Jury duty - again

So I got tapped for jury duty again this year. I deferred until school was out, so once my meetings finished I found myself back at the Santa Ana court house. The jury selection pool I was placed in was for a single count of lewd conduct with a minor under 14 years. Jury selection took two full days, and caused me to lose respect for humanity in general. I think it's understood that most people just want to be excused from jury duty, but when I have to sit for two days and listen to people try to wheedle out of it by claiming that their religion doesn't allow them to pass judgment on people, or that they are incapable of thinking for themselves even though they have just finished their junior year of college, I want to haul them out of the courtroom and toss them from the balcony. Every time one of these idiots would pull this the judge and attorneys would have to focus on them for several minutes, greatly extending the overall process. At the end of the second day I became the very last person sat on the jury, in the position of 3rd alternate. I would have to be present for the entire trial, but the chance of me ending up in deliberations was pretty small.

The trial went quickly and was fairly interesting. There was very little evidence aside from personal testimony, which was highly suspect as the witnesses all had different stories as to what they saw and what happened. Essentially a man had been accused of making out with and groping the daughter of his girlfriend, who he was living with, in brought daylight in the jacuzzi at an apartment complex pool. The testimony of the witnesses made it clear that there was a lot of speculation going on. The victim's testimony wasn't even very damaging. The most damaging evidence was the conversation between the arresting officer and the defendant which occurred at the police station, and then the defendant's testimony under cross. Both of those came in after the prosecution had rested their case. The officer had already testified, but only about what had happened at the scene. Whether his testimony concerning the conversation at the police station would have come in had the defendant not taken the stand, I don't know. If that was the case, the defense attorney should never have put his client on the stand.

The trial portion took 4 days. We probably spend 1/3 of that time sitting in the hallway or waiting for the attorney to return from a sidebar. I did get a lot of reading done. The most entertaining part of the trial occurred during closing arguments when the prosecutor justifiably referred to one of her own witnesses as not very intelligent. We were all thinking the girl (in her early 20s) was dumb as rocks, but it was hilarious that the prosecutor got her feelings about the girl on record. I was dismissed after closing arguments with the instruction to not talk about the case as I may be recalled. At this point we had lost one juror due to misconduct. The trial ended on Thursday, and court is closed on Friday, so deliberations were set for Monday. You can imagine that this is a non-ideal situation for all involved. All the evidence is in, but nothing happens until the jury, which can't talk about the case, reconvenes 3 days later.

Monday afternoon I got a call that they would need me on Tuesday as 2 other jurors had been dismissed. After receiving instructions from the judge about the need to complete restart deliberations with no thought given to previous deliberations we started over. The jurors had evidently reached a verdict, but then had a long lunch before reentering the courtroom as there wasn't enough time before lunch to complete the proceedings. After lunch the jurors sat outside while two jurors were called back and then ultimately released. The judge didn't say why. We restarted deliberations, which only took about 90 minutes. The charge had three points to it: victim under 14 years, physical act, and the act had to be sexual in the defendants mind. The last part was not proven by the prosecution but came out during the defendants testimony and the subsequent recall of the arresting officer. The defendant essentially stated that if something like kissing on the mouth, even quickly, had happened it would be inappropriate because it would be a sexual act, and then he later admitted to kissing the victim on the mouth. We found him guilty as a result. The judge can sentence him to anything from probation to 8 years in prison.

All in all it was an interesting, although slow process. We'll see if I get called again next year, for the third year in a row.