Jury Duty

June 4, 2012

Jury Duty

SO on the way to the airport with my mom and P to go to Indianapolis the other week, J (husband) hands me a piece of mail and says ‘Oh yeah, I almost threw this away, I’m so sorry’.  It was a jury summons for 8am on Monday morning, the day after I returned home.

Now, I have to be honest, aside from the timing being a little rushed; I was sort of excited about my jury summons.  I have never been called for jury duty and I was curious about the process and to see why everyone dreaded it so much. Plus, work is SO slow right now, so it was at least something interesting to occupy my time for a day or two. My only major concern was how I was going to pump (I am still breastfeeding), but I had some milk in the freezer, so it was not the end of the world.

Monday was a cattle call for all intents and purposes. I wish I had brought a book because it was so very boring.  We checked in and sat in an auditorium where eventually we were separated into ‘pools’ and shown a video on how great jury service was and that our civic duty was part of our freedoms as Americans (blah, blah, blah…..not that I disagree, but it was just so corny).  When we took a break, one of the people organizing this step of the process was able to provide a private area for me to pump, score!

After many unnecessary breaks and explanations, my group was brought to the floor of the courtroom where we would be evaluated for a potential case.  This case was to run for one day, the next day, and was a criminal case between the state and a young man charged with driving with no license and providing a counterfeit license.  Pretty straight up, right?  I was thinking that there had to be some interesting ‘L&O’ twist that would possess this guy to plead not guilty AND for his attorney to be like ‘Sure, we’ll fight this, no prob!’

I could write a dissertation on all the things that surprised me and made me shake my head.  The waiting was not surprising, and in fact, was probably about as efficient as it COULD be done, it just sucked.  The seriousness with which people expressed their flimsy get-out-of-jury-duty excuses was entertaining.  Many times I was like ‘Really, REALLY? You’re going to run with that one as your reason you can’t be partial?’

I, of course, was selected to be a juror.  At first I was a little bummed, until I realized that I was free to eat lunch and go home and the poor bastards that came up with lame excuses to get out of being selected had to come back in the afternoon to see if they were eligible to be selected for a different case.  Plus, like I said before, part of me was more curious than displeased (aside from all the waiting).

Tuesday morning things were totally official (I felt like a dork wearing my ‘Juror #567890’ sticker on my shirt, but whatev).  Still lots of waiting, but now we got to hear all the juicy details about the Spanish kid and the fake ID (that he plead not guilty to).

So here’s the Cliff’s Notes version:

-          Kid (we’ll call him a kid, he was like, 22) gets pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt.  (**The defense acts like she is going to challenge the original encounter with the cop, but fizzles and goes nowhere with it…it was frustrating and confusing**).  The kid does not produce an ID right away and he gives the cop a different name than the cop gets when he runs the plates on the car.

-          When the arresting officer questions the kid’s identity, the kid then pulls out an ID from Honduras to prove he is who he says he is.

-          The cop questions the validity of this ID and scans the ID for confirmation from another cop (who specializes in counterfeit IDs) and with confirmation it is in fact fake and arrests the kid.

So, seriously, that is it. No $h!t.

Some background info:

-          The state’s attorney provides us with the actual license to look at, a blown up version of the ID (**but NO picture of a valid Honduras DL**), the testimony from the arresting officer, the testimony from the officer that confirmed the ID was invalid, and a school official that stated that the kid was in school the date the DL was supposedly issued IN HONDURAS (**However, the school official did not actually work at the school on this date, she just printed out the attendance records…..BUT the defense never questioned whether the attendance record and her client were one in the same person, so we assume that record is legit**)

-          The defense questions the arresting officer and when she has her client testify (**big mistake**) she asks him questions that point out some discrepancies in the story of the arrest, but she never straight out says that she is trying to get the arrest itself thrown out, we are never directed to consider that, so it all mostly seems in vain.

-          It is almost painfully obvious this ID is fake. What possessed this kid to present it as real is beyond me.  I know we don’t all have common law knowledge at our fingertips and in a panic people do stupid things. However, if he just did not present an ID at all, it would have been a misdemeanor charge of driving with no license.  Slap on the wrist, learn English, try to become a citizen and stop wasting tax payer money.  Instead, the kid not only produces a terrible fake ID, HE TESTIFIES in court the outrageous story of how his uncle got it for him, how he used a PEN on his thumb to apply the thumbprint on the back, USED CORRECTION FLUID to fix it, and signed his own name to it AFTER it was brought to the US for him.  HIS attorney was asking the questions, it was a disaster.

-          SO….the closing arguments consisted of the state basically saying use your brain and the defense trying to argue that the kid genuinely thought the ID was real (**she had all but given up on the lesser charge at this point**)

So, we deliberated for maybe 15-20 minutes.  I was selected the foreman, and we agreed the kid was guilty (no duh).  I can see you are as impressed as I was (mostly that I was selected to be foreman, woo hoo!).