So...Jury Service
Posted: Tue Mar 17, 2020 10:06 pm
Recently I received a summons for Jury duty. I have deferred this a few times previously and was out of deferrals. So I cleared my schedule and showed up to the Bexar County Courthouse on Monday March 9th at 8:00am. Got there a few minutes early and followed the orders and sat in a huge room with 750 of my fellow citizens. The notice said be there by 8:00am sharp or risk having to come back another time. 8:00am and nothing from anyone in charge. 8:15, 8:30, 8:45 still crickets. By 9:00am people are getting pissy and the murmur in the room has grown to a level just short of a night club. 9:15am a sheriff's deputy walks in and tries to get everyone's attention. This take a few minutes and then he has us all rise for a judge who walks in. He proceeds to give us a government lesson for 30 minutes and tries to crack a few jokes that fall flat, people ain't having it at this point. The judge moves over to a side room to hear excuses. 30% of the room gets in line. 29.9999% of the room comes back looking pissed off.
Somewhere are 9:45am he is done and a staffer takes the mic and tells us we have 20 minutes before we all need to get back in this room for the first round of call outs to specific courts. Unfortunately I am a first round draft pick and have to go line up in a hallway. We are placed in a line in the order that the computer randomly generated the list. My place in the line of 46 people is 37. I am feeling pretty good on my chances to be released. Quick note on how Juries are selected in Texas. A computer randomly generates a list of names from those who checked in that morning for jury duty. This list of citizens is then sent to a specific court as per the directions of the judge in that court. The judge and then the state and the defense ask the potential jurors questions and some are removed for cause and then the attorneys have their own strikes they can use for any reason. When this is done the court starts from potential juror # 1 and goes down the line in numerical order until they have the 6, 8 or 12 jurors needed plus any alternates. This is why I am feeling confident with my number 37.
So the full 46 of us get to the court room and wait outside for 25 mins as pre-trial crap is happening. Then we are called into the courtroom and we take a seat in numerical order. The judge welcomes us and then gives us a 2 hour lunch break and says to be back outside the courtroom at 1:30. Lots of grumbling and we head out. I go to the office and who knows what everyone else does. 1:30 finds me back outside the courtroom. At 2:10pm we are allowed back in the courtroom. The State's attorneys and the defense and defendant are sitting at their tables facing us. The Judge explains what is going to happen and then asks some background questions. The first is "have you ever been a victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse." A few hands go up including one male. The judge then makes a statement that if anyone is raising their hand just to get out of service that there will be follow up questions and she can hold people in contempt. All the hands stay up. Lawyers write potential juror numbers down. Many other questions follow and the lawyers ask specific questions of certain potential jurors. None of the specific questions are directed at me. After two hours the judge calls a break and lets us know that when we return she will hear individual pleas to be released from jury service due to a hardship. Everyone wants to talk to the judge on this. So when we come back it is another hour of us waiting outside the courtroom for the judge to hear hardship pleas. They call us all back in and it looks like we are about 5 potential jurors short. The judge tells us the lawyers are now going to select 8 of us from the remaining potential jurors. We are dismissed until 6:45pm, which is about an hour and 15 minutes. I go find a place for a quick drink and snack and return. At 7:20pm we are led back into the courtroom and the jury is seated. My number was the last one called. Fuck!
So everyone else gets to leave and has a 3 year pass on this process. I am given instructions along with the rest of my fellow jurors and then we are shown our jury room. We are told to show up the next day at 1:30pm in the jury room.
The next day I am there along with my fellow jurors. The jury room is nice with bathrooms just for us. A TV with full on cable lineup, minus local channels, a DVD player, a CD player, a computer without internet access, Netflix, and other stuff. It has a full size refrigerator and a Keurig for coffee and tea. The fridge is stocked with sodas and water. We each also have a locker that we can put personal items in when we leave the room. There is some small talk but everyone just wants to get this trial underway. Finally we are shown to the courtroom and the trial begins. This is when we find out that it is a domestic violence case and being tried without the victim as a party to the charges. She didn't want to press charges and the State went forward anyway.
Over the course of the three days of the trial we see a lot of disturbing photos, body cam footage from police, video from the ambulance, video from the hospital and some security cam video from the outside of the apt complex. The defense attorney tried to get us to believe that the victim fell down the stairs. He also never offered up any ideas as to why his client wasn't the one to call 911 or why his client wasn't at the scene when police and EMS arrived. Instead he had us looking at all sorts of things that didn't matter. For example, the victim said she got home at 4:30am (she was a bartender) and that she didn't remember much after that. We know the police were dispatched at 5:41am. We know EMS was called at 6:12am. We know the victim got to the hospital at 7:01am. The defense attorney on cross of one of the police officers got deep into the weeds on the time shown on the officers body cam. It showed 13:00:00Z. He wanted us to believe that we couldn't believe any of the video or police timing since the body cam showed a different time. He worked the officer over regarding the time and the office stated he can't set the time on the body cam. Most of us jurors tuned out. When the State came back up on redirect they asked the officer if he was familiar with Greenwich mean time and the reference to Zulu time. He said he wasn't really but had heard of it. The state introduced evidence showing what time it was in Greenwich and what time it was in Texas and the difference in hours matched up exactly. The minutes matched all along.
The strange part of the case was the victim. She was called by the State and claimed she could remember nothing about the night and that she didn't want anyone to get in trouble. She couldn't remember anything on the questions the State asked. However, on cross she suddenly remembered two questions the defense asked, but then couldn't remember again on redirect from the State. None of us believed her it turned out.
We deliberated for about 4 hours and found the defendant guilty. We then had to also listen to the lawyers and witnesses for sentencing. This didn't take us much time at all. We went with what the State asked and gave the maximum jail time and fine, but allowed for it to be waived as long as the defendant paid restitution for the victims medical expenses and missed work hours and completed all the terms of a probation that the judge set. There wasn't any community service, but there was anger management courses, parenting courses, money management courses, among others. There was also a no contact order with the victim for the 4 year term of the probation. If the defendant violates any part of the probation the judge will order jail time to be determined by her up to potentially 2 years. (First time offender.)
Now that this is over, I can't un-see the photos and the videos. I have been laying in bed the last few nights and can't get that stuff out of my head. It is disturbing and I don't understand how someone can do that to another human, much less one they claim to have loved.
Anywho, I am back. What did I miss in the world the last 10 days?
Somewhere are 9:45am he is done and a staffer takes the mic and tells us we have 20 minutes before we all need to get back in this room for the first round of call outs to specific courts. Unfortunately I am a first round draft pick and have to go line up in a hallway. We are placed in a line in the order that the computer randomly generated the list. My place in the line of 46 people is 37. I am feeling pretty good on my chances to be released. Quick note on how Juries are selected in Texas. A computer randomly generates a list of names from those who checked in that morning for jury duty. This list of citizens is then sent to a specific court as per the directions of the judge in that court. The judge and then the state and the defense ask the potential jurors questions and some are removed for cause and then the attorneys have their own strikes they can use for any reason. When this is done the court starts from potential juror # 1 and goes down the line in numerical order until they have the 6, 8 or 12 jurors needed plus any alternates. This is why I am feeling confident with my number 37.
So the full 46 of us get to the court room and wait outside for 25 mins as pre-trial crap is happening. Then we are called into the courtroom and we take a seat in numerical order. The judge welcomes us and then gives us a 2 hour lunch break and says to be back outside the courtroom at 1:30. Lots of grumbling and we head out. I go to the office and who knows what everyone else does. 1:30 finds me back outside the courtroom. At 2:10pm we are allowed back in the courtroom. The State's attorneys and the defense and defendant are sitting at their tables facing us. The Judge explains what is going to happen and then asks some background questions. The first is "have you ever been a victim of domestic violence or sexual abuse." A few hands go up including one male. The judge then makes a statement that if anyone is raising their hand just to get out of service that there will be follow up questions and she can hold people in contempt. All the hands stay up. Lawyers write potential juror numbers down. Many other questions follow and the lawyers ask specific questions of certain potential jurors. None of the specific questions are directed at me. After two hours the judge calls a break and lets us know that when we return she will hear individual pleas to be released from jury service due to a hardship. Everyone wants to talk to the judge on this. So when we come back it is another hour of us waiting outside the courtroom for the judge to hear hardship pleas. They call us all back in and it looks like we are about 5 potential jurors short. The judge tells us the lawyers are now going to select 8 of us from the remaining potential jurors. We are dismissed until 6:45pm, which is about an hour and 15 minutes. I go find a place for a quick drink and snack and return. At 7:20pm we are led back into the courtroom and the jury is seated. My number was the last one called. Fuck!
So everyone else gets to leave and has a 3 year pass on this process. I am given instructions along with the rest of my fellow jurors and then we are shown our jury room. We are told to show up the next day at 1:30pm in the jury room.
The next day I am there along with my fellow jurors. The jury room is nice with bathrooms just for us. A TV with full on cable lineup, minus local channels, a DVD player, a CD player, a computer without internet access, Netflix, and other stuff. It has a full size refrigerator and a Keurig for coffee and tea. The fridge is stocked with sodas and water. We each also have a locker that we can put personal items in when we leave the room. There is some small talk but everyone just wants to get this trial underway. Finally we are shown to the courtroom and the trial begins. This is when we find out that it is a domestic violence case and being tried without the victim as a party to the charges. She didn't want to press charges and the State went forward anyway.
Over the course of the three days of the trial we see a lot of disturbing photos, body cam footage from police, video from the ambulance, video from the hospital and some security cam video from the outside of the apt complex. The defense attorney tried to get us to believe that the victim fell down the stairs. He also never offered up any ideas as to why his client wasn't the one to call 911 or why his client wasn't at the scene when police and EMS arrived. Instead he had us looking at all sorts of things that didn't matter. For example, the victim said she got home at 4:30am (she was a bartender) and that she didn't remember much after that. We know the police were dispatched at 5:41am. We know EMS was called at 6:12am. We know the victim got to the hospital at 7:01am. The defense attorney on cross of one of the police officers got deep into the weeds on the time shown on the officers body cam. It showed 13:00:00Z. He wanted us to believe that we couldn't believe any of the video or police timing since the body cam showed a different time. He worked the officer over regarding the time and the office stated he can't set the time on the body cam. Most of us jurors tuned out. When the State came back up on redirect they asked the officer if he was familiar with Greenwich mean time and the reference to Zulu time. He said he wasn't really but had heard of it. The state introduced evidence showing what time it was in Greenwich and what time it was in Texas and the difference in hours matched up exactly. The minutes matched all along.
The strange part of the case was the victim. She was called by the State and claimed she could remember nothing about the night and that she didn't want anyone to get in trouble. She couldn't remember anything on the questions the State asked. However, on cross she suddenly remembered two questions the defense asked, but then couldn't remember again on redirect from the State. None of us believed her it turned out.
We deliberated for about 4 hours and found the defendant guilty. We then had to also listen to the lawyers and witnesses for sentencing. This didn't take us much time at all. We went with what the State asked and gave the maximum jail time and fine, but allowed for it to be waived as long as the defendant paid restitution for the victims medical expenses and missed work hours and completed all the terms of a probation that the judge set. There wasn't any community service, but there was anger management courses, parenting courses, money management courses, among others. There was also a no contact order with the victim for the 4 year term of the probation. If the defendant violates any part of the probation the judge will order jail time to be determined by her up to potentially 2 years. (First time offender.)
Now that this is over, I can't un-see the photos and the videos. I have been laying in bed the last few nights and can't get that stuff out of my head. It is disturbing and I don't understand how someone can do that to another human, much less one they claim to have loved.
Anywho, I am back. What did I miss in the world the last 10 days?
