Category Archives: jury duty

crime, jury duty

I’m Back …

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… after spending a few days running around like a headless chicken trying to catch up. At one point I was harried enough to have my polo shirt on wrong side out for hours, only noticing that something was amiss when I kept trying to put my pen into the pocket that was on the inside and inaccessible.

Part of the reason for running around like mad was that I was indeed selected for the jury and so needed to make up some time. However my record remains perfect – I have never entered jury deliberations. Every time I have been seated on a jury, the defendant has decided to plead guilty. In close to 40 years of jury eligibility, I have been called for jury duty somewhere on the order of 25 times and have actually been empaneled on the jury 3 times now.  In all three of those cases, the defendant has decided to plead guilty before the end of the trial. In two of the cases, it was within minutes of the the start of the trial.

This time the plea came in the second day of testimony when the defendant suddenly took a plea bargain. I understood why he did so. He was up for three counts of felony assault with a deadly weapon and had prior felonies – thus he faced the possibility of 63 years with no possibility of parole if convicted. But the DA had no choice but to offer a misdemeanor assault plea and a year of jail after the star witness suddenly lost his mind and memory on the stand. It  wasn’t overly surprising that he did so since he was the victim of the assault and also the brother of the defendant. I think that he had second thoughts about being the one to send his brother away for that long. So after a day of gory medical testimony featuring the bashed in skull and broken jaw and teeth of the victim and then another half day of the disaster that was testimony for the prosecution (3 of 29 scheduled witnesses), the DA and the defense came to the plea agreement and we were excused.

I’ll leave you with the following question: what are the holidays like in a family where the brothers practice deadly assault on one another with a rock, avoiding murder by about a sixteenth of an inch according to the medical testimony? Would they trust each other enough to let the other carve the turkey?

On a completely non-factual basis, I think the whole thing was triggered by a monetary tiff over the proceeds of a drug deal gone wrong. Absolutely no evidence presented to support that thought, but it sure seemed that that was what was going on.

Sometime before I die, I hope to finally reach the deliberation stage of a trial. After all, I figure that I must look really mean to induce all those people to plead guilty. {*grin*}

jury duty, weather, wind

Huff and Puff and ….

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The wind howled today, at times hitting 50+ mph and the temperature never got above freezing. Right now the mercury is dropping and the wind chill is in the 9 below zero range. I think it is safe to say that fall is officially here.

In contrast to the cold and wind outside, I spent all day in an overheated courtroom.

All day from 8:30am to 5:30pm and there is still no jury empaneled. I hope to find out tomorrow if I am on the jury or not. There is nothing like the maneuvering of attorneys in a multiple felony case to bring out the worst of the jury selection process. Thus my new theme song:

Hi ho, hi ho

It’s off to court I go

Defense to the right of me

Prosecution to the left of me

And the judge in the front of me 

How low can we go

So off to court I venture in the morning.

council meeting, jury duty, music of the moment

A Popourri Of Oddness

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Yippeeeeee – no jury duty for me today. When I called last night, the trial was indeed called off. So I missed out on the coffee and donuts, but my health thanks me for that.

Tonight was a preliminary look at the budget for the city. In one of those strange oddities that I have never understood, the budget for next year will be set and the public hearing held and the budget adopted just before the new mayor and council are seated. So the newbies get an already done budget when they are seated. Of course, they could chose to start over, but I cannot remember ever hearing of a newly seated council wanting to open that can of worms. Not to mention that by statute, the budget has to have been set, public hearings held, and the budget adopted all within a two week period. Thus we have work sessions like this to kick the tires and get the glitches fixed before the clock starts ticking with the official “presentation” of the budget. Are you bored enough yet?

(As I type this, my last.fm station is playing Cream’s White Room. Given the stellar music Cream produced in the short time they hung together, I’ve always wondered what heights they would have scaled if they could have stood each other for just a bit longer. Eric Clapton, Ginger Baker, and Jack Bruce were the epitome of heavy music of the period. And perhaps the greatest guitarist, drummer, and bassist of the time all in one band. One relatively unknown pleasure I still love from college was Baker-Gurvitz Army, Ginger Baker’s follow on group. And of course you already know I love Clapton.)

So here is a set for your enjoyment! First up Cream and “White Room”:

Followed by a little up tempo “People” by Baker-Gurvitz Army from my graduate school days:

And then for the penultimate experience of the music of the time – Cream with “Sunshine of Your Love” (check out the facial expressions on Ginger during his drum moments and contrast that with the early heroin addition glaze of Clapton):

My job here is done. Time to get ready for the radio show in the morning.