I’ve been randomly selected for jury duty five times now. How random is that?
The first time was back in 2006 and I was an eager-to-serve juror who believed in the system of trial by a jury of a defendant’s peers. It sounded good with my background as a legal secretary and later as a newspaper stringer for the Plain Dealer and the Sun Newspapers. I knew I would make a good juror.
That first case in 2006 involved a civil malpractice lawsuit and we were a good group of jurors who paid attention and resolved a unanimous verdict within an hour. It was pretty much “cut-and dried.”
The most recent case was a criminal case, involving a young male defendant who was suspected of molesting young girls in the household in which he lived. We the jury were to watch videotaped testimony from these children because they were too young to be exposed to courtroom proceedings.
During voir dire we jurors were asked if we had been victims of crime. Some people were so excited over their jury duty that they went into way too much detail about their brushes with crime—most of which were not even worth mentioning. I kept thinking, “Who cares about your sister-in-law’s burglary anyway? Stay on point people! Don’t digress! We’ve got a case here.”
So how does this really work? In today’s overview I learned that we may serve every two years! And that it is based on voter registration and once we serve, our information goes back into the computer selection system for another random opportunity.
I can be called to jury duty until I’m 75 years old. That’s the age when you may decline.
What do I have in common with today’s defendants—the majority of whom are recidivists who are being processed through the American system of fair trial, learning legal procedure as they go and if found guilty, immediately file an appeal—because that’s the way the system works.
My husband is also a frequent juror. He served on a criminal case involving an armed robbery of a jewelry store, and his group returned a unanimous guilty verdict. The “gang that couldn’t shoot straight” apparently planned their heist as they drove along. The suspects selected a small neighborhood jewelry store and then discovered that most transactions are done by credit card so there was little actual cash on the premises. But wait! If there wasn’t much cash on hand, there certainly was jewelry! Jewelry? Didn’t anyone think?
And by directing the saleswomen to move and kneel on the floor between the display cases (FULL OF JEWELRY) the charges escalated to include kidnapping.
When the gang made their getaway in an easily-identifiable Ford Taurus with an add-on nifty rear spoiler, they stopped for a refueling at a Marathon station at East 55th and Superior. Surveillance cameras caught them all.
And cell phone towers can come into play. The gang’s cell phones “pinged” to a tower near the jewelry store at the time of the crime. And because the getaway car came from a used car lot, there was a GPS tracker on it indicating it was parked outside the driver’s home for several days after the crime.
Because one of the suspects brandished a firearm during the crime the charges escalated to armed robbery for all. The rest of the defendants must have made plea deals because the station’s video surveillance ID’d them, but only the getaway driver insisted on a full jury trial. They were a good efficient jury and returned a unanimous verdict of guilty. The defendant was well-versed in his rights and filed an immediate appeal.
I wonder where that defendant is now. Probably still appealing. It’s the system.
So Don’s time of service was pre-pandemic. That makes five for me and four for Don. Any day now . . .