Dury Juty: Day 2
A mind-numbing descent into the American judicial system.
Trigger Warning: The following contains depictions of gun violence and assault.
I didn't sleep well last night, and my drowsiness is bleeding into a frantic morning as I try to get out the door. I turn over the engine in my car, but it doesn't start. Of course. I had jumped it only two days earlier, but I must not have let it recharge enough. I rush back inside and request a Lyft, not wanting to be the one holding everybody else up at the trial. I hate using rideshares, being in a stranger's car — the weird hybrid smell of gas station air fresheners, vomit and cigarettes. Having to make small talk. Due to a LA County filing error when our house was built, our street address doesn't show up on most apps, so I have to wait on the corner in front of my neighbor’s house. A biker with a child on the backseat pulls up and starts talking to me. Who is this? In my hurry to get downtown I don't even recognize my friend, Ben. I haven't seen him in a few years, but still.
The Lyft driver pulls up soon after and I slide into the backseat. He drives like a NYC cabbie, racing to each stop sign before slamming on the brakes. The radio is on and he's blasting what sounds like the Pirates Of The Caribbean soundtrack or some similar Bruckheimer-esque overload, Hans Zimmer providing the musical tension to an already stressful morning.
I arrive at the courthouse, grateful to have at least avoided the mile or so walk from the parking garage, and I make my way inside. The main hall is less crowded than the day before. I imagine that most of the jurors have been selected for the week of trials, so it makes sense that there wouldn't be as many people around. The ones that are lingering create the atmosphere of a stuffy airport lounge — the main difference being that anyone I'm looking at could be a murderer or a rapist.
I'm earlier than I expected, and without the crowds, I decide to take the elevator. Stepping in I notice the defense lawyer from my case huddled in the back corner. The judge had instructed us not to engage with anyone from the trial, but there's a small part of me that thinks if I try to talk to her, maybe she'll see me as careless or irresponsible and not want me on the jury. I stand in silence all the way to the 11th floor.
As I step out into the open hallway, there are people everywhere — standing, sitting on benches, some on the phone, others playing sudoku or reading a paperback. I overhear a lawyer talking through details of an incident with a woman, trying to get the story straight in case she is cross-examined. Something about a truck being burned. The police had been called and the owner of the truck said he had had a fight with this woman the night before. He reported that she said she was “going to light his truck on fire.” My curiosity grows. The police had apparently found no sign of arson, but a family member later ratted the woman out which is why she’s on trial today. She tells the lawyer she had been upset because the man had been cheating on her. The lawyer walks through her possible sentencing of 1-5 years, maybe 16 months, maybe probation if she is lucky. The woman starts crying, “but I have no criminal history?!” The lawyer replies, “Arson is a serious charge.”
At the first roll call not everyone is there, and we have to wait another fifteen minutes before being led back into the courtroom. There are a few questions with a few prospective jurors, still weeding out from the day before. I'm doing the math in my head and realize it's almost inevitable at this point that my number will be called. One woman is four months postpartum and nursing. She gets out. The girl who is nervous about answering yes or no questions gets out. The guy with the auto body shop. The bank teller woman.
There's an odd repartee among the judge and the lawyers. The DA even cracks a joke about how "this is your last chance to get out of jury duty" before the judge lightly reprimands him. It's difficult to hear laughter and jokes while looking at a man on trial for a case that will most likely alter the rest of his life. A strange feeling comes over me as I look at him. There’s a part of me that wants to be liked by him. It doesn't make sense logically, but in a way, I feel sorry for him somehow. I have no reason to feel this way other than how he looks, hunched over, small and quiet. He hasn't even said a word, but it's hard to equate a man who has murdered someone with the man sitting across from me in the courtroom. It doesn't square up. Did prison change him? Humble him? Is he actually innocent?
“56." I glance down at my number hoping I had remembered it wrong. I slowly make my way along the knee-lined pew and up into the empty black office chair in the jury box. I'm finding myself nervous, but also newly ok with the process, now more resigned to my fate. I answer the questions on the sheet of paper, and when the judge asks me how I feel about serving as juror, I respond earnestly that “I am reluctant, but willing.” The judge laughs and says that she will accept that answer.
A few additional people are removed by the DA and Defense Attorney and then the jury is finalized. Fourteen people and four alternates. The judge thanks and excuses everyone else from the gallery, and I feel a tinge of jealousy as they exit the courtroom back into their normal lives. I'm sitting with an ominous feeling of being left behind, having to fend for myself without knowing what will come next. I'm anxious and nervous, but am also feeling deeply riveted, now that I have no choice but to be here.
The judge reads a long paper — paragraph after paragraph of law speak and rules for how the trial will proceed and what is expected of us as jurors. For the first time, I register the stenographer typing away with every word that is said. How stressful their job must be, hours and hours spent documenting an endless conveyor belt of language. It's hard for me to imagine why anyone would choose to do that as a profession.
We finish up around noon, and as we're breaking for lunch, the judge's assistant asks us to turn in our numbers and get new ones. The judge is visibly irritated, scolding him and instructing him not to change anything because all of her notes are associated with our current numbers. I can tell she's as annoyed with him as the rest of us are.
I make my way to the stairs, and descend the eleven flights down to the main floor on foot. The lobby is noticeably more crowded than earlier that morning. Lawyers and family members in intense conversations. Others lingering outside looking distressed and sad, waiting to find out the fate of friends or loved ones.
The past day and a half are starting to wear on me, partially because I'm recovering from a sickness I can't seem to shake. I'm wearing a mask while getting over my cold, but there was also a faint hope that maybe the lawyers would think I was extra paranoid or that my judgement would be impaired somehow by being sick. Now that I'm officially selected for the jury, I find it serves a new purpose, that of a buffer. A barrier, however superficial, between me and a murderer.
As I'm walking into the cafeteria, Hoobastank’s “The Reason” blares through the overhead speakers. All of the music here is a horrible mix of mid-aughts VH1 and dated EDM. I settle on a deli sandwich today, strategizing that processed meat might be slightly safer than cafeteria cooked chicken or beef. I go full American and grab a pack of Cool Ranch Doritos, taking a seat at an empty table next to a large glass window.
The sandwich bread sticks to the roof of my mouth in a way that reminds me of being a kid. Is it the mustard? The type of bread? I rarely eat sandwiches anymore. The lettuce is wet, almost overshadowed by the moisture on the turkey. I look across the cafeteria and notice the bailiff from our case flirting with the woman who had made my sandwich. I weigh the probability of them hooking up, envisioning a wild sex culture between all of the court staff trapped in this madness day in and day out. The monotony, the trauma, the dark, secret, empty backrooms.
I put my headphones in as a way to drown everything out. I find myself only wanting to listen to Shabaka, an artist I recently discovered. The slow, subtle ambience of the music is the only thing my brain can handle right now. I finish up the food, throw out my trash and make my way back out into the main hall. Glancing outside, I see a disheveled man standing on the stairs, his hands up to the sky and his underwear down to his ankles, yelling at everyone leaving the courthouse. I turn into the stairwell and begin the long climb back up.
Back in the hall, I'm gathered around what is now the official jury for the very first time. It's a unique feeling to be sharing such an intense experience with complete strangers. A few have been making small talk, but mostly everyone stands in silence while we wait to be called back in. The last thing I want to do is make friends.
The doors explode open and a lawyer and three other people barge out into the hall. “You can't just call her a bitch!” “I can call her a bitch if I want to, damnit!” They continue for a few more minutes before the younger woman storms off and the lawyer is left with who I assume are her parents. “She shows her ass every time she's in court!”
We make our way back into the courtroom, taking our numbered seats and picking up the notebooks we've been given to keep track of the trial. There are opening statements. The DA shows pictures on the flat screen TVs around the room, detailing the main people involved in the case. His tone has completely changed — his once insecure comical nature now replaced with a firm alpha voice. I feel like he's putting on a performance and it doesn't suit him.
There are a few newcomers in the gallery — one is a Spanish interpreter and the other, a middle-aged Hispanic woman, is the first witness. She is sworn in and takes the stand, expressing with a murmur that she understands English and can read it, but doesn't feel comfortable speaking it. She is visibly nervous as the interpreter stands beside her, leaning casually against the witness stand, translating in realtime what the lawyer and judge are saying. The interpreter is striking and distinguished in a relaxed suit and slicked back hair. He seems incredibly confident, almost in a Dos Equis Most Interesting Man in the World type of way, and like the stenographer, I wonder what it must be like to do this as your full-time job.
The witness states that she is very scared to testify in front of defendant. She had lived across the street from him and had seen him around, but didn't know him personally. She was home with her grandchild and daughter when she heard yelling, and went to the window and watched as the defendant opened a car door and shot a gun multiple times into a vehicle. She then ran to the bathroom with her family to hide.
The DA plays silent surveillance video from a nearby convenience store of an execution-style murder in broad daylight. A beer bottle is thrown at a car. The driver's side door opens as the man walks by, which leads him to pull out his gun and open fire. The car door slams shut and the man walks defiantly back over. He rips the door back open, bending down to aim before shooting multiple rounds into the car at point-blank range. I'm struck by how slowly and casually he walks away from the scene. It’s as if he felt no shame or risk of being caught, ambling down the middle of the street without a care in the world.
During cross-examination, the defense lawyer harps on random and hard to follow questions. “Where was the victim's leg at the time of the incident? Was she trying to step out of the car? How was her body turned?” She is doubling down on these micro details, looking for clarification before the neighbor is released from her testimony. I'm confused as to what the angle is, but I soon begin to wonder if they are trying to lay out a case for self-defense.
It's the DA's turn again, and he puts up the photo montage of all the people involved once more, then calls up the victim's boyfriend as the next witness. The door to the courtroom opens to reveal a man in his early thirties. He strolls in wearing a matching Ghostface Killah sweatsuit. Taking the stand, he explains that he was really close with the defendant at the time of the shooting and had been in the passenger’s seat when it had happened. They were friends and hung out together all the time, even with the victim. The energy in the room shifts, growing more intense by the minute. Two former friends, now enemies, back in the same room together, face to face for the first time in five years.
The DA continues the interview. There had been a fight the night before the shooting. The defendant had been attacked and threatened by the victim's older brother, but the boyfriend had tried to calm the situation down. He casually mentions that the victim was pregnant, before detailing that they were broken up at the time. They were still close and hung out regularly, having dated off and on since high school.
We leave it there. I'm learning that everything is dictated by the clock here, and no matter where you are in the trial, you stop for the day at 4pm sharp. The judge advises us not to speak to anyone involved with the trial, and not to look up anything on the internet about the case. We’re dismissed for the day.
As I'm making my way back down the stairs, I see that someone has newly scrawled “fuck yourself” on the concrete wall in thick purple marker. I have the distinct feeling that I have, in fact, done exactly that.