Jury Service in Kings County

Corrie has been selected to serve on a jury in Kings County this past week, and I felt like this would be a good time to relate my own jury duty--er, service--experience.

Like most things in relation to Murphy's Law, jury service seems to happen when you can most ill-afford for it to happen, and for me that was right about the time when I was switching jobs back in April of 2008, when we needed all the money we could possibly earn to fund our wedding. My third day back working with Chef Matt Weingarten I had to tell him I was being called in for jury duty. He was upset, but not at me, and shook his drooped head, "You gotta do what you gotta do...try not to get put on any jury," he finished with a laugh, knowing that there wasn't any real thing I could do short of not showing up.

When I got there, and through the metal-detector, I entered a large room with a few hundred seats and a few flat-screen monitors all set to news channels and muted. This was the waiting hall at the New York State's Supreme Court courthouse, this specimen situated in Kings County, in downtown Brooklyn. I had a seat, looked around at the walls in this giant room and tried to take note of the collection of historic photographs from Brooklyn's past adorning them. Then I started to read.

About a half-hour after sitting, and mildly perking my ears every ten minutes when they called another set of twenty names to proceed into another room, my name was called. I shuffled with everyone else into a much smaller processing room, stood in line with a few others, and then were led into an even smaller off-shoot from the processing room. This smallest room reminded me of a classroom; there was a rectangular desk at the front, and a few rows of densely packed chairs. Everyone took a seat, and two lady lawyers came in.

The first lady, the younger of the two, dressed in a smart business jacket and matching skirt, with blond hair that may have been a blessing in years past (though now was almost scraggly) began to talk about how this works in Brooklyn, or at least in this type of civil case in New York State: first we'd hear arguments to see if a plaintiff was unduly wronged by a defendant, and if we felt the case had been made well enough, and found fault of wrongdoing established in the defendant, then we'd move on to phase two, which was awarding financial considerations to the plaintiff.

She then began to ask if anyone of us prospective jurors had ever been a cab-driver. It turned out that one gentleman of Pakistani origin had been a cabbie, and the lawyer lady asked the same question in a number of ways, a number of ways that turned out to be mostly not understood by the Pakistani gentleman. The question was something to the effect of, "Would having been a cabbie make you more likely to side with a cabbie, or affect in some way your ability to render objective judgement?" Finally she gave up and the other lady started talking, much more confidently and calmly, and let us know that this trial might take a little longer since they'd be needing a Tibetan translator.

Tibetan! Sweet, I thought, if I got a chance to speak, I could talk about my unwavering support for the Tibetan people in their quest to regain their homeland from the PRC and all that...it never got there, of course. I listened to their cagy talks skirting the actual bits of the trial and lawsuit, paying close attention and making eye-contact. I realized that I would probably make a pretty good jurist no matter how this turned out.

By paying attention and making eye-contact, I was placed on the jury without getting to say a word. I, and three other folks from my group were sent to stand in another line to pick up our Juror Cards, things that we needed to show when we entered the actual courtroom, when it came to that. We adjourned to the deliberation room we'd be using to deliberate the case when the time came, and chatted with one another as the other jurors filtered in. Eventually they gave us some instructions about the following Monday, when we'd all be back to hear the start of the case, but the instructions came only after the rest of our jury had been selected; ten people total, eight jurors and two alternates, both of whom had to go about every motion as if they were a full juror.

On Monday we all waited in the deliberation room for longer than previously warned it would take, and close to eleven in the morning, we lined up and entered the courtroom. This courtroom was much closer to those I'd imagine when I was a kid, with wood finishes and the like, different from the modern flourishes that adorn the Sacramento and San Luis Obispo courtrooms I'd seen in the past.

The judge explained some more things to us, about the role of alternates, about the roles of juries, about how it is important to go by the book (as a juror), else lots of money will be wasted, yada yada yada...Then the opening statements were made. The plaintiff's lawyer, the younger blond lady went deeper into the facts of the case; a cabbie had injured the plaintiff's hand while whipping around a turn on Park Ave, and we were here to determine both the extent of the fault on the part of the driver, and to judge how much money should be awarded because of the injuries.

The defendant's lawyer, the calmer, more confident one, spoke about words like "whipping" and the connotations that represents, told about her client's side of things, that the lady was running across the street, that he hit his brakes and still struck her, albeit at a much lower speed, and that her medical expenses had already been taken care of. She made a few more statements, finished, and the judge broke for recess, for lunch. We were to be back in exactly forty-five minutes. I fought the urge to go grab a beer.

We made it back to our d-room, were lined up again, and entered the courtroom. The judge thanked us for participating and almost seemed like he felt bad for wasting our time. Then he told us that while we were at lunch recess, the parties had settled, and that the case was no more, and that in Kings County the eight of us who were jurors were now exempt for the next seven years, while the alternates would have to go back out to the waiting room and wait for their name again. That sounded like a tough break for the alternates, but what could I do?

The eight of us got letters upon leaving that stated we were done for seven years, not that I planned on living in Kings County in seven years, but it seemed pretty cool. Two days...a settlement after lunch.

Now, was reading this as boring as writing it?