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I’ve received five invitations to be a member of our jury system in two California counties, but many years passed between invitations. There were significant differences in the management of jurors in both locations. I understand the jury system has improved over the years but there’s room for more improvement. The jury pools were made up of an interesting group of folks on all of my visits. The jury pool selection procedure can use an overhaul too. For the most part I enjoyed the experience and was fortunate that all five times I found the system worked reasonably well, but with flaws. The flaws ranged from the issuance of the summons to preparing a verdict. In one instance the phone number to the “jury hot line” was dead. Improvement efforts continue.
The first two times (in another county) I requested postponements because my daughter had a health issue. I remember being concerned I wouldn’t be excused and would have to hire someone to take care of her but the system understood my situation and I was released. She grew out of her condition by around age two but I did not receive another summons for many years.
The last three summonses for duty were in my current county. The first time I was required to call the jury coordinator’s message line for a week to see if they needed me and I was excused without having to visit the courthouse. That concluded my responsibility for quite some time. The second time I was invited down to the courthouse for a few days and finally placed on a jury. When the attorneys began questioning us I was excused almost immediately. Must have been my perfume. The last time I was summoned I was selected and impaneled for a one-week jury trial--that lasted a month. That’s another area needing improvement. Too many unforeseen circumstances are allowed to alter the course of a trial and prolong it long after most of us desperately need to return to our lives.
High profile cases have entered our lives over the years and a growing animosity for juries has developed. For those of us who have never served on a jury it’s understandable to second-guess. All of the evidence in the media pushes at us and makes those of us out here in TV-land decide the case on our own. What we see and hear every day for weeks and months certainly places people in either camp and very few are on the fence. Worse, prospective jurors for the sensational trials are privy to media blitzes about the facts of the case long before selection. It’s a wonder that any jurors can be selected without bias. Attorneys must strive to interview and question jurors in such a way as to find people who truly can listen to the official court case without preconceived notions. Not an easy task and yet it’s how our system works—or doesn’t. In today’s technology changing venues seems a waste of time. On the big public cases if one had a case in San Francisco it would be difficult to change the venue to Paris to find jurors without an opinion. Everyone on the planet knows the details and the players from the beginning and we all form opinions. Where do we go for an untainted jury?
I was a legal secretary for many years with my local municipal government. During that time I worked on many court cases and prepared dozens of sets of jury instructions and proposed verdict forms along with boxes of documents and mountains of exhibits. The jury instructions and verdict forms prepared by opposing sides are then given to the judges and may or may not be accepted as presented and often the instructions and proposed verdicts are drafted and redrafted before the jury gets them. Those two documents are almost more important than all the evidence the jurors hear during the course of a trial. Those documents form the basis of how the jurors will deliberate. They are designed to remove personal opinion and emotion out of the jury verdict process. The rest of us sitting in our living rooms do not receive the jury instructions or verdict forms. A pity. Motions produced at trial change allowed information dramatically.
Judges rule their own courts. Certainly they are required to follow regional and/or district rules and regulations but each judge has a set of his or her own rules that opposing counsel are required to obtain and study. It’s wildly different court to court. A little overhaul in that area wouldn’t hurt either. Though it’s proper for a judge to have authority, there are good and bad judges. There are judges with biases, jurors with bias, and attorneys with biases. It’s a miracle we get anything passed through our courts without riots.
Once a case has concluded the judge delivers the jury instructions and verdict forms to the jury. They must then only consider the direction of those two documents when deliberating. If they heard about something on TV related to the case but never heard a word of it during the trial, they cannot use that information in their deliberations. Some things heard outside of the courtroom in the high profile cases are extremely damaging to one side or the other but if not allowed into evidence the jurors must struggle to keep that information out of their thoughts. Not an easy thing to do which is why we have jury instructions and verdict forms.
When I visited my courthouse on the last two occasions I was called to duty, we were gathered together in a large room filled to the brim with people. For the most part my co-prospects were normal, average, every-day people. There were a few fringe citizens in the group and they were quickly dispatched early on. The last time I served two young men were sent home to change clothes. One came back and the other didn’t. We learned later that deputies were going to visit him at home. The room we stayed in was not very large and every seat was taken. There were vending machines and bathrooms that were remarkably clean. The room went from hot to freezing. It was an old building. No windows. My desk at work was piling high. Stress loomed for many. Babysitters needed notification, spouses needed notification, and work needed notification. But there we sat.
Throughout our time in the room groups were called to follow a deputy to a courtroom for final selection and were never seen or heard from again. In the late afternoon I was called with a large group and we were told to drive to an off-site location, an annex to our crowded original courthouse. Transportation was provided for those who used public transport.
This was my second actual selection. I hoped to be selected because I was eager to see the trial experience from the other side of the fence. By the time we got to the annex it was late in the day. The judge and attorneys met with us briefly and explained the procedure for final selection the next day. The next morning after questioning and dismissing and questioning and dismissing the final twelve and alternates were selected and we began. The building was new but the AC and heating system were awful. We were always too hot or too cold. We had one sleepy juror and court staff tried to find the right temperature but the system did not provide a comfortable setting. She was uncomfortable the entire month. A bailiff was assigned to us and took care of our every need. We were the last jury he would babysit. After our trial he was retiring and going off to the land of fishing and travel after many years devoted to the courts.
Our case was a civil matter and we were a cohesive group from day one. Each of us adhered to the admonishments handed down by the judge to not discuss the case at all during our break times nor with anyone else we knew. Because it was not a high profile case we did not see anything about it in the news. We were all obedient and during our breaks and down time we discussed books, movies, travel, and our personal lives, and all became quite friendly. I thoroughly enjoyed this group and because our one-week trial stretched to a month we became oddly close. We loved our bailiff. The experiences of my family and friends were similar but some of their co-jurors were not so “enlightened” and the juries were not up to the job. Jury selection is an art form.
Finally the case was given to us for deliberation along with the verdict form and the judge read the jury instructions. It was late in the day so we had just enough time to select a foreman and our deputy told us to come back the next day at 9:00. As we gathered our things to leave I noticed a shift of in our group. Though we were still friendly we had all become very quiet and serious. No chitchat about what we were cooking for dinner, no lingering to discuss our new shoes, no laughing, and no casual discussions. We made straight shots to our cars and were gone. We all knew we were now deciding the fate of two people. Plaintiff was suing defendant and it was going to be bad for one of them, but which one? It was medical malpractice.
The next morning we sat in our cold room with our morning beverages of choice and passed around the verdict forms and set up an easel and marker pens. We each had our note pads we had used during the trial. We were all diligent note takers. Our foreman was an organized woman and her first suggestion was that we read the verdict form and try to answer the questions preliminarily to see where we stood and to determine how much deliberation we were going to need. As we read through the form we hit snags in agreement and made notes. The case was complex. After that we spent the day meticulously going over allowed material to use for deciding. We discussed verbiage and some were being very literal about the wording while others thought it was more of a guide.
I’ve heard some juries have been problematic when it comes to the written word. If one is a literal reader or comprehensive reader or someone else just takes it all in generally, real problems can occur. In our group we were able to overcome these differences more easily than I had expected. We all felt that without an understanding of what we needed to consider we could not go forward. I’m so proud of our earnest group. It was difficult for me to keep my mouth shut regarding various legal protocols. My main contribution was to explain the basics of how we needed to operate. I realized I could have swayed the group but I chose not to. Do all jurors operate in a fair manner? Does everyone with any “power” use that power wisely or is it used to strong-arm? I chose gentle guidance.
Finally, we went through the verdict form again, this time with agreed upon guidelines, and suddenly we all realized we were headed to a verdict. We then did a thorough review of the case. By spending time ferreting out what we could consider and what we couldn’t consider the outcome was clearly before us. As it turned out we found for the defendant. The most amazing part of this decision, we learned much later, is that we didn’t like the defendant and we all felt terribly sorry for the plaintiff. The defendant appeared to be smug and arrogant, his attorney had a big city demeanor (for our medium sized town) but the fact of the matter is, that doesn’t matter. The case fell in his favor and that was our decision. His attorney simply developed a better case and we could not decide in plaintiff’s favor based on the jury instructions and the verdict form.
Before contacting our deputy to tell him we had a verdict we sat back and agreed to meet for dinner in the next few days so that we could speak openly about the case and the process. Like I said earlier, we had gotten quite close. When we met we chatted nonstop for over an hour and said things we had all been dying to say but the overwhelming theme of our group was how sorry we were that we couldn’t find in favor of the plaintiff but that we were extremely proud of ourselves for coming up with a proper verdict based on what we were allowed to consider. We never met again.
Since then I have often wondered what the Rodney King jury had to work with when making their decision. How about the O.J. jury? Robert Blake? The list is huge. So many cases have come before the general public and when concluded we are often stunned with the outcome because we didn't have the information the jury did. This past Thursday it was the Mehserle criminal case verdict. I saw the videos, I heard the legal analysts, I watched countless reports, saw hundreds of interviews with the “man on the street,” read news reports for months, and this past week it all came to an end. All that’s left now is the sentencing.
I wasn’t on the jury panel. I know what I saw on TV and read online, but I didn’t have access to the jury instructions and did not read the verdict form they were given. If they were a conscientious group of jurors, then they made a decision based on the choices they were given—even if they didn’t like their choices. It isn’t always pretty and tied up with a bow. I feel for both families. Not only did they suffer from the event but also they had to endure the ordeal in front of the world. More is coming their way with sentencing.
Perhaps one way to ease the public angst in these cases is to give us more genuine information instead of sound bites when the jury is set to deliberate. Maybe if we could hear the jury instructions and read the verdict forms we would know the parameters. We hear so much in these cases but the information we need is not provided and so we are often outraged.
Over the next few days, weeks, and months, the case will be analyzed before the world and perhaps everyone will understand the jury’s verdict. The jury could only follow the order of the court in deliberations. I suspect the jury is feeling pain knowing there were real families awaiting their decision, twelve strangers deciding the fate of two families based on two simple documents. At some point in the process the people fade into the background and it’s all about the documents. That’s how it works.
www.sharonstrawhandgarner.com
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