This morning, I woke up early and headed into Dorchester , or as it is more commonly known, Deathchester, to participate in my thrice annual civic obligation, jury duty. Dim eyed and flat tailed, I sat in a drab room and tried to read about how Christopher Columbus was not a nice dude (thank you, S! I am on page 38) while silently scheming to avoid being placed on a jury. After about 45 minutes, a bailiff wheeled out a tv with some tubes protruding from the back and tried to entertain us with a 1980’s video about the U.S. court system and…. Well, I sort of tuned out the woman justice with the bouffant. The one thing the video got right was, “the one thing that’s foremost on everyone’s mind is “when do I get to leave?” You are correct, ma’am! The bailiff also announced that a snack truck would appear in front of the courthouse at 10AM and visions of breakfast began dancing in my head.
Unfortunately, at about 15 minutes before 10AM, the bailiff called us to come to a courtroom. Mentally steeling myself to discuss my latent racism, hatred of the law and my vague familiarity with the defendant, I anxiously sat in the back of the courtroom. The judge began calling jurors by number. Oh! I am juror number 20 and they only need 6 jurors… I began to feel better and better. However, voir dire begins and the lawyers started tossing jurors off the panel…for reasons such as being visibly drunk/high and have a constitutional law final. (well played, sir, well played.) They finally settled on 6 jurors but apparently needed an alternate and the last number called was 18. I started to breathe a sigh of relief, but heard a dreaded “20” called. Before I could spout off every potential prejudice I could think of, I heard the judge ask the lawyers: “does anyone have an objection to BostonGal?” Sadly, noone did and I was the last juror seated.
I have to say, I did warm to the judge through the trial, he seemed to share my affinity for quick action and efficiency as well as a twinkle in his eye and a Southie accent.
Here is a brief summation of the trial (with all identifying details removed): Alleged Victim (AV)’s sibling was murdered while he/she was sitting out on the street with the defendant (a friend). It was unclear what happened or who murdered him/her. AV never heard from the defendant and the defendant, who had named the AV’s sibling a godparent of his/her child, never came to any funeral or expressed his/her condolences in any way. AV waited a month and then called the defendant to ask him/her what had happened to the sibling. All sorts of invective spewed forth with both sides using words that Boston
A few observations from the trial: nothing is more amusing than a translator being forced to translate ghetto insults in broken English/strange Caribbean language, if you are on trial for assault, maybe try not to wear jeans, a sweatshirt, sneakers and a menacing aura, perhaps we should pay our ADAs more money so they will make better fashion choices and, most importantly, if you are a policeman witness who needs to present key pictures and evidence, maybe you want to actually show up.
After all the evidence/testimony was presented, the judge selected ME as foreperson and away the jury went to deliberate. WELL, noone cottons to faux authority and the chance to run a room for hours better than BostonGal! My fellow jurors were barely seated when I went up to the whiteboard and started writing out an agenda for our discussion and the hurdles we’d need to measure to find the defendant guilty or not guilty. I suggested we tackle the “threat” charge first as I thought it would be the easiest to resolve: the defendant had actually admitted to threatening the AV and had implied the intent to follow through. However, as we reviewed each of the four elements that constitute a threat, it became clear that we were deadlocked 5 (on the side of logic and reason) to 1 (Forrest Gump IQ, made up crazy backstory telenovela in her head). Forrest Gump steadfastly held her ground. “Yes, the defendant broke the law, but I cannot emotionally say that he/she is guilty.” This went on for TWO HOURS. I tried everything to point out to Forrest that she was being an idiot without coming out and saying it. I then instituted a 10 minute “recess” when it become apparent that she was taking a wild, wild detour into digging her heels in and during that time I tried to humanize everyone by making them go around the room and tell us about themselves. Great quotes included, “I have lived in South Boston for 38 years and I am very angry.” And “I work in a vault.” Although this seemed to help, we were still at an impasse. FG suggested that we tell the judge we couldn’t reach a decision. No way was I coming back tomorrow!
Finally, I summoned my inner To Kill a Mockingbird and gave a speech on the duties of jurors that was half pulled from my vague recollections of the 1980’s video and half pulled from my a**. I don’t know if it was my dazzling oratory or perhaps the realization that she’d already eaten a free lunch and was unlikely to get more food, but Forrest finally caved. PHEW.
Now, onto the assault and battery. For this, I suggested we “stage a re-enactment” so that we could all be on the same page as to what occurred. This actually proved to be helpful as I had initially thought the defendant was guilty, but I realized that I couldn’t tell beyond a shadow of a doubt whether the “scratching” had occurred as the AV was grabbing the defendant by the jacket (self defense) or after as the AV was being dragged away in a bear hug by his/her father (assault). Here again, we were deadlocked 5 to 1 and the 1 was actually a real-life corporate lawyer. However, after I explained my reasoning, she agreed that, although we both thought that actually the AV and defendant were guilty of assault/self-defense, we couldn’t prove beyond a reasonable doubt what had happened based on the evidence given. Another deadlock broken!!
