Although I never actually served on a jury before, I was always an advocate of the system.
Even though it failed me a couple of times in the past.
The first time was for an out of state traffic accident where the judge and my lawyer actually allowed the insurance attorney say “We have to show Mr. ----- (me) that he is not going to come here and collect the Ohio Lottery.” The “lottery” was in reference to the fact that his client smashed into the back of my stopped pickup truck at forty miles an hour because he was flipping through his CD collection on the passenger seat beside him. There was $6,000 dollars of damage to the truck and $30,000 dollars in doctor bills for my first wife and me. The jury agreed and awarded us $3000 en total.
The other jury allowed one of my clients to skate on a $20,000 debt for some set construction my company had performed. It took me three years to pay off my crew and suppliers for that project.
But I continued to believe that it was a system that worked better than any thing else out there. And I still do. So when a jury summons showed up in the mail, I never tried to get out of it, checked the little box that said I would appear, and was always there ready to go.
I was never picked. I was interviewed, but because of my past close relationship with the police and Treasury agents (When I was still doing special effects for films, stage, and TV I had a multitude of local and federal licenses for explosives and weapons. I also hired off duty cops as my security and weapons handlers. Lets face it, they know guns.) I was never picked.
Until last week. Tuesday April 27th 2010 I was empanelled on a jury and I was shocked. First at being chosen to actually serve on a jury that had police involved and second at the proceedings themselves.
It aint like TV, believe me.
This was a DUI case where the legal blood alcohol limit in Arizona is .08%. The defendant had been stopped and tested and with a blood alcohol level of .225% (that is not a typo) he was ever so slightly plastered, three out of three sheets to the wind, polluted, gassed….
This was supposed to have been a one day jury trial. It was a short jury of only 6 with one alternate. (I was juror 5 of 7) The first day was picking the jury, introductions of all participants, swearing everybody in, a legal description of the charges, and calling of the first witness.
The arresting officer.
He was young and attractive (according to my fellow jurors) not to mention impressive in his pressed tan highway patrol uniform. That was until he opened his mouth. Once that chasm was opened, no one could get it shut again.
Way back when I was in college, I worked as a security guard at night when I could do my studies. In Ohio, there were three types of guards; just a plain security guard, a registered security officer, and a private policeman. Each of these levels came with its own pay range, so obviously, spending a little time studying the regulations and taking some training were worth it in hard cash. To finally become a registered private policeman required a specific set of classes and becoming a member of the Cleveland Police auxiliary. Among those classes was one on how to prepare and testify in a court of law.
This officer never took that class.
When asked a question he would drone on and on, opening up aditional facts or calling some of his own testimony into question. He was warned by the judge several times but just could not help himself. Yes and No were just not in his vocabulary. His paperwork was just as bad. Boxes check and then scribbled out. Incomplete thoughts in the report as if he had been interrupted and then did not reread what he was writing in order to make sense when he continued. He even left off the suspect’s last name on one form.
The name thing was a fact that the defense attorney tried and failed to make an issue of. Mainly because during the introductions the defense lawyer, himself, had introduced his client as someone else and had to be corrected by the judge before he realizing his error.
I was trapped in a room full of children playing court!
The prosecutor had a facial tic. In the beginning it wasn’t really apparent. Just an involuntary occasional wink of his right eye as he spoke. However, as the officer testified and testified and testified, that minor wink began to take over the right side of that poor man’s face. It became nearly gruesome in its ferocity and frequency to the point that he actually raised his hand to touch his face as if to confirm what he felt must have been happening.
That afternoon was interrupted by a different defendant in a different court room not liking the outcome of his particular case and “getting even” by pulling the fire alarm. The evacuation and reentry through security metal detectors (the sign says “Take off your belt” so take off your belt!) took up an hour and a half.
I was doomed.
We resumed the officer’s testimony and finally finished at 5 PM. That ended the first day. The jury was admonished to speak about the case to anyone and was asked to return at 1 PM the following day.
Wednesday April 28th 2010 at about 1:25 PM we were again underway. A second officer who had interviewed a passenger in the defendant’s car was supposed to testify, but I think his testimony was considered borderline germane and was dropped because he was excused and the prosecution rested.
The defense had two witnesses. The wife of the accused, her testimony was to the fact that her husband, who was not a big drinker, had received bad news, a fact we, the jury, deemed irrelevant later in deliberation. The second was the passenger in the Cadillac SUV when it was pulled over. His testimony was that the SUV should not have been stopped at all because they had not been swerving out of their lane as the officer had testified. However, during cross examination it was discovered that he had actually been drinking WITH the defendant prior to getting into the SUV. His testimony too was deemed unreliable.
So at this point, in my mind, we had nothing.
The officer’s testimony was verbose and self contradictory. His paperwork was nearly indecipherable as to its meaning, the two witnesses for the defense were a total waist of time and it was again getting late in the afternoon. The only facts that we had at this point was that the breathalyzer had been properly maintained, was operating properly, and the breath test had been correctly performed. Both sides agreed. The .225% breath test itself was not in dispute.
The unresolved arguments that were being made were that 2 or 3 drinks (Jack and coke with ice) were probably not sufficient to make the defendant weave out of his lane and he should not have been stopped in the first place. And after the stop the fact that the officer based his initial arrest on the fact that the defendant could not walk nine (9) steps in a straight line without loosing his balance was irrelevant because the defendant could not perform that test sober (yes, they said sober.)
Why the Hell were we here? Is this really arguable? No the officer’s car was not equipped with a camera so we, the jury, could not watch the defendant’s SUV weave from lane to lane…or not. We, the jury, could not watch as he fell off the five inch wide painted white line in the parking lot where the field sobriety test was performed. The officer was also not equipped with an audio recording device so we, the jury, could not hear if his speech was actually slurred as he spoke to the officer that evening. And yes it was terrible that the defendant received bad news about several people in his life (although we were not allowed to know what the bad news was exactly) and he had a few drinks to console himself and then went for a drive that same evening on the freeway. All of this was fact, but none of it added up.
Luckily for the prosecution, the defendant took the stand in his own defense and filled in all the details for we, the jury.
He, the defendant, had gotten bad news, three times in one day. He had gone for a walk to “work thinks out”and stopped in a Pub near his business. He had 2 or 3 or was it 4 drinks of Jack Daniels and coke. He had nothing to eat. Thanks to a jury member handing a question to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge, who handed it to the attorneys, who then posed the question to the defendant we, the jury, learned that the 2 or 3 or maybe 4 drinks had been doubles. And perhaps stronger because the staff there “likes” him.
Thank the Lord and pass the potatoes. The judge gave out the final instructions. We, the jury, deliberated for nearly an hour before returning guilty verdicts on three of the four charges the defendant was accused of. And that one not guilty was because he had surpassed the upper limit of the charge.
He had not been operating a vehicle with a blood alcohol level between .08% and .19%.
I was free and slightly safer to drive home on the freeway.
This has been a long diatribe, dear reader. And if you have made it this far, I am again surprised. The only reason I don’t try to get out of jury duty (and I will not in the future either) is also the only moral I can leave you with for this verbose account of two days in my life;
If I had been accused of something and had to appear in court before a judge and jury, would I want that jury made up solely of people who were not smart enough to get themselves excused from jury duty?
Perhaps that is what had happened to me in the past. But on the Jury of which I was the foreman, I can assure you great thought, deliberation, and weighing of facts surely took place with great care. And my question, scribbled on a scrap of paper and passed to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge, who handed it to the attorneys, who then posed the question… didn’t hurt either.
And I would like to thank the defendant for clearing up all the confusion.
Be Well.
