The Nation's Pulse: Juror Furor
Norman, Geoffrey
THE NATION'S PULSE by Geoffrey Norman Juror Furor j ohnnie Cochran was on the radio, signifying. About the O.J. trial, of course, on some local talk show. He was very smooth and very persuasive...
...We were jurors...
...one that is not inconvenienced, like the rest of the world, by deadlines...
...77 been accused of beating up his girlfriend...
...He was just another jiving lawyer...
...And then adjourned the court...
...I had my mind made up even before the judge spent thirty minutes or so telling us what our duties were and how we had a solemn duty to find according to the law and blah, blah, blab...
...The defendant asked if any of us thought that kids should not be held accountable for their actions...
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...A few women (old hands, I figured) did needlepoint...
...Is it true that the bottles were found on the ground, approximately zoo yards from my trailer...
...He was a surly looking young man who had dressed in his newest jeans and cleanest sweatshirt for the occasion...
...The prosecutor made his case smoothly...
...Not if he could say what he was saying about juries...
...Lawyers and judges take as much time as they feel they need...
...Which often means jurors are not needed...
...Which explains, no doubt, why it takes a decade or more to execute a convicted murderer...
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...The prosecutor and the lawyer for the defendant...
...He said it with a straight face...
...j shopped from my own office and found the best deal available...
...Then before the trial could actually begin, the judge called another recess...
...To say those things he had to GEOFFREY NORMAN is editor at large for Forbes FYI...
...And then he began singing hymns to the jury system and all juries everywhere...
...I t was then that I began to understand that the judicial system runs at its own, leisurely pace...
...The case was rescheduled...
...His presence did not make me feel all that secure but, of course, he wasn't there to protect us...
...I ate chicken and dumplings at the local diner and was back in my assigned seat at one o'clock sharp...
...If the defendant had called the police to report the theft and the police had been able to find the boy and charge him, he would have been delivered into the hands of the juvenile justice system where he would have learned that nothing much happens to you if you steal someone's property...
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...By nine o'clock, there were about thirty of us waiting in the courtroom...
...Because he did break the law," one of them said...
...Objection...
...There was no reason to believe anything he said...
...He made good sense...
...The defendant and his lawyer left the courtroom...
...For that matter, what is doubt...
...We got lawyers and defendants out in the halls...
...The bailiff instructed us to rise...
...As jurors, our job was to consider the case against the man whose bottles the kids had tried to steal...
...At io:4o, the courtroom was opened...
...This, I was told by a man who'd done several tours of jury duty, is pretty much routine...
...And slowly, our side wore their side down...
...According to polls, two-thirds of the people on any jury believe in alien abductions...
...Needing some cash so they could play the video games, they decided to "take" the bottles and cash them in for the deposit...
...The implication was, plainly, that a "yes" answer would put me in the company of welfare cheats and doctors who scam Medicare for millions...
...He called recess...
...It was now after three...
...Well," I said, "when are we going to get started...
...Nine o'clock passed...
...It was our job to be treated with highhanded contempt...
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...And, yeah, he'd heard somebody yelling at him to stop but he kept running anyway...
...Thirty bucks a day...
...J.C...
...The kid went into an apartment building to hide but the man followed, cornered him, and gave the kid the business...
...I located the clerk's office and announced myself...
...We had a defendant who wasn't going to cop a plea...
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...And then he spoke to us from the heart...
...He had probably done the kid a favor by throwing a scare into him...
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...Still, nobody came to tell us anything...
...Like the rest of the jurors, I was eager and impatient to do some justice...
...I knew how much respect lawyers like Cochran—and everyone else in the judicial system—feels for juries and jurors...
...Did any of us know the defendant...
...He was very smooth and very persuasive and as I drove along the blacktop, listening to that mellow voice, I was almost sold, in spite of myself...
...Much less than the government pays its full-time employees for doing the same thing...
...The prosecutor stressed the chase...
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...We argued, back and forth...
...At ten, nobody had bothered even to stick his head in the room and tell us that things were running late—which was self-evident— and apologize for the delay...
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...More and more, I felt like I was back in kindergarten...
...Did any of us have relatives on the police force...
...The reason for this, it became clear, was that nobody was a damned bit sorry for making us wait or keeping us uninformed...
...The guy must have a prostate problem," one of my fellow jurors said...
...But then, the talk show host (a small timer, as out of his depth as I) asked him about the jury...
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...We were, I fear, increasingly typical...
...He sounded reasonable...
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...We all believed that the defendant ought to get a medal...
...Do you recognize the man who yelled at you...
...The judge entered and told us to be seated...
...It was our job to be treated with high-handed contempt and we were being paid for it...
...B ut this time it looked like we might get a case...
...I had been reduced to reading the bridge column...
...Sorry," he said, "but you can't leave the room...
...he was our jailer...
...The judicial system, when it is not on 60 March r998 The American Spectator break, takes a very dim view of anyone who does this...
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...And on it went...
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...As our names were read off, we took our places in the jury box...
...Over the next half hour or so, the judge and the lawyers went through the motions of a plea and sentencing for the man in the stylish sweatshirt who had44 We were jurors...
...I found a place to park—there were no designated spots for jurors as there were for all the judges and other members of the courthouse crowd...
...The American Spectator • March 1998 59 pulling the gun would have probably given him a coronary...
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...Jurors' time might be wasted but—to use the punch line of an old joke—what is time to a pig...
...I was directed to a courtroom and told to wait there for instructions...
...and infinitely faster than Phoning dozens of agents...
...By now it was 11:45 and since court normally recessed for lunch at 12:oo, the judge decided there was no point in working for a mere fifteen minutes...
...Just yelled at and cuffed a little, maybe...
...jury we had returned a flawed verdict, based largely on our resentments...
...But I wasn't expert enough in the minutiae of such things as the "blood evidence" and the "race card" to marshal the facts and sift the evidence...
...A stocky, middle-aged man with the look of someone who had done hard jobs for small pay, he was seated at his table, alone, since he had decided to act as his own lawyer...
...The judge didn't have a problem with this...
...What's a couple of months, after all, against the imperatives of justice...
...I had no doubt when I walked into the jury room...
...Twenty minutes later, the first witness was called...
...The other jurors—all but one, women—wanted to convict the defendant...
...The defendant said that he would attempt to prove to the jury that he had not threatened anyone, that he had done what anyone in his shoes would have done, and that his conduct had actually been fairly restrained...
...The judge thanked us, with some distaste...
...The man chased one of them through the neighborhood and across a city street...
...The deal was done...
...Sir, I must remind you again that your questions must be framed in such a way that the witness can respond as to matters of fact...
...Had any of us been the victims of a crime...
...Like the O.J...
...Hespoke very slowly, as though we might not understand the epistemological subtlety of "reasonable doubt...
...Once my name had been found on the list and a check mark entered next to it, I was asked if my employer was compensating me for my time spent doing jury duty...
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...He was so fat that the exertion of Johnnie Cochran isn't why juries have become a joke...
...I said—politely, I thought—that I didn't quite understand...
...This case is about a defendant who took the law into his own hands...
...Jurors—those of us doing our civic duty for a cool thirty bucks a day—had to be confined to a room with an armed guard at the door...
...He went out and gave chase...
...I have no shame...
...I was impressed...
...Our most persuasive argument was experience...
...No sign of the judge...
...He finally showed at about 2:40 and, once again, we all stood up when he entered the room, as though we were honored...
...The star witness, of course, was the kid...
...Then nine-thirty...
...We all knew about boys who did worse than the kid who stole the bottles and never suffered...
...We had actually worked about four hours of a nine-hour day...
...The state," he intoned in his opening remarks, "does not condone the theft of private property...
...He was charged with recklessly endangering the kid when he chased him across the street and with menacing him when he caught up with him in the apartment building and got in his face...
...We all knew that from watching the television...
...I went to the door and was stopped by a man who wore a uniform and carried a sidearm...
...You will be counseled...
...Jurors may be the anchor of all our liberties but that doesn't mean they rate parking privileges...
...He quoted Abraham Lincoln (something about how jury duty was "the highest act of citizenship") and Jefferson ("the jury is the anchor of all our liberties") and carried on in a state of high rhetorical fever for a full five minutes...
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...But it passes quickly...
...Neither did two other jurors...
...The defendant also took his place...
...We made it through the questions in a little less than an hour...
...I live in the country (Vermont) and it is a fortyfive minute drive from my home to the courthouse...
...I finished my paper...
...If this was the way they ran things, my side argued, then we needed more vigilantes...
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...Another scruffy defendant walked up to the front table, accompanied by his lawyer, who then asked the judge to continue the case...
...The bailiff called the next case...
...Who does...
...According to the judge's instructions, we should have found the defendant guilty...
...It was the one question that contained any hint of what the trial would be about or any element of originality...
...So I listened to Cochran as the miles melted under my tires and, for a while, he had me...
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...Yes...
...Both men...
...The bottles were clearly mine, right, anybody would know that...
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...But that is not what this case is about...
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...I might not have known about the "tainted evidence" in the O.J...
...And, no, he hadn't been hit when he was cornered in the building...
...I said I was self-employed...
...Halfway into the rap he had lost me and undone all the work that had gone before...
...The essentials of the case were as follows: A couple of kids—young teenage boys—were on their way to school one morning and saw some returnable bottles stacked outside a neighbor's trailer...
...The man who owned the trailer — and the bottles —and was now sitting in front of us as a criminal defendant, happened to look out of his window and see the theft in progress...
...After an hour or so, we prevailed in a clear cut case of jury nullification...
...When the judge gets ready...
...I could have brought a book...
...Sorry, Your Honor...
...The prosecutor seemed to read my mind...
...The fat man with the Glock gave me a look that pretty much summed up what the courthouse gang thought of jurors...
...If we felt inconvenienced by the delays and the inefficiencies of the system, he said, there was an easy remedy...
...case but I knew about juries first hand...
...We went with justice instead of the law...
...When you are called to jury duty, you are inclined to feel a little surge of self-importance along with a sense of pride that goes along with doing your duty...
...It was you...
...Then the prosecutor and the judge asked us the predictable questions...
...The boys dropped the bottles and split up...
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...The three of us made our argument...
...I'll try again...
...be either a liar or a fool (or maybe just a great lawyer...
...While those of us in the jury pool had been confined to our room, his lawyers and the judge had worked out a guilty plea and a suspended sentence...
...Bailiffs entered and a couple of men in dark suits took places at tables in the front of the courtroom...
...Yeah...
...If I had followed the trial more rigorously, I might have been more skeptical...
...I gave it an hour and a half just to be sure and bought the morning paper in case I was early and had some time to kill...
...Well, the clerk asked, did I want to be compensated...
...They will not be hurried...
...said he was glad his host had asked that question...
...It came to $3o a day, for sitting around and mainly doing nothing...
...Some of these people became instant acquaintances and talked...
...I went back to my uncomfortable seat and my newspaper...
...Defendants—people who were charged with crimes—were free to roam the halls...
...The defendant, who had the impertinence to act as his own lawyer, was repeatedly interrupted by the judge and told to frame his questions properly...
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...When called to participate in my first jury pool (a few months before listening to Cochran), I was warned to be at the courthouse promptly at 9 a.m...
...The man said things in a way that made you suspend your resistance...
...But more than that, we all had our own immediate experience with the judicial system—our day of jury duty...
...I took the money anyway...
...What we got was a case involving some stolen bottles...
...The defendant, when his time came, got the kid to admit that, yeah, he and his buddy knew those bottles didn't belong to them but they had decided to take them anyway...
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...The problem was overwork...
...After these opening arguments, we heard from the cop who had arrested the defendant, a couple of women who had called to complain about the disturbance, and the boy whom the defendant had chased...
Vol. 31 • March 1998 • No. 3
