Civic Duty-part two

Thursday is day four and we start the trial. There are fourteen of us because there are two alternates. We don't know who the alternates are until after closing arguments, at that point two of us get dismissed so the twelve remaining can begin deliberation. Oh boy, ok here we go.

I am juror number one. We each have an envelope with our number on it at our chairs, chairs are assigned by number too so that's where you always sit. I had a column by me, I was happy about that, it meant only half of the courtroom was looking at me and the line of news people on one side of the courtroom were the other side of my column. News people aren't allowed to take pictures or video of jurors and they are watched carefully to see that they don't, thank goodness. In our envelope is our note pad, we take notes and our note pad stays in the courtroom until we have to deliberate and is locked up at night. The jurors aren't allowed to talk about the case with each other or anyone else. By now, I haven't read a paper or watched the news for four days.

Mostly this first day we are sitting in the jury room waiting. We start two hours after we arrive, hear opening arguments and see our first bits of real information--not evidence but the "story" as presented by prosecution and defense. We are dismissed from the courtroom for another hour after this and return to be dismissed for lunch. I brought my lunch, as planned with two other women on the jury, we have to wear jury tags everywhere we go and the idea of walking a couple blocks to a restaurant with a big X on me didn't appeal really. Since we are spending the majority of our time in a courtroom or in a windowless jury room we decided to eat outside at some picnic tables.

I need to add some things here. The courtroom is guarded. There are two guards for the defendant, two bailiffs at each of the doors and two bailiffs on the other side of my column. Then there is a bailiff that sits up in between the witness stand and us. He's our bailiff who helps us with whatever we need and comes and talks to us when there is a bench conference between attorneys and the judge (so we don't overhear.) So there are nine armed people in this courtroom in addition to it being pretty full of families and other interested folks. I'm really starting to wonder now about just who it is I'm dealing with here.

Beginning the first day of trial we park in a designated area and we are told to arrive in the morning at a specific 15 minute interval. When we arrive there are sheriffs deputy's outside watching for us. We enter through a locked employee door that takes a key card to unlock to come in AND go out. We are wanded, our belongings x-rayed (shoes too) and when we enter the jury room we go in a locked door, down a short hall, in another locked door to the jury room. I started wearing my plastic "its a belt" so I wouldn't have to take my belt off every time I entered the building--my pants kept falling down while I was trying to put my shoes on!

So yeah, this is my world for as long as this trial takes, 13 strangers, lots of guards, locked doors. K, back to lunch. We wait to be let out and tell them we are eating outside at the picnic tables across from our entrance door. Off we go. While we're eating our lunch and getting to know each other we realize there is a deputy outside, he's guarding us. My state of mind has been set to CYA (cover your ass) as it is--all this guarding only heightens that state of mind.

We stay outside as long as we can, with only short "comfort breaks" where I convinced non-smokers to go outside with smokers so we all could have sunshine and fresh air, and lunch time, we are inside a building so we take full advantage of the whole hour to be outside. That's pretty much how it goes for all the remaining days of the trial. A couple of times when we had much longer breaks we walked a block away for coffee, other than that we three stayed right there with our guards.

I think that's all the really wordy stuff so I'll make a part three about the trial part and try not to write a novel?

This is just wrong....

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QbuXOopbWcE&feature=player_embedded

Civic Duty-part one

Monday, March 9th I had jury duty. I had postponed my civic duty when I was originally called because I was up at The Cave with LT Dan. Peachy. So I show up for jury duty at 8am. Of course it was dark because it's the first day of daylight savings time and of course I'm going to somewhere I have never been. YAY.

I'm totally unprepared for what happens to me...I sign in and get a juror tag, then I get a form. Something like you have been called for a capital murder case called "xxx" (I'm not putting a name-some asshat will find me and harass me), do you know this entire page of people's names. Oh boy. I know one name out of an entire page of names.

Go sit. Find coffee (which btw only exists because one of the judges pays for it). Sit some more. An hour and a half later I've been assigned to group one, and I'm filling out a nosy form. The nosy form asks about who you are, where you live, where you work, your marital status, your children, your criminal status, your victim status, where does your husband live and work...and on and on. It's a triplicate form so everybody gets one, the court, the prosecution and the defense.

They call group one, off we shuffle to the courtroom for voir dire. Voir dire is basically questioning potential jurors. What is lovely about this, is it is done with people present in the courtroom. People you don't know, people who are both family of the defendant and family of the victim. Great, so now, you are answering specific questions about where you live and work, who takes care of your children, where your family lives and works, what you and your family criminal status is, what you and your family victim status is. In detail. LOTS of detail. With your name. Your full name. In front of strangers who in one way or another are involved in murder, drugs, guns, gangs. I love it. Not so much.

Oh yeah, and the death penalty, how do you feel about the death penalty. Have you ever actually thought about how you feel about the death penalty? I mean seriously thought about it? I can't say I had in more than a philosophical way until then.

The one good thing for my voir dire was it was early on a Monday and the first day of daylight savings time, apparently not too many people wanted to get up and go to court quite yet. For later potential jurors the courtroom was full of people. I can't imagine the discomfort for them. Especially when they eventually got picked for this jury.

Husband meanwhile is concerned but not too much on day two of all day jury selection and I am still there. He says, tell me something I can Google. I tell him Google words. He disappears for a while and comes back with "Sweet Jesus" (this does NOT make me feel better and I CAN'T Google so I'm screwed, everybody else knows more than I do!) and then asks me if our neighbor who looks out for me is tracking on all this and I say no and he says "well tell him NOW" Great. Oke doke.

Neighbor goes away (apparently also to Google) and later comes out with his dog and says "I just need to know one thing, do I have your authorization to use lethal force inside your home." *blink* I look at him and say yes, you do. Peachy. Now I'm really not very happy.

Day three of all day jury selection. Yeah. So now I have heard probably better than 120 people answer the nosy questions. One guy basically had PTSD from doing a capital murder trial as a juror like 15 years ago. Oh.my.God. End of the day comes, and these days are long, get there at 8 ish leave at 7 ish. Jury names are called oh great its me. Husband says..."do they pay you?" I say yes, for what that's worth. He says, "oh honey, I knew you would get a job!" Can we say I will beat you now dear husband?

Note to self: Learn to lie. Learn to lie well. You suck at telling lies but you need to figure out how to do it. Never do this again this jury thing. Never. Yeah.

Part two sometime...

The Cost of War

I just, well, go read what Claire says. I'm tired. For me, for my family, this is the cost of war:


October 24, 2003, Baghdad, Sylvester and Zach on Zach's 21st birthday