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November 18, 2004

A great job for $17.20/day

I spent the last two days serving jury duty, at a pay of $17.20/day. In the end, I think people actually enjoyed the experience--everyone was all smiles at the end, and we frequently were reprimanded by the sheriff for laughing too loud. We were quite a crew, including an Egyptian chiro, a young Subway manager who had previously served on a Murder 1 jury, a young fake-baked math teacher of Polish background, a Naval radar technician, and a South Sider whose brother was murdered. We spent more time in the jury room than the court room, where the jester was an obese south-side schoolteacher who regaled us with tales of her wild ADD students and the Smell-Blaster toy.

The case was a young Hispanic man of slight build accused of drunken driving and obstructing traffic. It looked like a slam dunk for the prosecutors. However, the cop and defense witnesses (including the defendant) told wildly different accounts, and either the cop or the defense witnesses were committing perjury. The cop asserted he witnessed the defendant arguing with his girlfriend and drive away wildly, at which time he made the arrest of the driver. It was a prima facie case, and the arrogant prosecutors were quite sure that the conviction was in the bag. The defense then called three witnesses who argued that the defendant wasn't even driving!

Both sets of attorneys, the prosecutors and the public defender, were novice attorneys. The public defender was a female Columbo (less rumpled cloak and cigar), stumbling through her poorly-prepared case and seemingly grasping at straws, with lots of "oh, and one more thing." In fact, the jury came up with nicknames for all the participants, and we considered entering the list as "Jurors' Exhibit #1." The prosecutors were both extraordinarily arrogant. One was one of the type of fat guys wearing poorly-tailored trousers whom I regularly encountered (and beat) in high school debate. The other was a young Indian who delighted in confusing the low-IQ defense witnesses and using this to brand them as "liars," which the jury found offensive and insulting to our collective intelligence. (It was actually a very smart group of jurors.) Among this prosecutor's most brilliant questions: "About how tall were you on September 19, 2001?" The defendant's response: "About as tall as I am now."

I actually have to hand it to the public defender because, despite her awkwardness and poor preparation, she did an excellent job presenting the case. The doubt started with some shoddy policework, as the cop errored in his account of the traffic stop, claiming it happened eastbound when the road was one-way westbound. All three witnesses were led to point out this shoddy policework, and a small technicality started to provide the doubt needed for the defense to make a credible assertion that the cop happened upon the scene after the argument when the car was parked. The defendant frankly admitted that he was wasted and asked his buddy to drive him in his car. Seeing his girlfriend walking, he said he got out and argued with her while the driver parked his car. Someone called the cops because of the domestic disturbance. (This was a very key point that the prosecutors didn't even recognize.) The cops proceeded to the parked car, around which two people were standing. The cop then assumed (or so my theory goes) that the drunk owner of the parked car must have been the driver and backfilled from there to create a story that we didn't find believable. For instance, the cop argued that he spent five minutes waiting as the car blocked traffic--no cop spends five minutes patiently waiting while someone obstructs traffic on a narrow road, not even in Paris. The defense also portrayed their witnesses as being rather dim-witted, such as dressing one in a soiled Old Navy shirt. This contrasted very strongly against the female prosecutor's haughtiness and actually contributed to the theory that both the prosecutors and police were playing loose with the facts to get a conviction. Just like when I went to court on a traffic violation of my own.

So it ended up anti-climactic, as every juror agreed on acquital very quickly. I don't know what we would have decided if the policework were not so shoddy, but at least it felt good to give the verdict. Perhaps we were totally hoodwinked by three brilliant confederates who orchestrated the flawless telling of the exact same lie three times (even under cross-examination), or perhaps a cop lied under oath attempting to obtain a false conviction. One of these whoppers was said under oath today, and that's what really bothers me.

Posted by adrianjo at November 18, 2004 10:01 PM

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