Court Date

Well, I'm finally going to do it - I'm going to write the saga of the jury duty. It's only taken me, what, 3 months, it's about time. Sometimes I feel like it was a weird dream that wasn't really true life, but then I realize, nope that was real life - 3 weeks of real life!

First a quick summary:

I went to my first day of jury duty armed with a book and having no idea what I should even expect. That day they went through all the exemptions of why your jury duty could be postponed or canceled (have kids under 5, people over 65, students...there is a whole list defined by the legal system). You also had to make it known if you knew anyone from the list of witnesses they read, if you knew anyone from the lawyers, if you were affiliated with any law offices, if you had read the articles when the murder was in the paper 3 years ago, if you had any personal reasons that you couldn't be fair and reasonable in a murder trial...it went on for hours...literally. From the original group of 400 they had it down to under 100 that were assigned specific interview times. We showed up at our interview time, were called in one at a time and without realizing it was going to happen you walked in on the backside of the courtroom, were sworn in with the audience sitting there watching you, and answered questions about what you thought about the death penalty, mercy, if you could make a decision and not be swayed by the other jurors, if you would respect their opinion...it didn't take that long, but it was intense. Then they told you if you were excused or not. All those not excused, I think by this time we were down to about 40, showed up one final morning, and the attorneys were allowed to choose whether to seat or excuse the juror for any reason they may have. Each attorney was given a certain number of people they could excuse with no contest it seemed. They had renumbered us but not told us our new number so we didn't know it was us they were talking about when they said 'excuse juror #5' or 'seat juror #10'. When they reached 12 jurors and 4 alternates they stopped reading off numbers, announced our names, sent us to our jury room, excused the rest of the people, and the case started up right then. No joke. Opening statements and away we went.

I put links to the newspaper articles so that I don't need to go into details on the case itself. It really isn't something that is enjoyable to read about, let alone retell. The case was a murder trial with death penalty as the punishment - yeah, my first call to jury duty ever and not only do I get picked, I go and get picked for a murder case - oh but not just a murder case, a death penalty case. In short, he was accused of torturing the victim for 18 hours, leading to his death. Suffice to say that it was graphic - there were actually some pictures that they showed only the jury, audience members were not allowed to see. You could always tell how bad the stuff you were going to be seeing was that day by whether the mother of the man who was killed was in the court room or not. It really was horrible - 18 hours is a really long time.

Now for some FAQs:

Q: First one is always - so did you find him guilty?
A: Yep. After nearly 2 weeks of testimony, the prosecution rested, the defense chose not to have anyone take the stand, they both gave their closing statements, which involved hearing the defendant speak, we deliberated for about 5 hours, and we found him guilty.

Q: And then the obvious next question - and the death penalty?
A: We did decide on the death penalty. In the end I would say that is was based on the severity of the death. The defense tried to say that the defendant wasn't the 'worst of the worst'. Really? What is worse than being tortured for 18 hours before you die? I mean, if he had just shot him then I could see saying he wasn't the worst of the worst, but short of a serial murderer, I can't think of much worse. The reason I say that the death is what in the end led us to that sentence is because going into the trial, I couldn't really say that I believed in the death penalty. It was one of those things, that I felt like I should have a stance on, but could see both sides and so never really had a stance. I would have said...well, I did say during my interview...that I understood the death penalty as a punishment society had, but that I personally find it difficult to think that I could make that decision about someone's life. Now, I also said that I was willing to make the decision based on the facts of the case, but I don't know that I really ever thought I would go with death penalty. It is however, a whole different ball game when you talk about death penalty in the context of a specific situation. And the stakes are raised even another notch when you actually know all the evidence. I can honestly say that I still think that death penalty should only be reserved for extreme cases, and I would not want to make that call if I was not sitting in the courtroom watching every bit of evidence. However, I can also honestly say (and I did) that in this case, the situation was so bad and the evidence was so clear that there really was no other way that I would decide. And 11 other people agreed with me, which made me feel as though I wasn't missing something.

Q: Another very common question - How long did you deliberate?
A: I think the guilt phase was about 5 hours and the punishment phase was about 3 hours. We started with an anonymous vote to see what people thought. You could choose guilty/not guilty/or unsure on each of the three counts. It was kinda nerve-wracking writing your thoughts that first time through. You didn't know what anyone else thought because we hadn't been allowed to talk about it for the entire trial, so you were really not sure if you were totally off base, and you also have that horrible 'Am I missing something' feeling when you have to make a decision and you know you are part of the final authority on the matter. I didn't feel comfortable marking unsure because I felt like if I did that what I was really doing was waiting to see what everyone else in the room thought before saying what I thought. So, I chose guilty for all three counts and saw how the chips fell. As it turned out almost everyone marked guilty on both of the non-murder charges, and I think around 3/4 marked guilty on the murder charge. After that we spent hours going over the evidence making sure that things the attorneys said was the correct information (yeah, you can't really trust that they were saying the truth), making sure what you remembered of certain testimonies and evidence viewings was in fact that case. We did 2 more anonymous votes before it was unanimous - it has to be unanimous by the way. And so, that was it.

Now on the punishment phase, we did the same thing, although this time the stakes were a bit higher. Now you have that feeling in the pit of your stomach saying 'Am I a horrible person for thinking this is the right punishment, Is everyone else not going to say this and wonder who it is that said death penalty, Should I be giving him mercy, not because he deserves it but because God is merciful?' I'm telling you it was intense. Again, I forced myself to make a decision on the anonymous vote because I didn't want to just go with what the majority said, and in the end almost everyone said death penalty from the start. If you read the article from the day of the sentencing (which was in fact the only article I've read, since I wasn't allowed to read any news during the trial), it says that the prosecutors didn't think we were going to go with that verdict based on our pre-trial interviews. So, it seems that most of the jurors felt the same way I did. And the evidence we saw swayed them in the same way. Yes, it was that bad. Go ahead and judge me if you want (believe me, many people have), but you didn't sit in that court room and see what I saw and know without a shadow of a doubt that he was the man who did it. Most of our time deliberating was spent dealing with the fact that we knew we needed to all sign a paper stating that we supported the death penalty. That is one paper, I never hope to have to sign again. I am glad that I prayed long and hard and felt that I was justified in my answer not only to myself but before God. Oh and I prayed long and hard - I read as many verses on mercy as I could find, and in the end I felt God telling me that (for this specific case) it was his job to give mercy to his soul if warranted (and that was no concern of mine), it was my job to give justice to his body and mind that actually committed the crime.

Q: Did you get sequestered?
A: Thankfully, no. The judge afterwards asked us if we had problems with people asking us questions or trying to talk to us (which none of us did), because he felt like sequestering the jury just added undue stress and he preferred not to do it. Apparently usually death penalty cases are sequestered just because they are high profile, but I'm really glad he chose not to!

Q: So how does it compare to what you see in the movies or on TV?
A: Some things are amazingly similar and other things are not even close. At one point I actually noticed myself spacing out (you know like when you are watching a TV show and you can tell the conversation going on is not really important to the end of the show...this by the way is why I LOVE LOST - you can never space out because you never know what is important to the show!)..but back to what I was saying, I noticed myself spacing out and had to shake myself and say 'This is reality - you have to listen to EVERYTHING!' I'll tell you, the DNA evidence is not nearly as impressive as they act like it is. Perhaps some of that is because I've studied genetics and so it doesn't have that 'mystery' to it, but really, in this case the DNA evidence didn't do too much to convince me of what the testimonies already made a pretty clear case for. The cell phone information, on the other hand, was brilliant! It's amazing how much they can get from cell phone tower info - super cool. We did not have any of those times where the jury was told to disregard something someone said - the judge always stopped it before it got that far and made the attorneys tell him where they were going with something. I did gain a huge respect for what it really means to consider someone innocent until proven guilty. You hear that all the time, but when you actually try to do it, it's a really hard thing to do. You literally have to force yourself to take in just facts, not emotions, consider if those facts line up with other facts and then really look at everything in probability form until you hear everything at which point you let your mind reassemble all the distinct thoughts and probabilities and you have your verdict. That of course is a weird way to explain thinking, but it's kinda how it worked. In a sense everything built on everything else, but in a sense it was all it's own idea that in the end all came together. Our jury also didn't have all the fighting or crying or freaking out that you see on movies, although I am told that I'm lucky that I didn't have this. We had a great group of people who I think all considered the case seriously and respected each other. I think the biggest difference is not in what it looked like or what was talked about, but the fact that instead of seeing snippets of a trial you see the entirety. When you see it in its entirety you get a much greater appreciation for the enormity of the task, but you also get a much better appreciation for your ability to decide because you have all the info. You don't just have the snippets the producers thought were important. And the words that they use in the courtroom that are all legalistic and specific get defined for you - you aren't allowed to work on your own understanding of them, they are legally defined and you swear that you are going to abide by that definition regardless of your own opinions on the matter. It's a good system.

Now to lighten the mood - some not well known facts...well maybe you knew them but I didn't!

1 - the guilt and the punishment phase are two totally separate court proceedings - you literally start over with opening statements, witnesses, introducing evidence, closing statements, the whole shebang. Thankfully you are required by law to have 24 hours in between the two sections, which because our 24 hours fell on a Friday allowed me to get to Kathleen's wedding!

2 - the jury does not read the verdict. Believe me, our foreman was happy about that! You do, however, after the verdict is read have to individually raise your hand and say that it was in fact your verdict because the decision had to be unanimous.

3 - the whole point of calling witnesses is because nothing can be hearsay. Everything has to be first person. So everyone who swabbed for blood needs to say that they were the one that swabbed that blood and they didn't tamper with the evidence, and the person who ran the tests needs to say that they were the one that ran the test and they didn't tamper with the evidence, and the people who talked to the defendant or saw him had to say what he said or what they saw and if they even strayed into what they heard someone else say they got cut off real quick. While it was annoying at points and made for the DNA evidence to be painfully slow, it is a good system and I see why it is done that way. In fact, I was impressed by the system as a whole - the founding fathers knew what they were doing!

4 - the jury is not only not allowed to talk to anyone outside the courtroom, you aren't allowed to talk to your other jurors until both parties rest. Yeah - talk about pent up frustration! The first 15 minutes after we got into the deliberation room everyone just talked over each other just because we needed to talk.

5 - after you see the same people day in and day out for 3 weeks you start running out of things to talk about (since you can't talk about the purple elephant in the room). The court staff kept commenting on what a good jury we were because we were on time and we were considerate of others (honestly, I just thought this was plain old normal behavior, but apparently we were top notch by doing it). The one day we asked one of the marshals who escorted us into and out of the building each day what the craziest thing he had seen from other jurors was. He said that one juror actually got caught with marijuana coming to trial. When we asked him how he got caught he said that he took it out of his pocket to put it through the scanner...apparently he followed the directions of emptying your pockets. Wow - yeah, not real bright.

6 - while you can't ask the same question again in a court room, you can ask it differently even if in reality it's the same question. One of the defense lawyers loved this tactic - I guess he thought he could get them to answer the same question a different way by asking it a different way. It was SOOOOO annoying. I tried not to make faces, but at one point I couldn't even help looking like I wanted to jump across the jury box and strangle the man. And then you go back in the jury room and can't even talk about how annoying the attorney is...oh, it was torture sometimes not to talk about the case.

7 - taking non-smoking smoke breaks is highly recommended when you are sitting in a freezing cold building all day long. We realized about a week in that the smokers got to go out and hang out outside for a while, so we asked if we could go and just not smoke - it was excellent. You defrost the toes a bit and then you head back in to freeze. I'm not kidding you, they kept that place at the temperature of a meat locker!

8 - you get really good service at a restaurant when they guy paying has a gun. The last few days I think they were feeling bad for us (that or they were worried about our safety, but that didn't seem like it was the case) because they started having the marshals take us out to lunch (and pay!). It was great. We also got donuts in the morning - that started with the second day of trial. Some days they gave us fruit, some days muffins. It was actually pretty nice of them. It was kinda funny that the day after the verdict when we started the judgment phase they had forgotten to get the donuts. We asked them if they didn't like our verdict and so we didn't get any more donuts.

9 - you have to wear these blue sticky tags that say Juror on them (well at least in Charleston County you did). Everyday without fail, you get one handed to you when you hand in your cell phone, you take it off at lunch and get another one afterwards (I started bringing a sweater and just leaving the sweater with the sticker in the room). There were stickers in my car, in my purse, in my closet on random sweaters - I can't even imagine how many of those stickers the courthouse goes through in a year.

10 - you can't get out of jury duty by saying stupid things. If the case is a major one, they can and will read through your silly statements. One of the guys on our jury knew one of the attorneys, one was married to an attorney, one guy wrote on his application (which you had to fill out before showing up for the first round of interviews) that he hated police officers (yeah, he got questions about that on the stand! - talk about uncomfortable). I personally find it selfish and pompous to think that my life is more important than the life of the person being tried in a case. So, my work schedule got interrupted for 3 weeks - seriously consider whether your work schedule is equal to a human beings life. And if you think it is, wow, I'm sorry you think that your job is that important and you are that indispensable, it must be rough being so important. I refuse to agree with the idea that because people are being inconvenienced that it means only the stupid people should have to do it. The whole system only works because people like the 11 other people and 4 alternates I served with did it. If we actually believe in a system of innocent until proven guilty, then we should be willing to be part of the process of making that ideal possible. Jury duty is a pretty amazing experience. yes, I said it - and I meant it. I learned so much about our legal system, why it runs the way it does, what certain things mean, and I have so much more trust in the system from having been part of it. My plea to anyone reading this is don't believe the hype - take it for what it is, an inconvenience, but something unlike anything you do on a normal day - learn from it what you can, and accept that your part in society is more important than you personally.

Now I really need to talk to an attorney and see what happens on the other side of the bench (and inside the court room when we were locked up in the jury room!).