June 23, 2007

  • aahhh, I had a nice 9 1/2 hours of sleep this past night, as I'm trying to catch up on all the lost sleep I didn't have this past week because of the dreaded graveyard shift + Jury Duty combo. Between those two, I had maybe one or two hours of sleep in between. I believe the longest I stayed awake at one point was 31 hours straight.

    Jury Duty is all done for me as of Friday afternoon, and while I had problems with the lack of sleep situation, I can't say I regret the experience. As somebody who enjoys watching those court room drama on TV, it's a little surreal actually experiencing it yourself. In fact, I could say that it was actually fun. I also met some pretty cool people of different ages in my jury pool, so that was an extra plus. I learned a few new functions with my new phone from one of the other jurors, and I also got some advice from another on which Hawaii island I should go to for my honeymoon.

    The only problem with this case was that we had all these delays, which is unfortunate because if I add up all the actual time we spent on the case, we could have finished it in half the days it took to actual get it over with. We had to deal with two defendants, and one of them was most likely the reason for the delay, because he voluntarily refused to show up in court on the last two days. BTW, both defendants plead the fifth and did not testify as witnesses.

    The court case had it's moments. The judge looking more or less bored by the case was amusing to us, as if it's sooo "been there, done that" for her (most likely). In fact, we were speculating that the judge was either browsing the internet or playing computer games while the case was going on. However, she is on the ball when her attention is needed from an objection by the prosecutor / defense attorneys. Which brings to mind that I guess I watch enough courtroom drama, because when hearing the deliberation process and such, I would call "objection" in my head at the same time the lawyers would, as well as be able to decide on whether the judge would say "sustained" or "overruled."

    I did a lot of eye rolling whenever the defense attorneys did their deliberations and statements, because their tactics was sooo full of it, that they were making it hard for me to side with the defendants. The defense was throwing out so much made up speculation for any kind of reasonable doubt, that they honestly would have had a better chance of just sticking with the evidence to help their case. Put it this way, just based on the evidence and witness testimony alone (per the Judge's instructions), we were actually able to come up with some reasonable doubt for one of the defendants. Reasonable doubt that his defense attorney barely bothered to bring up. We actually had to help his case, and that's kinda sad if you think about it. Ofcourse the fact that a lot of expected evidence was not presented to us didn't help the matter.

    Two counts against each defendants was what we had to deal with. Whether each charge was a great or simple crime. We decided that the second defendant was going to get a simple charge because of the reasonable doubt that we were able to come up with. The other defendant however was not as easy as that, because it came down to whether he had the weapon or not to commit the crime. After having one of the witness testimony read to us again, 11 out of the 12 of us agreed that he should have the higher charge against him. However there was still doubt in one of the jurors; which is understandable, except that she is also facing the possibility that us going back for further deliberations on Monday are resting on her decision. It literally came down to the last 5-10 minutes before we were going to be excused for the day and return the next week. It turned out that she thought we had to be 100% sure about our decision, which we all understandably chimed in at once saying that we're all not 100% sure ourselves. Each one of us has some doubt on the matter, but we were at least 80%-99% confident in our decision. She just needed to weigh her scale on which side is she leaning more on, and that side was luckily the same side the rest of us were on.

    The foreman did the paper work, we were sent out back to the jury box, but then was sent back in the jury room because one of the verdict document wasn't complete. While it was a brief somewhat embarassing delay, at least now they got a little taste of what we went through waiting on them. Soon after the verdicts were read. One of the defense attorneys seemed to know that his client was going to get the harsher crime, and it's too bad for him if he remotely thought his poor closing argument was going to win us over. The other defense attorney was who we were mostly curious about to his reactions, because he also did such a poor job that he was probably expecting the same thing for his client, but when he heard the simpler verdict charge, I swear I read his lips saying a surprised "wow." After everyone was excused from the case, that second defense attorney actually approached some of us from the jury asking how we came up with the simpler charge. We told him that there was an obvious reasonable doubt to his charge, which brought to mind that since his defendant plead the fifth, what did he say to his lawyer? It turns out that it would have been valuable information for their case, because it would have actually helped him even more if he testified that in court. Well, it's a good thing we didn't give him the harsher crime then, and his lawyer looked really pleased with the result (whether he deserved it or not is up in the air).

    I've got to admit though, that I do feel a bit sorry for the one defendant we charged with the harsher charge. To me he looked like somebody who really did feel remorse for what happened, and he just went way over his head on his actions that night. His girlfriend / wife (maybe sister) was in court that day, and during the lunch break he seemed to have been really happy being with her at what was probably expected to be his last few moments before he gets thrown in jail. Earlier that day, at one point I was going to eat at the Wendy's near the courthouse, and the two of them were also heading that way for lunch, so I quickly changed my directions and opted for the Subways instead. I wonder if he saw me avoiding them? Add to the fact that I decided to also not get in the same elevator with them earlier that day. I only hope that jail time doesn't make him a worse person and that he learned his lesson.