Jury Duty

Jury duty.

Two words that almost no one wants to hear. This comes to mind because for the first time since I’ve lived in Connecticut, I was recently summoned for jury duty. Naturally, I immediately sprung into action and postponed it. Then, with my new date approaching, I found myself wracking my brain for a way to get out of it. I have this great fear that I’ll be stuck on a jury for several months while the rest of the world moves forward.

I also have a fear of being forced to eat flan but that’s another story. The fact is, most people are just like me and they show up with a plethora of reasons to be excused from service; a jury of one’s peers instead ends up being one of people who just couldn’t get out of it. I was one of those people twice when I lived in Oakland, California.

The first time, I ended up on a trial involving a man who had been arrested for drunk driving. I have no doubt that he was guilty. But the young public defender representing the accused somehow got the arresting officers to admit that they hadn’t observed the defendant all the way to the station, where the Breathalyzer test was to be administered.

“Could the defendant possibly have burped during that time?” asked the clever lawyer.

The officer admitted that it was indeed possible that some burping had occurred. Meanwhile, I was busy thinking this attorney was nuts. But after that, she got another witness to admit that burping, could possibly affect the results of a Breathalyzer test. He wasn’t saying that it did, only that it possibly could have affected the test. Therefore, as a result of what I now call “the burp defense”, we the jury, absurdly had to find the defendant not guilty.

The only positive of what turned out to be a three-day experience (which was two days longer than it should have been), turned out to be my seat, as I was in the front row. Just my luck, I get better seats in the courtroom than I do at the ballpark.

My other jury duty experience had no burping but it did have some buzzing. A man had been arrested for assaulting a sheriff’s deputy while he was in custody. I am sure he would have opted for the wily public defender’s services, had he known of her brilliant burp defense strategy. Instead, he’d not so cleverly decided to represent himself.

I was the last juror seated - no front row this time - and the judge was droning (this guy really liked the sound of his own voice) on about the importance of jury duty. Suddenly there was a really loud buzzing noise in the courtroom. The defendant screamed out in tremendous pain, flipped over backwards in his chair, and was out cold or possibly even dead on the floor.

We were quickly ushered from the courtroom with no explanation of what had occurred. Once we were in the hall, we were buzzing too. We assumed we’d now be excused from jury duty and perhaps even called in to be witnesses concerning the buzzing event.

But when a court official eventually emerged, not only were we not excused, we were told we had to return the next day at 10:00am. People were incredulous. They hurled questions at the official. “How can we possibly be on this jury after that? Is the defendant dead? What is the best way to get coffee stains out of a white shirt?” Okay, I made the last one up. But we may as well have asked that as the official simply ignored us and disappeared.

The next day, we arrived at 10:00am as requested. The mood of the jury was not good. Thirty minutes later, people were still grumbling when another court official appeared. Once again, questions were asked and once again the questions were ignored. Instead we were told that there were “technical difficulties” and that we should leave and come back at 3:00pm.

You can imagine how this went over. What was grumbling before, quickly turned to fury. Besides missing work, many people had driven in from some distance and returning home was not an option. No one could believe we hadn’t been simply dismissed and on top of everything else, we still had no idea what had happened to the defendant.

Hours later, when we returned, the first thing we noticed upon taking our seats in the jury box was the defendant, alive, apparently well, and not buzzing. The judge came in, called the court to order and said, “Yesterday, we had an unfortunate occurrence, and as a result of that, you’re all dismissed.”

With that he banged his gavel and was gone. No explanation, no apology, just an angry jury. In the hall again, people gathered in groups and there was a lot of talk about writing letters of complaint and so on. While others were threatening to write, I was taking notes.

Ultimately, I did fire off a letter to the jury commissioner detailing the entire saga. I explained that experiences like this were the reason people tried so hard to get out of jury duty. We should have been dismissed immediately after the incident but instead were jerked around as though we had nothing better to do. Although, I believe it was one of my better efforts in the letter of complaint area, I never received a response from anyone.

I eventually read in the paper that the buzzing was the result of a stun belt worn by the defendant. Because he was possibly violent, the belt was worn as a precaution. Supposedly, a deputy “inadvertently“ activated the belt button.

Supposedly.

Back in Connecticut, my jury service was much less eventful. There was no burping or buzzing, but there were plenty of people scheming to get out of it. I managed to be excused from three separate civil trials, most likely because I was scheduled to be working in Los Angeles during the trials.

This means it will be three years before I can be called again. I plan to use that time to hone my reasons for being excused. And if I can’t come up with anything, I just might try burping.