Dem
51
GOP
49
Today we present some more reader-juror experiences focused, in particular, on the behavior of people in the courtroom.
C.J. in Boulder, CO, writes: I'm certain what my experiences were will just be echoes of others, but I can't resist.
So, point 1: Attorneys are far too often narcissistic idiots. I was empaneled on a civil jury in Boston long ago. While the civil case was state law, the case was being heard in a federal courtroom as sort of overflow. We had the judge who had presided over Boston's school desegregation case. The case was medical malpractice: A fellow with a 6th-grade education agreed to spinal surgery unaware (he claimed) that he had been warned he might be impotent afterwards. So the plaintiff's attorney gets up and wheels over a model of the spine and nervous system and starts to lecture on medicine. This only went maybe a minute before the judge called on counsel to approach the bench. He clearly gave a pretty stern warning to this attorney that he was to let his expert witnesses talk about medicine and not for him to grandstand based on his readings on spinal surgery. Chastened, the attorney came back, rolled his display back away from the jury, and then gave a far briefer introduction to his case.
Second example: I had the privilege of serving in a jury pool in federal court in L.A. (downtown). Back then, you were in the pool for a month unless picked on a jury, and most days that month I had to drive down the Pasadena freeway to park near Olvera Street to get to the courthouse. It so happened that a fellow I met in the jury pool was a scientist working at JPL (I was a postdoc at Caltech); it seemed like we ended up going to all the same jury selections. One was a case of age discrimination. The plaintiffs' attorney had already blown through all save two of his peremptory challenges when I came up. "What do you do?" "I am a postdoctoral scholar at Caltech." A couple other questions, and he looked pained. The next fellow up was... the guy who was a scientist at JPL "What do you do?" "I do scientific work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory" "And what did you do before that?" A small smile crept across his face: "I was a postdoc like that other guy." The attorney gambled and used those last two challenges to kick us off, and he was rewarded with a couple of blue-collar jurors. But I was kind of annoyed (after all, if I was not picked for a jury, I'd be coming downtown for a few more weeks). The next day I saw this attorney going out for lunch and I ran after him. "Why did you kick the two of us off the jury?" He launched into a story about how he lost a case where an engineer had been the foreman. He questioned the foreman after the verdict to see how he had lost and said that the foreman recounted some of the evidence. "But what about XXX?" asked the attorney. The foreman supposedly slapped his forehead and said "You're right! We forgot about that." The attorney's view was that therefore engineers were untrustworthy. My view of his story was a bit different: This lawyer didn't know how to lay out his case so that the salient points were clear.
Somehow the possibility of an egomaniac representing Trump seems plausible... and that might not go well.
As an aside, it is very clear to me, and I suspect most jurors, that the attorneys do not want juries to explore possibilities; they want a black-or-white choice.
Point 2: Juries need an adult in the room. I think a few folks have kind of mentioned that, but here goes my experience. This was the civil case involving spinal surgery. The judge read off a list of points that had to be cleared for us to find for the plaintiff. OK, off to the jury room. We walked in, chose a foreman, and immediately everybody was wanting to vote on finding for the plaintiff. I objected—we had a series of questions to answer. A lot of blank stares. We asked the bailiff if we could get a written version of the instructions. Nope; we marched back into court where these were read to us again (and we were not allowed to take notes in this courtroom). So our deliberations got a bit more solid once this was laid on us a second time, and one of those points proved to be impossible to agree to, so the defense won.
Point 3: Juries can surprise you. In that same case, while we found for the defendant, we were also pretty annoyed that the doctor had clearly failed to communicate with his patient. So we asked the bailiff if we could have a statement read into the record. He wasn't sure, but said to write it out and he'd take it to the judge. After we gave our verdict, the bailiff gave the judge the note. The judge looked at it, handed it back to the bailiff and told him to read it aloud. So we got our opportunity to point out the flaw in the doctor's behavior... which, being in the record, might have had an impact down the road should that doctor face another similar case.
W.L. in Pasadena, CA, writes: About 25 years ago I served on a criminal jury in downtown L.A. and the trial had an unusual situation. A young man in his twenties was accused of stealing a car in Hollywood, leaving the scene of an accident after hitting a van, fleeing an officer, and possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia.
The biggest surprise was that the defendant had chosen to represent himself. At the start of the trial the judge told the jury that a public defender was seated in the courtroom and would remain throughout the trial. If at any point in the trial the judge decided that the defendant could not (or should not) represent himself, then he would have the public defender take over. As it happened the judge did not intervene and the defendant continued to represent himself to the end of the trial. In my opinion it was a big mistake for the defendant as he did not understand the role of a defense attorney, did not ask good questions, nor give a cohesive summary argument as to his innocence.
A second surprise was that I was selected for the jury at all as I had stated that I had a Ph.D. in Physics and was a scientist at a local well known institution. I really thought this would disallow me as it had on prior and later jury duty calls. Usually I was dismissed by the defendant's attorney, but in this case I think the defendant did not understand my educational background. However, ironically, I believe my selection played a role in deciding in his favor one of the four charges. The witnesses were the owner of the car, the driver of the van, and the police officers who made the arrest, and, of course, the defendant. The actual courtroom trial presentations took about a day and a half and the jury met on the third day.
My fellow jurors were from all walks of life and all backgrounds, as is typical in very diverse L.A. County, only a couple had a college degree, and none a graduate education. We deliberated for a few hours and agreed that he was guilty on three of the counts—it was obvious that he was in the stolen car when caught, the van driver witnessed him fleeing after the accident, and the police officers identified him as the person they chased and arrested. However, most of the jury thought he was also guilty on the charge of possession of drugs and drug paraphernalia. In the trial it was stated that these items were in a bag in the car. Most jurors believed that having a bag in the car made him guilty. I argued that it had not been proved, as neither the police nor the prosecutor had provided any evidence that it was his bag (it had no ID nor were fingerprints or DNA—this is pre-DNA analysis—presented). It could well have belonged to the owner of the car. Although the car owner stated that it was not his bag, he might have lied. After a bit more discussion the jury voted in favor of not guilty on the drug charge.
The lessons from my experience are: (1) do not defend yourself, (2) do not assume that a highly educated person is a poor choice for a juror, (3) if you are obviously guilty, seriously consider a plea bargain, and (4) jurors (and therefore juries) are not always logical—but from other stories printed on this site this last point seems obvious.
S.B. in Los Angeles, CA, writes: I am a veteran prosecutor in a large metropolitan jurisdiction in California. One of my first cases was unlawful possession of cocaine base. The judge and the defense attorney had been assigned to the same court and knew each other pretty well. During the trial the judge started sustaining defense objections that were simply wrong. (I'm not being partisan, I looked it up after the trial!)
At one point the judge sustained a defense objection when I asked the police officer if the amount of cocaine base recovered from the traffic stop was a "usable amount." I was dumbfounded because that's actually one of the listed elements the jury has to find before they can convict on this charge. I was young and still working on my poker face so the judge saw my look as I paused trying figure out a workaround. Before I could proceed he then said in front of the full jury, "Mr. XXXXX, would you like me to take a recess so you can go down to your office and ask what you should do next?" Again, still working on my poker face, I scowled at the judge and said "No!" and finished what I could with the officer. Unbeknownst to me at the time, the bailiff had called the assigned Calendar Deputy DA (DA supervisor) for that courtroom and told her the judge was beating up on the "baby DA" in trial there. At the break, outside the presence of the jury, she came up with the California Jury Instructions Code book and followed him around showing him usable amount was an actual element that had to be proven. He got mad but finally relented loudly exclaiming, "Fine! Do whatever you want!" When the trial resumed, I asked my one question to the recalled officer and he was able to answer that, yes, it was a usable amount.
After closing arguments during deliberations, the jury sent out one question that was read outside their presence, "For Count One what is a usable amount?" Whew! Judge blew his top again and as he stormed back into his chambers yelled to the clerk, "Tell them to refer to the instructions!" After the response was sent into the jury room, they came back with a guilty verdict about 10 minutes later. In California courtrooms, the prosecutor sits closer to jury box because we have the burden of proof. In that particular courtroom the jury had to walk out the front end of the jury box and past my table to exit the courtroom. As they walked past several made sure to make eye contact with me and one even patted me on the arm as they walked by.
At the end of jury trials, judges give final separation instructions to the jury including that they can now talk about the case if they want and that they can wait in the hall if they want to talk to the attorneys. When I went out, alone, to the hall, I found my entire jury panel out there waiting to talk to me. (It's very unusual for all 12 jurors to hang around like that.) When I asked them if they had any questions I could answer for them they asked, "How did the judge like our question?" My mouth dropped open and they all broke out laughing. They explained that they clearly saw what was happening and did not approve. They sent out that question to mess with the judge!
I did make sure that they convicted based on the evidence, but I must confess it was nice to see they had my back. It was a valuable lesson that sometimes jurors are smarter than lawyers think or are aware. Also, they watch the judge, for good or for bad.
Hopefully, this all comes together for a just result in Mr. Trump's many trials.
R.E.M. in Brooklyn, NY, writes: I've served on two trial juries, a criminal one in Manhattan state court and a civil one in the SDNY. As a lawyer, I came away very impressed with my fellow jurors and how seriously they took the case. It was also a fascinating experience watching the lawyers try the case—better than any Continuing Legal Education class I've ever taken.
In the state case, New York had just abolished all the professional exemptions from jury service, so in addition to me there also were a corporate lawyer from a top firm, a chief resident from a big-name hospital, a history professor from Columbia, and also a guy who drove a truck for UPS—altogether a true cross-section of Manhattan residents (as I was at the time). I was surprised that I got picked. The defendant charged with armed robbery (knife) was a Black man, and the complainant was a gay, white man. I figured the prosecution thought that as a white professional, I'd be on the side of "law and order." I speculated that the defense attorney (an older woman who obviously had done criminal defense for decades, likely starting at a time when few women practiced law) thought I understood "reasonable doubt" (the main issue was identification by the complaining witness) and the "presumption of innocence." She was right. We ended up agreeing (on my suggestion) that even if the defendant probably did it, the prosecution had not proved it beyond a reasonable doubt.
The federal civil trial taught me that a lawyer could actually blow his own case despite having the law and facts on his side. Ostensibly the question was whether an individual was a stockholder of the company so that it was a fiduciary for him. He wasn't. But the company was clearly insolvent, and the individual was clearly a creditor, and thus there was a fiduciary relationship for that reason. I convinced the other jurors to send out my question about whether we could find insolvency and to request the judge give us legal instruction on the implications. The jurors were all focused on getting the verdict right. After 15 minutes or so, we were called in, the judge said the case was tried and his instructions stood. As we went back to the jury room, he said in a loud stage whisper, "This is why I hate having lawyers on juries!"
So we returned a verdict for the plaintiff because the defendant hadn't proven the fiduciary relationship, which it could have done had its lawyer taken the insolvency lifeline I had thrown them. I learned from the clerks that there had been an argument about the question, and defense counsel had finally accepted not responding to my question. Idiot.
I'm sorry some of the other commenters here had bad experiences. I fully believe in the "collective wisdom" of the jury system, particularly after experiencing it twice.
Next week, we'll have reports focused on the impact of the judge's instructions. (Z)