No Friday

Shortly after I wrote my introduction to jury duty, I was called for an actual case. There was one other “draft” for a smaller district court case (read this for an explanation of the difference between municipal, district, and superior courts in Washington) with only fifteen potential jurors selected, but I wasn’t one.

I was picked as juror number 24 in a civil litigation case, which I probably shouldn’t go into too much detail on. When my name was called, I picked up a placard with the number 24 on it, waited for a little bit, and then was called into the courtroom around 11:30.

It’s amazing how hard it is to be completely impartial, since as soon as I walked in and saw the plaintiff and the defendant and their attorneys, I immediately began sizing people up, trying to figure out what happened based on the little detail we had of the case, etc. I am sure I would be able to put things aside and focus on facts, but I think the human mind, or at least mine, is prone to prejudging.

The judge, who was very nice but had a nasty cold, went over the jury selection process (and also told us how wonderful and responsible we were). After about fifteen minutes of preamble, we were sworn in and then the voir dire process began.

Voir dire is the process where the judge and attorneys ask questions of the potential jurors to determine if there might be any biases or prejudices that would prevent a juror from serving his duty in the case. The judge started with a list of standard questions (such as “do any of you know the defendant”) and questions she thought were relevant to the case. For each question, you raise your placard if your answer is yes. After that, the plaintiff’s attorney and the defense attorney each had their shot. Sometimes the questions were yes/no, but the attorneys could also dig further to understand more about one’s answer. Some of the questions were somewhat personal (“have you ever depended on someone else for medical care?”) but the judge and both lawyers did an admirable job of performing their duties in a respectful manner.

There are several ways that jurors are excused. One is a hardship request from the juror – three sought those and they were granted. Another is a “challenge for cause”, whereby I believe the judge has to agree with the attorney that a juror has reason for bias (e.g. knowing the defendant). Only one person was excused for this reason, which surprised me, given some of the potential biases I observed in the questioning. It seems that the possibility of bias has to be fairly clear, and not just a perceived one.

But each attorney also gets four peremptory challenges whereby he can dismiss a juror without explanation. Only one was dismissed via this mechanism. Juror 15 then moved from the gallery area to the jury bench. I didn’t realize the significance of that until a minute later when, after there were no more challenges, the judge announced “OK, we have our jury.” Jurors 1-14 were the primary candidates for the trial, and the rest of us were really just backups. Eight jurors ahead of me would have had to been dismissed for me to have been selected in this trial.

After we were excused from this trial around 2:30 pm, we went back to the juror’s room to go back to the selection pool. Since no other trials were starting that afternoon, we were free to go home (or back to work, in my case). Still, it was nice to get out early. Tomorrow, I report back again (8:45 this time, so I get to sleep in a bit more). If I don’t get picked for a trial tomorrow, I am done with my commitment. I kinda hope I get picked for a trial though. It would probably be a pain, but I have a strange fascination with the legal system, and it was fun to get a firsthand impression in action.

A few other highlights:

• I forgot to mention the funniest part about the judge’s speech from the morning – apparently, his wife was a juror on a case that he tried (and lost) when he was a trial attorney. Back then, they had a little more personal information on the cards you fill out as a juror, so he knew she was single and found her attractive. Two weeks after the trial, he ran into her, asked her out, and they’ve been married ever since. That was supposed to be an inspiration to us, I suppose, in case the honor of serving your country wasn’t cutting it for you.
• I had lunch at the Ram in Kent with juror #23, who was the president of a local construction company which happens to be involved in the building of Amazon’s South Lake Union campus. Super nice guy. I met a few other interesting people in the waiting area.
• This week’s 30 Rock apparently featured Tina Fey’s character trying to get out of jury duty by dressing up as Princess Leia. Nice. I need to start watching that show. We tried watching the clip on Youtube in the waiting area but the connection was a little flaky.
• You get two fifteen minutes breaks, one in the morning and one in the afternoon. It was funny when they called the morning break – since the entire time till that point has been spent hanging out, drinking coffee, and surfing the web, I wasn’t sure what I should do for my “break”.
• The Washington state juror per diem of $10 hasn’t changed in fifty years (according to the judge in the case I was part of)
• The court has a daycare space which is provided for by the county, but there is no money to run it. They “offer” to allow you to donate your per diem and mileage reimbursement to the program – apparently many do this and the program largely runs on these and other private donations. Pretty cool idea, especially since $10 isn’t really much compensation. It helps the children of those involved in ugly cases to avoid the potential trauma of the courtroom.

This entry was posted Wednesday, November 12th, 2008 at 10:18 pm and is filed under General. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.