I think that at some point I may write at some length about the last week, but for the time being I’ll share my biggest take-away from my brief career as a juror in the 53rd District Court of Travis County: never, ever allow anything meaningful in your life to be decided by a jury. I say this without benefit of having actually deliberated, though the three days I spent in the court and the jury room offered more than ample evidence for my verdict.
It may be the fact that at any given point in the trial, of all the concerned parties — judge, jury, lawyers, defendants, plaintiffs — at any given point in time, a full 30% were fast asleep. The front row in the jury box must have been soaked in ether, because Jurors 7-12 were nodding, drooling, and babbling. On the rare stretches when 8 was awake, he would bust out with a cartoon character yawn about every five minutes.
Granted it was a civil lawsuit over real estate, but millions of dollars were at stake. There was fraud and scandal and even a whiff of sex. I thought it was fascinating. I learned absolutely everything I now know about commercial real estate during the testimony. Does that mean I’m really boring? I’m dying to use my new vocab — let’s go plat something!
I wasn’t very interested at the outset. I did everything I could get get excused from service. If that makes me non-civic minded, I’ll own that. I absolutely did not want to be on that jury. When I got my number (11), I knew I was screwed — they take the first 12 that don’t get struck, so I knew I had some talking to do. During the voir dire (a phrase that no Southern lawyer, no matter how smart, can say without sounding like a complete hick) I talked about how my years as a teacher had taught me that rich people are nuts, I talked about how biased I was against real estate people because of the economic meltdown. The defense attorney inflamed me by saying it was the quiet ones that get picked, so I blabbed on and on. I knew one of the other potential jurors, I had a bad cough, I had anger issues, whatever; I spilled.
I didn’t, however, have the stones to claim economic hardship. The way the judge framed hardship made it all but impossible. No, my family would not go hungry. DadLabs would be sorely screwed, but my inconvenience suddenly seemed like whining. So I kept my seat when the judge made the call.
And I got on the jury.
The testimony began that afternoon, and the star witness for the plaintiffs was something of a local celebrity — former Attorney General of the State of Texas, Jim Maddox. Juror 1 evidently wasn’t very impressed with his testimony because about an hour in she lost her lunch all over the jury box. Suddenly jurors at the far end were jumping around, puke sloshing over the jury box rail.
We got the afternoon off.
Back in the box the next day, the bailiff moved Juror 1 closer to the jury room. Next to Juror 5. Me.
It’s difficult to process complex testimony when you’re worrying about some lady hurling in your lap.
I won’t burden you with the specifics of the case (my wife has taken to warning people not to ask me about it — I can ramble). Suffice it to say that it involved a disputed conveyance of land out of a 800+ acre low income housing development in South San Antonio.
On the third day, we finally heard from the defense. I kind of liked the old guy, and I guess the plaintiffs thought we would. The settlement was announced right after lunch. I was bitter, not only because I nearly choked to death on a dumpling while running back to the courthouse in an effort to avoid getting bitched out by Juror 3 for being late (again), but also because I wanted to deliberate. I wanted to play the whole story out. I was left with a bad taste, feeling that our time had been used wantonly.
Mostly I was pissed because it meant we didn’t serve for a full week. That means I get no exemption from future service. I’m right back in the jury pool.
