originally posted july 13, 2000

duty calls

After my very first day of work at Cendant IT, I received a notice that I would be on telephone standby for jury duty. Even though my notice stated that I wouldn't be called for at least a month, if at all, I was still a bit surprised that their timing was so precise. After all, I go to school out of state for about nine months out of the year, and I had been home for less than a week. In any event, I gave notice to my co-workers that I might be called. The resounding response from most of them was, "Can't you get out of it?"

Well, in short, no. New York grants one automatic postponement of up to six months, but they eliminated all the provisions for exemptions -- students, doctors, and even judges have been called for over four years now. I could have done what one of my co-workers did when he was in a similar situation: postpone until a date when I would be out of state, get the notice while at school, postpone again, repeat. Since there's no block of six contiguous months when I'm at home, I could postpone until after I graduate. If I decide to live outside of New York permanently after college, then that pretty much disqualifies me altogether. I decided not to get into the whole mess of phoning in postponements, so I toughed it out. Finding that my standby number was 2079, I felt pretty confident that I wouldn't be needed. I called on a Sunday evening to see whether I would have to report on Monday. I was answered by a recording:

Thank you for calling the Nassau County Supreme Court Juror Information Line. Jurors on telephone standby, for the week of June 19, 2000, should locate their juror number . . . Jurors number 0001 through 0770 should report at 8:30 AM tomorrow at the address listed on their summons. All other jurors should call back tomorrow.

Crap.

Although the number of new jurors called was lower the following day, I still wound up getting called on Thursday. I brought a book and my organizer to stave off boredom, but I thought I would never need them as our room full of prospective jurors was shown a videotape with various TV news reporters instructing us how lucky we were to be performing our Civic Duty. After a few introductions, the long, arduous wait began. Occasionally, the court officers read out a list of names, but most of the time I was flipping through my book or dabbling with a few games on my organizer. And it was boring. Terribly boring.

Then, right before lunch, my name was the last in a long list, and I excitedly hurried over to Empaneling Room #5, where after a long delay my fellow jurors and I were transported by bus to another court building located no more than 200 feet away. After we arrived, we were promptly told to go to lunch, and report back at 2:00 PM. (In government language, "2:00 PM" is defined as "a period of time ranging from 2:15 to 3:00 PM, depending on how late everyone gets back.")

The voir dire, where the judge and lawyers ask all order of questions, was the most interesting aspect of my day. Our panel of jurors was instructed that this case was a robbery case, where two men were suspected of robbing a pizza delivery man at knifepoint. This is where the "Can't you get out of it?" mentality comes shining through in a wave of overacting.

I heard all order of excuses as people were asked whether they could be biased. Jurors were asked individually, starting with number one going up to number 14 (12 jurors, two alternates). While number one made it through the first round of questioning from the judge without a problem, three people were dismissed from the number-two spot before a suitable one was found. Excuses ranged from "I've been robbed before, so I hate all robbers" to "I can't miss work because I have to pay my ex-wife's alimony." One man even tried to use his experience as a producer for Court TV to suggest that he was biased against all courtroom settings. The lawyers agreed to dismiss him, perhaps only to stop his whining. (When dismissed, a juror goes back into the pool, and can be called again for up to two days before he/she is sent home.)

My name was called when the eighth juror was dismissed. My heart immediately started racing as I walked up to the jury box. The questions were simple in nature, but I couldn't help noticing that the judge was asking me far more questions than any other juror, perhaps trying to expose my youth as a source of doubt. Finally, the judge moved on. A few other jurors were dismissed, but after the judge's questioning, both of the lawyers' questioning sessions went on without a problem. At long last, we were all sent out of the room while some discussion went on.

When the 14 of us were seated again, the judge called out a list of names -- eight of them in total -- that were dismissed. Lawyers can dismiss any juror with justification, or can use a limited number of "peremptory challenges" to dismiss a juror without any given reason. Despite the grilling I took, my name wasn't one of the eight called. I was in.

The trial didn't start until the following Tuesday, five days later. I was sworn not to tell anything anyone about the case, and I kept my word. My co-workers were surprised that I got picked, and some were angry that I didn't try to fake my way out of it. In any event, after a half-day on Friday and a full day of work on Monday, I was set to go.

The trial was not without a slew of delays. Whenever anyone ran late, the whole trial had to pause. A whopping 90 minutes was allocated for lunch, although there were always a few people who took more. We were surprised that the trial even proceeded in a timely manner; at one point we thought we were going to follow in the footsteps of the other jury we saw while waiting, who brought overnight bags in case they needed to be sequestered.

The lawyers had constrasting styles; while the Assistant District Attorney was always impeccably well-dressed and neat, the defense attorney almost reminded us of a lawyer who might advertise on daytime television, what with his hilariously mismatched suits, disorganized stacks of note paper, and generally gruff demeanor. Nevertheless, both were able to make very good cases.

The victim was a Domino's Pizza delivery boy who spoke so little English he required an interpreter, and there were two men suspected in the robbery. One man called Domino's and ordered pizza to be delivered to a dark house at 10:00 PM one evening last September. The other waited for the pizza to arrive and made sure that nobody came to the house. When the first man returned, shortly thereafter the pizza came. The two managed to distract the delivery boy by saying that an imaginary third party, their roommate, had the money. As a car passed by, the delivery boy turned around thinking that the roommate was there. That provided the distraction for one of the men to hold a long knife to the delivery boy's throat and demand money. They took the money -- and the pizzas, and ran off to their home, which was just a few houses around the corner. (These criminals weren't exactly masterminds.) Shaken, the delivery boy ran to a lit house and had the owner call 911. We heard the tape of his call, as he was barely even able to speak given how traumatizing the event was.

We heard testimony from several witnesses, including the detective who took the defendant in, and the accomplice. The accomplice bargained his way down to a class-D felony, with a penalty of 6 months in jail and 5 years probation, in exchange for his "truthful testimony." The detective was grilled on cross-examination, as the defense attorney charged that the statement the defendant gave was not given voluntarily based on all sorts of factors, mostly a lack of proper procedure. When we deliberated, we tried not to discount the accomplice's testimony despite the fact that the accomplice had a much longer record, did most of the planning for the robbery, took most of the money, and likely would have received a much more harsh sentence. We also carefully considered the detective's work, which was a hotly debated issue.

In a criminal case, the jury must be unanimous in their verdict. After four hours of heated debate, growing very fierce at times (I didn't gain any friends by changing my vote a few times) we decided that the defendant was indeed guilty of robbery in the second degree, and guilty of robbery in the first degree. As our foreman read the verdict, the defendant -- who had barely shown any emotion during the entire trial -- turned bright red and buried his head in his hands on the table. That, in my opinion, was the toughest part of the trial. However, after it was all over I was confident that I made the right choice, and the judge told us that the defendant would likely get the minimum sentence of five years in jail, rather than the maximum of 25 years. I was also relieved that I wouldn't need the overnight bag I was told to bring, so that I could enjoy my fourth-of-July weekend in its entirety.

Overall I think jury duty was an interesting experience, certainly one that not everyone gets to experience. I'll spare you the drivel they gave me about my Civic Duty, and just say that the sheer intensity of arguing points with eleven strangers puts "reality" TV shows like "Survivor" and "Big Brother" to shame. (Granted, there weren't any bikini-clad women or "entertainers in a gentleman's club" in our group.) I have to say, though, that it's also a load off of my back to know that I won't get called again for at least four years.

So, this being just about the longest update I've ever had, I'd be remiss to say that I've put eleven pictures of my new New Beetle up in the picture archive. Speaking of pictures, a person identified only as "E. Martin" sent a small animated GIF that you can use if you have a web page that you'd like to link to mine. Thanks!

Lastly, the news archive has been getting very large, with the larger updates of late. Plus, it's not very compliant with the spirit of the web, keeping small, manageable documents instead of enormous archives. I plan to categorize the documents in some sort of hierarchy, be it chronological or topical. Things will be more organized and easy to find. Additionally, search engines can index individual anecdotes, allowing for "deep linking" so that other web sites can link directly to relevant content. In any event, I hope to have everything neatly categorized (statically, mind you; my web host doesn't allow for dynamic scripting) before I head back to school at the end of August.

That's all for now -- next update next month!

Back to July 2000, or to the year 2000.