour to be called back to court. Of course the bailiff came and got us late, then there was more standing in line in the hallway. Finally at about 1:50pm we were back in our seats.
It was now time for the attorneys to grill us as a group. The prosecutor started by asking general questions to the whole group and allowed anyone to answer. She then started picking out certain people and asked specific questions. I was not singled out for a question. After she was done, the defending attorney asked questions. These were very strange questions. They ranged from topics of the no contact order to what domestic violence is and who is usually at fault. I was surprised at some juror's responses to these questions. One lady went so far at to insist that domestic violence is always the fault of the man, who is always the aggressor. Even the Judge had a funny look on her face at that comment. The last question the defending attorney asked was "does my client look guilty?" I can see the point to this question, as it would weed out the people who would look at someone and decide before even hearing a word from either side. I mean, the guy wasn't clean cut or anything. He had a tattoo of the letter R on his neck and was making some strange faces (which we later learned is because of a cornea problem). I shouldn't have been surprised by people who answered that yes, they thought he looked guilty. I answered that I had not made any judgments about him.
At about 2:30pm we were excused for a recess and put into an empty courtroom to wait. We were not allowed to go anywhere else for this break. Once called back into the court, jurors started getting excused. First there were two that were excused for undue hardships. Next, the judge heard each side's objections to specific jurors for cause. This means they didn't think a juror could be impartial and had a good reason for it. Only two more were excused for cause. After that, each side got a turn to excuse a juror for no reason. They must have decided on the rules prior, as 6 was a strange number. This preemptive selection was weird, random jurors were dropping. I assume this was based on the answers to the questions earlier. Finally, at almost 3:30pm, the jury was set. I was still sitting in seat number 6.
We had another brief recess and then were called back out. It was odd having only 13 of us, and the room felt huge and empty. The prosecutor started with an opening statement. The case was about the defendant allegedly climbing through the window of the victim's house at 2:30am on 8/6/06. This did two things in the way of charges. First it violated the conditions of a no contact order that was in place. The second was a burglary charge. This fit because burglary is defined as unlawfully entering a dwelling for the purpose of committing a crime. The prosecutor spoke for about 20 minutes about what she was going to present and the crimes themselves.
Finally at about 4:10pm the Judge let us go for the day. We were to report back at 8:50am and could go directly to the jury room of the court we were in. I caught a bus back to the building I work at normally and Erin picked me up just like normal.
Tuesday
Tuesday was a little less crazy. Since I didn't have to report until almost 9am, I rode with Erin to work and spent about 45 minutes at my desk catching up on a few things. I caught an 8:10am bus in the rain, rode it to pioneer square, got a coffee and then walked the rest of the way to the courthouse. I was the first juror to arrive at about 8:30. To my surprise, the Judge walked into the jury room with two boxes of dougnuts! She told me that they like to keep everyone going with sugar and coffee. She smiled and left the room without another word.
By 8:50 everyone was there. Court of course didn't start on time. We finally went out at about 9:30am and sat in the same seats. The defending attorney waived her right to an opening statement and the prosecution was able to call her first witness. She called a neighbor of the victim who was pretty composed. Next she called a cop, followed by another cop, and then a third. By this time we were starting to see a theme in that no one actually saw the defendant at the scene. Or if they had, they were being really coy about it (that neighbor). We broke for 15 minutes and then got to hear from the victim herself (called by the prosecutor). She was very hard to listen to. She obviously had a drug problem and was talking so fast it was hard to understand. She would bounce around any subject she tried to talk about in a way that made my head hurt.
After that, it was time for lunch. We got yet another 1.5 hour lunch. I found myself walking down the street with two of my fellow jurors. I wasn't planning on going to lunch with anyone, but they seemed nice so I went anyway. We decided on Fado, a great Irish pub I had been to in the past. One of them was fresh out the Army, the other was a guy who publishes the Hispanic Business Directory. They were both pretty interesting and we had a good lunch. In fact, after that witness it was nice to be distracted for a while. We ate a very leisurely lunch and wandered slowly back to the courthouse. After all that, we still had 20 minutes to kill before we were due back, and then it would most likely be another 30 minutes before we get back into the court room.
At about 2pm we went back into the court room and heard the prosecutor rest her case. The defense called the defendant's mother to the stand and only asked one question about his squinting. It was at this time we learned that he needed a cornea transplant. Then the defense rested. We were excused back to the jury room while the court got all the instructions from the Judge ready and had copies made for each of us. This took about an hour. It was pretty much killing us to not be able to talk about the case yet with even each other. We made do though. One of the jurors had a million stories and I think he told us every one of them.
Finally at about 3:30pm we were called back into the court room and were giving a packet of instructions each. However, were were not trusted enough to read them, the Judge had to read every single word to us on the record. We were told what we could consider as evidence and what we couldn't. It also went over definitions of terms like "beyond a reasonable doubt" and admissible. Heavy stuff to say the least. This really was the defendant's case in about 30 pages. It was now in our hands. We were told who of our 13 was the alternate. It was #13 (surprise!) and she was let go. She would be called if needed, but for now she didn't have to come back to deliberate. Once she was gone we had to pick a presiding juror. We did that quickly at least.
However (!), it was of course 4pm by then and we were excused for the day! Argh! It was going to be so hard to not talk about it! I went home the same way again. It really was nice to take a bus for free. Each day we were able to request more bus passes if we needed them.
Wednesday
I again went to work first, then got coffee, and found myself the first to arrive in the jury room. I found the admitted evidence on the table and fought my urge to start looking through it. There was a copy of the no contact order and some pictures a detective took the day or so after the alleged crime took place. It really was a pretty weak case against the guy.
Once everyone was there we started discussing it... FINALLY! After an hour we took our first vote. 7 guilty and 5 not guilty. Uh oh. We discussed it some more and took another vote. 5 guilty and 7 not guilty. Hmm. Most of us felt he probably did it. We kept going back to the instructions from the Judge and the definitions she provided. We discussed it some more and were just about to take another vote when the bailiff came and forced us to go to lunch. The court room would be locked and because it was so old there are no emergency exits. So city code required we not be in the jury room when the court doors are locked.
I again went to lunch with the same two guys as the day before. We didn't go far this time though. We found our way to the awesome little mexican place just west of 3rd ave on James street. I don't remember the name of it, but it was really good. It had maybe 5 booths and was so tiny. I didn't feel like I was even in Seattle anymore. We had another great lunch and went back to the courthouse.
As soon as everyone was back in the jury room we took another vote. 12 not guilty. We rang for the bailiff and let her know we were serious about the 10 minutes we needed before lunch. She laughed at this and went to get everything ready. Once the court was called back to order they brought us back in. We handed the verdicts to the court and the bailiff read them out loud. The defendant was VERY relieved. We were excused back to the jury room.
In about 15 minutes, the Judge came back and thanked us personally. She even answered some of our questions and presented each of us a certificate for our service. She also let us know of a little known statute that states you are exempt from serving on jury duty again for 2 years after your last one. Nice!
We were released at about 2pm. On our way out the prosecutor was in the hallway and asked if anyone wanted to talk to her about the case. I think everyone except one guy stopped. We provided her some reasoning for our decision. I feel she respected it but was quite frustrated.
I got out of there and caught an early bus back to work.
All in all it was a cool thing to do. Very educational and something I would recommend to everyone at least one in their life. Sometimes it is easy to lose perspective of our system of justice. For all its flaws, it is as fair as can be, if not a bit lumbering and slow.
Monday
I showed up at 8am as summoned and stood in a very long line to check into the Jury Assembly room. After my badge was scanned I was given a bio form to fill out and keep until I was assigned to a Judge. I sat down and waited. At about 8:30am we were addressed by the jury assembly director and introduced to a Judge. I don't remember her name, but she gave a nice overview of the jury process and its importance to the justice system. We were then shown a video that was not made for King County court, but got the point across anyway. The theme was clear -- don't talk about anything, to anyone. I was starting to fret a little as most examples were referring to cases taking a week or more to be tried.
At 9am the director read the names of the first group of jurors. It was a list of 30 people and would e assigned to Judge Julie Spector. I was number 6 on that list. We each wrote our number on the bio form and got up to give it to the clerk. We were then asked to sit back down a wait. At almost 10am my group was called to go to the court room of Judge Spector. We met the bailiff and she asked us to assemble in the elevator lobby of the 7th floor. After we were put into order we were marched into the hallway and asked to wait. This was very much like elementary school. After about 20 minutes we were led into the courtroom by the bailiff. Since I was number 6, I ended up in the jury box! Everyone after #13 were instructed to sit in order in the spectator section.
It was now about 10:30am and the Judge addressed us for the first time. She went over what her role was, introduced her staff to us, introduced the defendant and finally council. She went over how important we are to this process and how we would not be referred to at any time by name. We each had a number already (remember, I was number 6) and would be referred to that number for all court proceedings. This was to protect us as well as to speed up the process. She then started in on a list of about 40 questions. The process was this; as the questions we read if anyone felt their answer as anything other than no, they were to raise their card which had their number on it. The court would record the numbers and I assume the attorneys would pick us based on that. Most of the questions were pretty tame, usually about keeping an open mind, not judging too quickly, and more like those. However, near the end there were a lot of questions about domestic violence and count ordered no contact orders. This whole process is referred to by the court as voir dire. One of the last questions was about undue hardships. The Judge was giving us an "out" if we could convince her of it. She of course had heard it all before and warned us of that fact. She also told us that this was most likely going to be a quick case, ending on Wednesday if everything went to plan. Should we be excused from this case, we could get assigned to a 4 month medical malpractice next!
Once all the questions were asked and our votes entered, we were excused for lunch. This was at about 11:50am. Lunch in the justice system is a very long 1.5 hours. I think I could eat 3 lunches in that time. I walked down to pioneer square and got a subway sandwich. I ate in the store and then went next door to the Starbucks for an americano. Coffee in hand, I walked back up to the court building and sat and waited for over an hour to be called back to court. Of course the bailiff came and got us late, then there was more standing in line in the hallway. Finally at about 1:50pm we were back in our seats.
It was now time for the attorneys to grill us as a group. The prosecutor started by asking general questions to the whole group and allowed anyone to answer. She then started picking out certain people and asked specific questions. I was not singled out for a question. After she was done, the defending attorney asked questions. These were very strange questions. They ranged from topics of the no contact order to what domestic violence is and who is usually at fault. I was surprised at some juror's responses to these questions. One lady went so far at to insist that domestic violence is always the fault of the man, who is always the aggressor. Even the Judge had a funny look on her face at that comment. The last question the defending attorney asked was "does my client look guilty?" I can see the point to this question, as it would weed out the people who would look at someone and decide before even hearing a word from either side. I mean, the guy wasn't clean cut or anything. He had a tattoo of the letter R on his neck and was making some strange faces (which we later learned is because of a cornea problem). I shouldn't have been surprised by people who answered that yes, they thought he looked guilty. I answered that I had not made any judgments about him.
At about 2:30pm we were excused for a recess and put into an empty courtroom to wait. We were not allowed to go anywhere else for this break. Once called back into the court, jurors started getting excused. First there were two that were excused for undue hardships. Next, the judge heard each side's objections to specific jurors for cause. This means they didn't think a juror could be impartial and had a good reason for it. Only two more were excused for cause. After that, each side got a turn to excuse a juror for no reason. They must have decided on the rules prior, as 6 was a strange number. This preemptive selection was weird, random jurors were dropping. I assume this was based on the answers to the questions earlier. Finally, at almost 3:30pm, the jury was set. I was still sitting in seat number 6.
We had another brief recess and then were called back out. It was odd having only 13 of us, and the room felt huge and empty. The prosecutor started with an opening statement. The case was about the defendant allegedly climbing through the window of the victim's house at 2:30am on 8/6/06. This did two things in the way of charges. First it violated the conditions of a no contact order that was in place. The second was a burglary charge. This fit because burglary is defined as unlawfully entering a dwelling for the purpose of committing a crime. The prosecutor spoke for about 20 minutes about what she was going to present and the crimes themselves.
Finally at about 4:10pm the Judge let us go for the day. We were to report back at 8:50am and could go directly to the jury room of the court we were in. I caught a bus back to the building I work at normally and Erin picked me up just like normal.
Tuesday
Tuesday was a little less crazy. Since I didn't have to report until almost 9am, I rode with Erin to work and spent about 45 minutes at my desk catching up on a few things. I caught an 8:10am bus in the rain, rode it to pioneer square, got a coffee and then walked the rest of the way to the courthouse. I was the first juror to arrive at about 8:30. To my surprise, the Judge walked into the jury room with two boxes of dougnuts! She told me that they like to keep everyone going with sugar and coffee. She smiled and left the room without another word.
By 8:50 everyone was there. Court of course didn't start on time. We finally went out at about 9:30am and sat in the same seats. The defending attorney waived her right to an opening statement and the prosecution was able to call her first witness. She called a neighbor of the victim who was pretty composed. Next she called a cop, followed by another cop, and then a third. By this time we were starting to see a theme in that no one actually saw the defendant at the scene. Or if they had, they were being really coy about it (that neighbor). We broke for 15 minutes and then got to hear from the victim herself (called by the prosecutor). She was very hard to listen to. She obviously had a drug problem and was talking so fast it was hard to understand. She would bounce around any subject she tried to talk about in a way that made my head hurt.
After that, it was time for lunch. We got yet another 1.5 hour lunch. I found myself walking down the street with two of my fellow jurors. I wasn't planning on going to lunch with anyone, but they seemed nice so I went anyway. We decided on Fado, a great Irish pub I had been to in the past. One of them was fresh out the Army, the other was a guy who publishes the Hispanic Business Directory. They were both pretty interesting and we had a good lunch. In fact, after that witness it was nice to be distracted for a while. We ate a very leisurely lunch and wandered slowly back to the courthouse. After all that, we still had 20 minutes to kill before we were due back, and then it would most likely be another 30 minutes before we get back into the court room.
At about 2pm we went back into the court room and heard the prosecutor rest her case. The defense called the defendant's mother to the stand and only asked one question about his squinting. It was at this time we learned that he needed a cornea transplant. Then the defense rested. We were excused back to the jury room while the court got all the instructions from the Judge ready and had copies made for each of us. This took about an hour. It was pretty much killing us to not be able to talk about the case yet with even each other. We made do though. One of the jurors had a million stories and I think he told us every one of them.
Finally at about 3:30pm we were called back into the court room and were giving a packet of instructions each. However, were were not trusted enough to read them, the Judge had to read every single word to us on the record. We were told what we could consider as evidence and what we couldn't. It also went over definitions of terms like "beyond a reasonable doubt" and admissible. Heavy stuff to say the least. This really was the defendant's case in about 30 pages. It was now in our hands. We were told who of our 13 was the alternate. It was #13 (surprise!) and she was let go. She would be called if needed, but for now she didn't have to come back to deliberate. Once she was gone we had to pick a presiding juror. We did that quickly at least.
However (!), it was of course 4pm by then and we were excused for the day! Argh! It was going to be so hard to not talk about it! I went home the same way again. It really was nice to take a bus for free. Each day we were able to request more bus passes if we needed them.
Wednesday
I again went to work first, then got coffee, and found myself the first to arrive in the jury room. I found the admitted evidence on the table and fought my urge to start looking through it. There was a copy of the no contact order and some pictures a detective took the day or so after the alleged crime took place. It really was a pretty weak case against the guy.
Once everyone was there we started discussing it... FINALLY! After an hour we took our first vote. 7 guilty and 5 not guilty. Uh oh. We discussed it some more and took another vote. 5 guilty and 7 not guilty. Hmm. Most of us felt he probably did it. We kept going back to the instructions from the Judge and the definitions she provided. We discussed it some more and were just about to take another vote when the bailiff came and forced us to go to lunch. The court room would be locked and because it was so old there are no emergency exits. So city code required we not be in the jury room when the court doors are locked.
I again went to lunch with the same two guys as the day before. We didn't go far this time though. We found our way to the awesome little mexican place just west of 3rd ave on James street. I don't remember the name of it, but it was really good. It had maybe 5 booths and was so tiny. I didn't feel like I was even in Seattle anymore. We had another great lunch and went back to the courthouse.
As soon as everyone was back in the jury room we took another vote. 12 not guilty. We rang for the bailiff and let her know we were serious about the 10 minutes we needed before lunch. She laughed at this and went to get everything ready. Once the court was called back to order they brought us back in. We handed the verdicts to the court and the bailiff read them out loud. The defendant was VERY relieved. We were excused back to the jury room.
In about 15 minutes, the Judge came back and thanked us personally. She even answered some of our questions and presented each of us a certificate for our service. She also let us know of a little known statute that states you are exempt from serving on jury duty again for 2 years after your last one. Nice!
We were released at about 2pm. On our way out the prosecutor was in the hallway and asked if anyone wanted to talk to her about the case. I think everyone except one guy stopped. We provided her some reasoning for our decision. I feel she respected it but was quite frustrated.
I got out of there and caught an early bus back to work.
All in all it was a cool thing to do. Very educational and something I would recommend to everyone at least one in their life. Sometimes it is easy to lose perspective of our system of justice. For all its flaws, it is as fair as can be, if not a bit lumbering and slow.
0 Comments:
Post a Comment