AKA Why Me?

Many of you know that for the past two weeks I’ve been on jury duty. Many of you have also been very curious to know what that actually involves. Here is my best shot at describing what i’ve been up to, in a series of posts I will call “Matt goes to Court”

(where i spent the last two weeks)

When I lived in Boston, I had been called to jury duty once - I was 20. Like California, they have a “one day / one trial” policy, which means you show up to court for a day, and if you don’t get put on a case that day you go home and you’re done for the year. Back then I was called for a panel (30-40 prospective jurors of which 12 get chosen + 2 alternates). The case was civil, and involved people selling airplane engines. Or something. I was the first person peremptorily sticken from the panel. Meaning: for whatever reason counsel did not want me trying their case. My (albeit somewhat arrogant) interpretation at the time: they didn’t want a Harvard student picking apart their arguments in the jury room.

So I (again somewhat arrogantly) assumed that there was no way this time around I’d be chosen for a jury. I even scheduled a flight for the day after my appointed jury week was to end.

When you show up to the court they send you to the orientation/waiting room. This part of the day is eerily similar to waiting for a flight to board (the court has metal detectors too but you can keep your shoes on - score). You sit in a large room with hundreds of people waiting. Every hour or so they call a number of people up to the wrangler’s desk (ranging from 30 to 60). You kind of hope they call your name to shake up the boredom (jury duty for most people involves waiting in this room from 8AM to 4PM). And right before lunch they called mine.

(Walt Disney Concert Hall, designed by Frank Gehry - the upside to jury duty is you get to explore downtown LA, whose existence I always questioned)

After lunch, I arrived at 11th Floor, Department 125. The first thing you do is state: where you live, your occupation, your marital status, spouse/partner’s occupation, kids, kids’ occupation, previous jury experience. Then you go through a set of jury questions asking both standard inquiries (“have you ever been charged with a crime?”) and case-specific inquiries (“have you or anyone close to you been a victim of domestic violence?”).

The answers people gave here were fascinating. In this panel of 35 potential jurors, there were no fewer than 8 people with stories of violence (all told their stories frankly in front of a room full of strangers). One had an aunt who was kidnapped, raped and murdered. Another woman was beaten savagely by her husband. The juror next to me (#26) had a story so saddening she began to tell it to the court but the judge interrupted (her husband and kids) were all killed. We didn’t see or hear much more of her.

Then counsel started asking us individual questions to gauge our ability to be impartial and fair (“when you saw my defendant did you presume guilt because of his presence here?” “are you able to understand when and why someone might lie on the stand and judge the quality of their testimony by both the evidence you hear and the circumstances a witness may be in?”).

At the end of the day, despite my best efforts (Me: “I manage Chris Brown’s site”; Prosecutor: “Oh - really- wow - um - i didn’t expect that - my office is prosecuting that case - you probably have access to information we don’t”; Me: “not really, no. probably not”; Judge: “can you be an impartial juror in this case”; me: “yes”), I found myself selected for the jury of People vs. JN for two counts of domestic violence against a cohabitant/partner (RW, his girlfriend/mother of his child) and two counts of assault with a deadly weapon (DN).

Next post: The Trial!

quick postscript: thanks for the concern from those who pointed me towards various news clippings describing incidents in which jurors blogged/twittered from the jury room or during trials. I want to be very clear: the case I served on has reached and announced a verdict, now in public record. what i’m describing in this series is legit. again, thanks!!