« | Home | »

Justice Isn’t Blind – Only Nearsighted: My Time On St. Louis Jury Duty

October 7, 2008

It all began innocently enough with a little postcard in the mail:

“THE CITY OF SAINT LOUIS SUMMONS YOU TO APPEAR FOR JURY DUTY ON SEPTEMBER 8TH, 2008 AT 8:00 AM AT THE CITY CIRCUIT COURTHOUSE AT 10 NORTH TUCKER BLVD. – BLAH BLAH BLAH… IGNORE THIS NOTICE AT YOUR PERIL…. BLAH BLAH BLAH… BETTER BRING SOMETHING TO READ IF YOU KNOW WHAT’S GOOD FOR YOU… BLAH BLAH BLAH…”

Excuse me? Monday? 8 in the morning? And you’ll pay me how much? $12 a day, you say?

Omigod, I’m so there.

Actually that’s not true. About the pay, I mean. You see, $12 per day is only for the saps – the guys who just sit around all day and never called. But if you’re chosen from the sea of misfits to be on an actual jury… you get a whopping 50% pay-raise. Boo-yah! Now let’s see, that comes to…

$18 a day to decide the life-long fate of our fellow man!

Seems fair enough.

So I wake up Monday morning to my obnoxiously loud bell alarm clock, grab a quick bite to eat, and I’m off to St. Louis Circuit Court for the very first time (with book in hand, of course, per their suggestion. Mine was “Breakthrough Advertising” by Eugene Schwartz.)

They direct us to park in the nearby stadium arena. I grab the first spot I see, and take the shuttle down to the courthouse. I feel particularly pale among the other faces with me on the bus. But after living in St Louis over a year now, I’m more than used to it. Comfortable, even.

Entering the unusually gigantic courthouse reminded me of how Greeks must’ve felt after building a temple to Athena. Surrounding me were towering columns, majestic tablets with mysterious Latin inscriptions, and…

…Metal detectors.

Wearing jeans and a polo, I emptied my pockets and walked though onward to the jury calling room where they called out our numbers 20 or 30 at a time, to go to an upstairs for consideration on a trial.

There must’ve been hundreds of us in there, seated 10 to a row with devil only knows how many rows in all. They gave us little booklets to read about how awesomely cool jury duty is and how proud we should feel to be there, called out among the muck of our fellow citizens to do our duty for mankind.

Hell, if I’d sat there too many more times watching that video loop around, I’d might actually begin to believe it all.

Instead, I dozed off where I sat. Slumber the night before had never truly greeted me.

FIVE HOURS LATER I jolted awake. Did they just call my number? I don’t know. Maybe. I looked down at my tag: 400-something. Yep, that was me.

We take the stairs down, down, …down to the basement. Then up – up the elevator to the long hallway just outside some courtrooms; 4 of them to a floor, all connected by the same humongous hallway; a long wooden bench dividing the camps into north and south, reminding me of old Matlock episodes.

And there we waited yet again. All of us perfect strangers, bound together only by this common thread. Some of us old, short, young, fat, thin. Black. White. Two cute girls. Many ugly men. And then me.

It wasn’t long before the bailiff called us. We marched in, sat down in the pews. Nervous silence. And then…

BZZZZZZZT!

“All rise!” (we jolted up with a start as the bailiff mumbled something incomprehensible, as I’m sure he’s said it thousands of times) “…the honorable John J. Riley presiding.”

The judge sombers in with the enthusiasm of an undertaker and a demeanor to match. He sits down in his large wooden Chair of Judgment with the letters “LEX” carved in the headrest above. “Lex Luthor?” I wonder. Nah, that can’t be right.

“Be seated.” he says calmly, surveying the room. We obey.

For the next day and a half, we sit there in that large courtroom overlooking The Arch while the two attorneys (prosecution and defense) interview us in a sort of group-style public forum format – both trying to assess our suitability for serving as juror on this case – about which, at this point, all we know is it’s a serious criminal trial where a man’s liberty is at stake.

Since I assume they’re both competent attorneys (my first mistake), I’m under the impression they only want it to SEEM like they’re aiming for a fair jury. Because in reality, the goal of jury selection is to use your cunning verbal skills and powers of observation combined with demographic and psychographic profiling to tilt the odds of a verdict in your side’s favor as far as possible.

Er… maybe that’s a little too “New York City Slicker” for these two.

They ask us fair enough questions like: “Does anyone have a criminal record?”, “Have you or anyone you know ever been involved with violent crime?” and “Would you give testimony by a police officer more, less, or the same credibility as anyone else?”

But my personal favorite was “Does anyone here already think the defendant is guilty?”

Hmm. That last one’s a bit strange. I couldn’t imagine anyone in there standing up and explaining to the entire room how they “KNOW” the defendant sitting over there (a black man, by the way) is “already guilty” without even knowing what the case is about, let alone the details. I suspect it would be a fantastic way to make a few surprise enemies out in the hallway.

I decide to keep my mouth shut unless specifically asked something. But a few guys in the room definitely did NOT want to be there, and knew EXACTLY how to ensure their place back on the streets tomorrow afternoon while the rest of us slogged it out in court.

So here then are:

5 Ways To Guarantee You Will Not Get Picked To Serve On The Jury

#1. When they ask how you feel about the American judicial system, simply raise your hand and say “I do not believe in the circuit court and I am anti-legal system.” They’ll label you as a “crazy” and not ask any more questions. If you try to answer another, they’ll say “We’ve heard enough from you, thanks.” Worked like a charm for this one fellow that day.

#2. When they ask if you were ever convicted of a crime, start to tell virtually any story that begins with the words “Yeah, this one time – me and my girl – we were in a situ-A-shun…” (that’s street-talk for “situation” in case you couldn’t tell.) If you’re stuck for ideas, proceed to tell about the time you left an IHOP just as it was being robbed and were questioned in the case since you were the last on the scene, OR alternatively – tell about the time the “PO-lice” got all up in your “bizness” when you walked into a room and found some guy holding an AK-47 up to your little sister’s head because she wouldn’t have sex with him. (yes, these were some of the real stories that day in response to a simple yes or no question.)

#3. Tell them about how the idea of judging people offends your religious beliefs. And while you’re at it, refuse to be sworn in. They hate that.

#4. Tell them you think the guy’s already guilty. To seal your fate as a non-juror, you might even use the words “I mean, look at ‘em! If that ain’t a guilty face right there, I don’t know WHAT is!” (use this one at your own risk :) )

#5. When the lovely female prosecutor asks if you know anyone else in the room, say “Yeah, you look just like my girlfriend…” Then she’ll ask if you think you can put aside those feelings for this case. Simply reply thusly: “Man, I hated that bitch!” She might ask again. Just say “HALE no!” (yes, pronounce “hell” as “hale” – it’s a nice little touch – this one also takes some brass balls to pull off, but, guess what? It gets you off the hook like a charm.)

So there’s a few excuses for ya… should be more than enough for any jury dodger’s arsenal.

5 o’clock comes around. The lawyers wrap it up, and the judge debriefs us on the quantity and quality of donuts in the deliberation room. We’re done for now.

The following day, I enter wearing jeans and another polo. Strip search at the metal detector and then… more of the same relentless questioning. We break for lunch. I meet some nice people out in the hallway. We talk “jury talk” and end up dining together. I… actually… had fun… maybe this stuff isn’t so bad after all.

Back in court. We’re seated in all our positions. The bailiff stands there and you just KNOW that scary buzzer is gonna go off at any second… but… but when?!

You can cut the tension in the air with a knife – everyone poised to stand in a millisecond. It’s clear none of us wanna get caught with our pants down like last time.

… wait for it…

… wait fooor iiiit…

… … … …

BZZZZZZZZZT!

The room leaps to their feet!

“Stay seated!!!” the bailiff yells.

What?! What’s this? So we’re supposed to stand the first time, but not the second? Embarrassment and confusion circle the room, a spell broken only by the almighty judge as he makes his grand entrance…

…only to tell us to go back out into the hallway while the attorneys decide which ones of us they want.

WTF. Why not just keep us out there?

We go back out and I lean up against the marble wall like I own the place. One of my new acquaintances is talking to me about how he just KNOWS I’ll be chosen and out of the corner of my eye, I notice one of the two cute girls get up off the bench and walk 30+ feet over to where we’re standing, curiously lingering around. She’d seen us before. It’s obvious she wants to talk to me, but too shy to initiate.

“Omigod, is that a Louis Vuitton?” I blurt out, pointing to her shiny new handbag. “Just last week my little niece dragged me ALL OVER the city trying to find THAT, EXACT, BAG! Nobody even had it in stock! Finally we got to this ONE store that said they JUST sold the LAST one! So… all I’m sayin’ is… if you got that at Saks last Saturday… you’re dead!” I finish, smiling.

This got her smiling and opening up a little. We talked for awhile before the bailiff called us back into the courtroom.

We seated, and the bailiff read off the 14 juror numbers, one-by-one. 12 jurors and 2 alternates. Mine was the 3rd number to be called, and I took my new seat on the perch overlooking the judge and witness stand.

Afterward, everyone else was dismissed, and surprisingly, the trail started immediately after a brief break so the attorneys could assemble their final notes.

Revealed: The Case Of The Retarded Lawyers

Finally we got to hear what all this was about. Well, it was a rape case. And if they couldn’t get the guy on rape, they were also charging him with “sexual assault” for good measure (which is legally different, as I came to learn.)

After hearing this, I expected the whole thing to be pretty clear-cut. I thought most rape cases were. But not this one, not by a longshot.

The prosecuting attorney opened with an over-the-top melodramatic plea to us jurors to take into consideration how “special” (e.g. mentally challenged) this girl was and how all she wanted to do was leave her lifestyle here in St. Louis and go back to Arizona where she came from. She came here a couple years ago to visit this guy and they ended up getting married 2 months later. They lived in the guy’s friends’ basement in what came off to me as a very filthy, miserable, and sometimes abusive existence. Anyone could see it was bad, but then again these weren’t exactly society’s finest we were dealing with here. Finally they had a big fight and she left to go back to Arizona, leaving behind husband, life, everything with nothing more than a small bag of her stuff and the clothes on her back.

Ok so far, right? Sure. But then…

…when she arrived at the Greyhound bus station, turns out she forgot her confirmation number. No number, no ride. So she spent the night there at the stop, rather than go back to that house. Next morning, she wanders around town aimlessly and bumps into a guy named Sam. Sam lets her use his phone and they spend the rest of the day together. Sam says she can spend the night over at his place and he’ll feed her. So she comes over to Sam’s crappy apartment. Sam takes her in, gives her food and lets her use his phone as much as she needs to try and get that Greyhound confirmation number. She calls some people, but to no avail… and then…

…this is where the story begins to get all muddled.

Some accounts say Sam cajoled her, using guilt and flattery. Some say Sam pushed her down. Some say he pulled her forward. Some have him taking her clothes off, others have her taking off her own clothes willingly. One time she told him “no”, the other time she never told him a thing… But no matter what happened, it’s a classic case of “he said, she said” because they were the ONLY two people in the room.

So how can there possibly be so many different versions, if there were only 2 people present? Simple. Because of idiotic questioning from BOTH attorneys that frustrated us on the jury and tried the patience of the judge…

…the girl contradicted her own testimony and deposition no less than 5 times!
Sometimes even minutes apart from each statement!

This was one of the major things that called into question the very validity of the whole thing. Another biggie was the fact that after the act happened, she stayed the night at his house (didn’t leave)… AND spent almost the entire next day with Sam, even going shopping and over to his buddy’s house to watch them play chess! Then afterward, Sam made sure she got on a city bus back to her former house to finally get that damn confirmation number.

What’s more, is that the vaginal swab test they did at the hospital revealed NONE of Sam’s little boys… however, they did find some on the panties, which were now torn and looked pretty dirty from what I saw (didn’t surprise me… this was NOT a clean girl by any stretch of the imagination.) This proved that SOME kind of inappropriate activity occurred, but not necessarily what they were trying the defendant for in this case. The prosecution lost even more ground with me when she presented the torn panties as “evidence” Sam had been violent, but then later on in the trial, we learned that they’d simply been cut by forensics when they took the test sample. C’mon, she should’ve known that.

More amateur hour antics over at the county courthouse were played out when the prosecution annoyed the shit outta everyone (even the judge) by CONSTANTLY asking to “approach” the bench to bicker every last little detail in private. 98% of the time, Judge Riley shot ‘em down anyway, ultimately accomplishing nothing. The guy would’ve looked infinitely better if he hadn’t cried every time someone spilled his milk and cookies.

On top of that, the line of questioning by both lawyers was clearly unplanned, on-the-fly, and usually led the witness around in circles or… nowhere at all. Often they repeated the EXACT SAME QUESTION multiple times in a row (after it was JUST answered), frustrating the judge and angering the jury. Through this, we the jury learned tons of irrelevant, useless information that was never even discussed in deliberation.

Finally…

…it was all over and the day came where those of us in the main 12 of the jury were systematically locked up in a little room with donuts and pizza for 8 HOURS while we discussed the case far too long into the night.

On that last day, I arrived wearing one of my better suits. I walked up to the metal detectors and began the usual drill of emptying my pockets.

“Oh no, sir, you don’t have to do that. Come right on through.”

Well hell. There just ain’t no breaks for a guy in jeans and a polo.

Deliberation began, and within 15 minutes we had already eliminated rape (the more serious charge) from the table completely. At this point if Sam was gonna get convicted of anything, it was going to be “sexual assault” – which is different than rape in that sex still occurs, but not by force or threat of death or loss of a body part or vital function.

But it was still an uphill battle. About half of us were unsure of anything and we needed to discuss the finer points, or “elements” of the charge as they say in legal terms.

I just didn’t think it would take 8 friggin’ hours.

Almost from the beginning I had the “reasonable doubt” necessary to let the guy go. It was clear he did something he shouldn’t have, but whether that thing was what he was being charged with, well… the evidence just wasn’t there. Also adding onto that the absolute incompetence of both attorneys in the case, none of us had very much hard info to go on.

Except for ONE guy. Or so he thought.

There was this one old man in our jury who rained torrents of shit on our parade.

We discussed everything, every relevant part of the case in minute detail. 6 hours into the thing, ALL BUT TWO of us were in favor of a “not guilty” vote. It came down to two guys… one was David, our excellent, fair, and logic-minded foreman… and the other, this crabby old fart of a man.

We sent down a note to the judge saying we were having trouble, hoping he’d just let us off the hook. He called us down, asked if we reached a verdict. No, of course not.

“Go back up there and try some more.” was his answer.

We did. And after reviewing his notes again, (and if you ask me, the prospect of staying here all night didn’t set well with him) David changed his vote to a “not guilty.” One down, one to do.

But the old dude wasn’t budging. No matter what we asked or how hard we tried, he kept repeating the same tired old diatribe:

“When she was up there on the witness stand and said she told him “no”… I just believed her.”

And we would say, “Ok, but what about when she contradicted her testimony 3 minutes later? And what about what she said in the deposition?”

“I just believe what she said.”

“Just that one time?”

“Just that one time. It was the look in her eye.”

David tried various “thought experiments”…we tried logic, we tried emotion… we even said we could agree with him if he only could explain his decision.

“I just… it’s just… when I saw that look in her eye, right there in the moment… I believed her that she said no.”

Ok, so maybe she really did say no. But there’s still the issue of whether or not intercourse actually happened and that she properly made Sam understand that she was resisting (both of which were legal requirements.) The evidence to support all that just wasn’t there. This is what “reasonable doubt” is supposed to mean, and there’s no way we wanted to send a man to prison and get him listed as a sex offender over such flimsy evidence.

Still he persists, “I just saw that look in her eye.” Ah yes, the brilliant hunch. Lest we forget.

Everybody groans as the old guy sits there smugly with a slight grin crossing his face every now and then. Personally I think he just enjoyed being shitty and illogical just so he can feel important for awhile. (And… I can’t prove this, but… he might’ve had some racial issues with the defendant.) Either way, we all agreed there was definitely something going on in this guy’s head that he wasn’t telling us about… and that we’d never discover for sure.

At one point, it got so heated we stopped talking about the case altogether and I began what became an enthralling conversation on theoretical physics and the fate of the universe.

We couldn’t agree on Sam’s guilt, but we did manage to reach a consensus on the ethics of oversized cyclotrons and what might happen to one’s field of view as they approach the speed of light.

…Annnnnd then back to the case, which was going nowhere fast.

Several of us, me included, began to just not care too much anymore. We were worn down and irritable. Eventually we sent down another note to the judge that basically said there was no way on God’s Green Earth we were ever going to agree on a verdict. He called us down for our official take.

“Ladies and gentleman of the jury, have you reached a verdict?”

“No, your honor.”

“Then I declare this a mistrial and you are free to go.”

After the official stuff, he debriefed us on how we served our duty well and how it was illegal for the city to call us back for duty for at least a couple years or so. Then he informed us that since it was so late at night, we’d be escorted back to our cars at the parcking garage by means of the St. Louis City Police “meat wagon” – a lovely term that means “caged 10-passenger van with metal seats and unforgiving shocks.”

As we parted ways that cool, wet night in the city… and despite our mistrial due to fart-face, I couldn’t help but think “The system isn’t half bad.” Take 12 unbiased strangers off the streets and have them decide the damn case.

It works more often times than not, and… I certainly can’t think of any better way, save God Himself coming down and telling us all what really happened on the night in question.


Email this post Email this post

Most Popular Articles:

Tags: criminal case, incompetent lawyers, judgment, jury deliberation, jury duty, justice, law, legal system, st louis jury duty, twelve angry men

Topics: Personal | 2 Comments »

2 Responses to “Justice Isn’t Blind – Only Nearsighted: My Time On St. Louis Jury Duty”

Leave A Reply

CommentLuv Enabled