Jury “Service” Wrap-up
As I posted on Monday, I had Jury Duty on Tuesday. If you listened to the far too energetic and canned speech that Loren Jackson (Harris County District Clerk) gave everyone before panel selection, it is Jury “Service”, not duty. Whatever. The following is my lengthy and rather dry retelling of my experiences for the day.
I had to report to the assembly area by 8:00 AM on Tuesday. I ended up arriving early which gave me time to pre-pay my parking and get settled by about 7:45. Nothing much happened until 8:30 when they closed the outer doors, took up our summons, and played a video for us talking about jury duty. Once that wrapped up, they began calling number ranges (we each had a number assigned on our summons). I got called as part of a group of sixty-five folks for criminal court. Let me just establish right here that I was actually a bit hopeful that I would get selected for a jury, and if I was going to do it, I’d rather see a criminal case. So that perked my interest, as did the size of our group.
After heading downstairs, meeting our bailiff, and getting a new number assigned we headed over to the correct building. I pity the bailiff. It’s like dealing with an kindergarten class sometimes. The court we were assigned to was District Court #338 on the 15th floor of the criminal building. Let me just say, metal detectors are stupid. Their operators even more so sometimes. As it turned out we had plenty of time to navigate security. We were asked to wait in the hallway outside the courtroom until we were called in. So we waited. And waited some more. And … waited more. Finally, after about two hours we were lined back up and marched in to sit on perhaps the most uncomfortable benches known to man.
Judge Jones, who is even now presiding over the case, introduced herself and launched into a rather haphazard-feeling government and law procedure crash course. She outlined the various stages of the trial, defined a few terms, and read the indictment. I’ll save you the trouble of searching her docket to find the relevant case. She had a number of questions for us as a group as well. Mostly dealing with the punishment phase of the trials, and whether we would be able to “abide by the law” and consider the full punishment range. In the case of this felony (Aggravated Assault with a deadly weapon [firearm]) the punishment range, if found guilty, is two to twenty years in the state penitentiary and up to $10,000. She had each of us affirm, or deny, that we could deal with that range. Then she went through the entire group again specifically asking about the lower range, then again for the higher range. I guess it was an attempt to ferret out what the problem was if we had objected to the overall range. This punishment range question took at least twenty minutes to get through, but that’s not all!
If the defendant has a prior felony conviction, the punishment range changes according to Texas law. With a single prior the range shifts to five to ninety-nine years to life and the same $10,000 fine. The judge went around the room again asking if we were okay with the range, with the lower bound, and with the upper bound. This part took even longer since a potential life term was involved and folks were beginning to smell a possible exclusion from service. But that’s not all!
If the defendant has two prior felony convictions, the punishment range shifts to a minimum of twenty-five years and a maximum of life, with the same $10,000 fine. Of course we repeat the questioning phase, and of course it takes even longer. I don’t know if some of these people were being honest, or just trying to get out of jury duty, but it got ridiculous really quickly. One of my fellow citizens said “life isn’t enough.” Many folks simply failed to grasp that the range is established and we would have to choose within those bounds if the defendant was found guilty. They wanted to set their own boundaries, including I suppose, a death penalty. *sigh*
EDIT: I forgot to point out that, if I read the Criminal History correctly, it appears the defendant in this case has at least two prior felony convictions on his record. That certainly shines a different light on the whole questioning process. During our lunch break, that line of questioning and the extent to which it was detailed made most of us believe that he had priors, although we did not yet have access to that information.
By about 12:45 we finished up that part and we were released for a lunch break. One cafeteria stop later and I was back to waiting in the hallway outside the courtroom. A little after 2:00 we were ushered back in and seated. Now the attorneys had their chance to address and question all of us (we were not separated and questioned individually or in smaller groups).
The prosecution went first and seemed to focus on witness credibility. He asked us to explain what tools we would use to assess the credibility of a witness. I think he was more than a little flustered by some of the responses, but he did his best to remain looking upbeat and positive. The first real warning bell that went off for me was when he asked if we would automatically assign higher credibility to a police officer. After harping on that for a while he asked if we could simply start every witness off on an even level and go from there after hearing the full story. There were a few mixed responses that led to a rephrasing of the question. Really it was a completely new question, but I could see the link he was trying to make. We were asked what we would do if the prosecution had just barely failed to prove beyond reasonable doubt their case, a police officer was a witness, and if after lending the officer’s testimony just a little extra credibility due to their position would we find the defendant guilty. (Hope that made sense.) About half of the group ended up raising their little juror numbers indicating they would (which is not what the prosecutor wanted to see). There was a little frantic scribbling of numbers on the notepad and his time was up.
The defense reiterated a few of the same points, but largely left witness credibility alone. She, instead, focused on the indictment itself. What if, she posited, it was proven that a firearm was not involved at all? What if it was shown to have been a knife? Would we convict? You might call it a technicality, I sure would, but according to the letter of the law, we as a jury would have to find the defendant not guilty of the charges. The ensuing argument, clarification, argument, pointed questioning, “three strikes and you’re out”, and so on took most of the remaining time. She was left with enough to kick up another firestorm when we were asked about personal involvement in an aggravated assault. Some rather amusing stories were told about bar fights and one rather gruff Vietnam reference: “Yes I had a gun pointed to my head and I had one to his. How did that turn out? Well, I’m sitting here right now and he’s not.”
Thankfully the end was in sight. The attorneys gathered with the judge at her bench and began their whispered striking of names from the list. I’m not sure how many were eliminated in that round, but I’d have to estimate twenty to twenty-five based on what we could overhear and how the rest played out. A couple of people were called up to the bench for “clarification” on something they had said earlier, but the questioning never took long. Overall it took about 15 minutes for them to sit back down. The judge then explained that the prosecution and defense each would now be able to strike ten more names from the list without reason (although the standard non-discrimination laws limited them a little). We we told that when they had finished, the first twelve people remaining (by juror number) would become the jury. Remember, there were sixty-five of us in there and I was number thirty-eight. I didn’t figure they would get down the list far enough to be in striking distance of me. Oh how I was wrong.
The list was compiled, names struck, and a final list drawn up. The first person selected was number … thirteen. Holy cow! Suddenly the possibility that I might actually get selected was increasing dramatically. Remember that I didn’t consider that a bad thing either. A few more numbers were called out in the twenties and then they skipped to thirty-five. Maybe five people had been picked at this point. It was all but guaranteed that I’d be on the list now. The next number to be called was something like forty-seven. They’d skipped most of my entire row, including me. To show just how many people had been cut in one or the other rounds, the final juror selected was sixty-three or sixty-four out of the total sixty-five available. They had dug deep.
We were dismissed pretty quickly after that. Most everyone was pretty pumped up over not being picked. For me it was a mixture of relief and disappointment. Relief that I wouldn’t have to deal with downtown traffic and parking for the next few days, but a little disappointment over not getting to see and participate in the next stages from inside. I suppose I’ll have my chance eventually. All said and done, I’d been away from the house for about ten hours. A roughly normal length business day for me, but I was certainly more drained than normal.
I have jury duty tomorrow. Kind of looking forward to it as it will be the first time I’ve been summoned and haven’t been in school, etc. Yet, even that excitement is tempered with misgivings about the system. I believe that for a democracy to work, its citizens must be involved, however, I do not feel they should be compelled to serve under penalty. I don’t want an unmotivated, or worse a “mad at the system; out for revenge”, person serving on a jury. That is simply not what they are there to do. And as recent experience has shown, even for the properly motivated, financial concerns (among others) can weigh heavily on potential jurors. *shrug* I guess tomorrow will be an experience either way.