Freedom!

I knew it would probably happen, and the odds were in my favor, but it was still good to know that at 2:55 PM, I had fulfilled my civic duty for the year.  The judge, the defense attorney, and the prosecutor got to ask a lot of questions of the randomly selected "first" 18 people.  The defense and prosecution picked their challenges and six people were kicked off about an hour after lunch.  They paneled six more people to pick the alternates, and in just 15 minutes, they picked two more people.

There was some slight drama with one of the jury panel members.  This guy was late by about 45 minutes and we had to start the jury selection without him.  We were warned yesterday, that if even one of the 65 members of the jury panel was late, we could not start the proceedings.  Three people called in ahead saying they were going to be late by about 15 minutes.  Two of the guys showed up when they said they would, but after another 15 minutes, the last guy did not show up.  We started without him, half an hour late.  When he finally came in, none of us were surprised it was this guy.  He was a pain in the jury pool room.  He was a lawyer who had court dates all week, yet he did not ask for a postponement before he was assigned to a panel, or rearrange his schedule (you've got about 4 weeks to figure this out from when you get your summons).  So, he comes in late.  He rifles through his briefcase, not even paying attention to the questions being asked of the jurors in the box, and his cell phone rings inside his briefcase and he doesn't even recognize it as his phone.  Totally self-absorbed.  Anyway, when we came back from lunch, we were told that we would not be rejoining us.  He was fined for being in contempt of court, and he would have to restart the jury selection process over.  If it weren't for this guy, we would have been done 15 minutes earlier.

I had lunch over at the Cathedral of Our Lady of Los Angeles.  I still get a kick out of how modern and cool looking this structure looks.  It looks like a lot of lawyers like to have their lunch in the cathedral plaza in the shade.

 

	Here's a view of the cafe from my shady table.
	There's the view of the back of the cathedral.
	There's the entrance. For something that's called "of the angels," there sure aren't a lot of angels around.
	Here's the fountain at the front entry way. It says, "I shall give living water" in about 20 different languages.

 

We get an hour and a half for lunch.  Not bad for 15 dollars a day.  After lunch, we futzed around with the defense attorney and the prosecutor before being dismissed.  Some of the questions they asked gave us some clues on how the case was going to be presented.  Here's what I was able to figure out.  A Mr. Brown was robbed and assaulted with a knife at the Hollywood Way offramp off the 101, causing grave bodily injury.  Either he or another witness is a homeless person who was the only witness to the crime.  Two police officers will testify to their investigation and apprehension of the defendant, a Mr. Jones.  Mr. Jones will likely not testify on his behalf, relying on the prosecutor's burden of proof beyond a reasonable doubt that this is a case of mistaken identity.  The people the attorneys dismissed right off the bat were a law professor, a guy who was held up by two guys with guns, a guy who felt his friend was shafted by a San Diego judge, a woman from Santa Clarita whose husband is a sheriff, and an actor who has a lot of friends in the LAPD.  Of the alternates they dismissed: a psychologist with his own radio show who can read body language, a school nurse, a doctor, and a former corrections officer.  Then we got dismissed, and had to go back down to the juror selection room.  Here's how it looks during a busy docket season:

 

This room was jam-packed at 8 AM, now look at it at 3 PM.

 

And that was my day and a half in the criminal courts system.  I must say, the judge and the defense attorney really beat it into our heads about the presumption of innocence.  The defense kept asking people how they would vote "right now" if they had to deliberate.  The answer she was fishing for was "innocent" because the defendant is technically innocent until the prosecutor presents her case.  Also, I must say that all my diversity friends would have loved to have been in this courtroom.  The judge was a woman, the prosecutor was a black woman, the public defender was an asian woman, the court reporter was an old woman, the court clerk was a woman, and the bailiff was a latino dude.  To appease my right-wing friends, the defendant was a black male.