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GeekNights 070201 - Rym and Jury Duty
Tonight on GeekNights, Rym talks about his experiences with jury duty. In the news, Roman treasures and bananas.
Scott's Thing - Ghostbusters Car
Rym's Thing - Laundry Alerts for only $13,000/year
Scott's Thing - Ghostbusters Car
Rym's Thing - Laundry Alerts for only $13,000/year
Comments
*Golf claps here.
The court system is under funded and under staffed. If every lawyer demanded a trial for their client, instead of pleading the case out, there would be a national train wreck. There is no way the courts could fulfill everyone’s right to a speedy trial. It would be fun to see what would happen if all the lawyers ever got together to do this.
BTW, Scott would hate dealing with the general public on a day- to-day basis as a jury commissioner. A larger percentage of the general public than I’d like to admit are idiots. Scott complains enough about his dealings with people as it is. :)
Keep up the great work guys. I’ll be putting out “Geeknights†flyers at Comic-Con in San Diego for you this summer.
It was kind of an unwritten rule that you should use a preemptory strike to strike an attorney. This was partly because the attorney might have prejudices that would work against you and that he might be bothered by the other jurors, but mostly because other attornies wouldn't want to be away from work for the duration of a trial.
I broke this rule three times. The first time was for a misdemeanor assault. I didn't strike an attorney. I knew him and thought he would not be persuaded by the prosecution. The prosecutor expected me to strike the attorney so he didn't strike him. So the attorney ended up on the jury. The trial only took one day, and my defendant was found not guilty. The other time was for a felony wanton endangerment. The same thing happened - I left an attorney on the panel. It lasted three days. My defendant was found not guilty. Then I tried to do the same thing in a felony assault trial, but the prosecutor struck the attorney. Later the attorney told me that he had already decided my defendant was not guilty based solely on what he heard in voir dire, which made sense. He did a lot of domestic relations work. This was a domestic violence case. The attorney had seen so many baseless claims of domestic violence that he was able to recognize that this particular case was baseless as well. (Before you flame me, READ THIS: I know that there are many valid domestic violence claims. This doesn't detract from the fact that there are also many basless claims. In this particular case, the claim was baseless and the attorney on the panel recognized that it was baseless.) This time, my defendant was found guilty. If the attorney hadn't been struck, I would've had a hung jury.
I was picked for jury duty before I was a CASA. The jury was finally seated and they brought the defendant into court. All of a sudden his lawyer objected and both lawyers went up to the bench to huddle. The jury was then dismissed.
The defense lawyer objected because they brought the defendant into court in shackles and an orange jump suit. The lawyer claimed that seeing the prisoner in shackles would automatically cause the jury to think he was guilty. They had to start all over with jury selection. I never did find out what the charges were against him but they were obviously serious.
I am one where you have to prove guilt beyond a shadow of a doubt. If I was the type of person who would automatically think someone was guilty if I saw him in shackles, why wouldn't I think he was guilty simply because he was arrested? I never got that logic.
Strange but true: People in family court had to go through metal detectors out here in CA long before they had to do so going into criminal court. The rate of courtroom outbursts is higher as you are dealing with emotions and actions by family members - divorce, child abuse, domestic violence, etc.
Ever consider contacting this companies clients and letting them know about the prior art?
If you don't automatically think a person is guilty of whatever when you see them dressed out, you're an exception to the rule. Most jurors do, just as most jurors implicitly and wholeheartedly believe anyone who wears a badge. I also had a witness brought out in orange once. The judge in that case didn't believe that there was the same need to have a witness dressed in street clothes. We had an automatic appeal to the KY Supreme Court since my defendant was sentenced to 20 years or more. The Supremes didn't buy our argument about the need for the witness to be in streets either, but they didn't publish the opinion. The standard practice, however, remains to have anyone appearing before the jury to be in streets. I had a defendant once who was transported from prison not dressed in orange, but in kinda regular garb but for an ID patch. He refuse the street clothes I had for him, so I asked the deputies to just rip off the patch and we went forward.
Actually, a lot of defendants try to refuse street clothes, I guess hoping that the trial can't go forward otherwise. Usually, if that happens, the judge will just go on record, explain to the defendant that he can appear in streets, get the defendant's refusal on record and the defense attorney on record stating that he advised the defendant to wear streets and then they go forward. I remember family court violence well. One of the reasons I'm glad I'm out of it. An even bigger reason, though, is the time factor. If you stepped off the elevator in a family division, you could expect to be there for at least 3 hours, no matter what. Is CA as slow? Hard to believe. What behavior was combative or slanderous? I can tell you from twelve years of experience that many judges have a very high tolerance for "bad behavior". Even at that, a judge would first threaten the attorney with contempt, and, if that didn't calm things down, maybe make a finding and stick him in the cooler for a couple of hours or maybe even overnight. A mistrial just delays the trial. The state has the opportunity to retry the defendant, with the added bonus of having testimony on record. No - as a defense attorney, you don't want a mistrial unless the prosecutor has done something or the judge has allowed something that's so unjust as to be intolerable, and the judge would be making the decision based on the standard of whether something has occurred that would make it impossible for the jury to render a fair and just decision. It's difficult to imagine an instance in which behavior alone would rise to this standard. I have no reason not to believe you observed the judge declare a mistrial, but unless you can show where the judge said on the record that (s)he declared a mistrial due to some sort of bad behavior, I have to believe it was due to some other reason.
The doctor was very good and very thorough in his explanation of the plaintiffs past medical problems and the nature of the injury being blamed on the defendant. During cross examination the plaintiff's lawyer made some remark about the doctor having been arrested for DUI!
It was totally out of left field. One minute they are talking about the injuries and the medical opinion and the next thing the lawyer is accusing the doctor of being arrested for DUI. The doctor got very irate and told the judge he wanted a copy of the record and intended to sue the lawyer for libel/slander/whatever. When the judge asked the lawyer what the hell he was doing the lawyer responded that he was trying to "attack the credibility of the witness" !!!
This occurred before lunch and after lunch the judge had us all come out and she explained that the outburst forced her to rule the case a mistrial as certain members of the jury gave off facial expressions that indicated they thought the plaintiff's lawyer was a buffoon and she felt the plaintiff could not get a fair trial from this point forward.
I may have gotten some terms mixed up but, you get the picture!
Item's in red were added for clarification.
I think what really happened was that the witness' threat to sue the plaintiff's attorney was grounds for mistrial.
Finally, when you say, "If the case was not declared a mistrial the defense would have lost... Perhaps he did it on purpose?", if we assume for the sake of argument that it really was the defense attorney, I'd have to say: No, it was most likely not done on purpose. I've worked in an insurance defense firm. The insurance company wants the case OVER so they can close their file.
Pretty much. As I'm sure you know (but most here don't) CASAs are volunteer officers of the court and undergo special training. We have access to all court files, medical records, etc. Being volunteers, our cases are supposed to be taken first as we have to take time off of work to advocate in court for the abused child. (Adoptions trump our cases but I'm happy to wait for them.)
I was in court the Friday before Memorial Day weekend last year. My child's case ended up literally being the last one heard in the entire courthouse that day - and we weren't bumped for adoptions.
I'm supposed to show up by 8:30 a.m. but I'm lucky if the judge in my court starts her day by 10:30. The one saving grace is that she is an excellent judge, listens to all sides and tries to make the best decision on behalf of the abused child. She has even invited me into her chambers to discuss a case. It was just like "Law & Order."
Sorry to be so verbose.
Defense Witness
Plaintiff attorney caused the trouble
Mistrial
I'm really surprised that there are so many legal workers on this forum. Maybe it's the gaming. When I was going to court a lot, I'd play games on my Palm IIIc. I LOVED Space Trader. If I was going a lot now, I'd need a DS.
tuttle88: I think it's only the people who really want to see a trial, the ones who take their civic duty very seriously, and the layabouts that don't care how they spend their time. It makes you wonder what they're really talking about back in the jury room. One time in Louisville, a jury flipped a coin to decide guilt. It made the national news and a friend of mine was interviewed on CNN.
The defense was painting the plaintiff as a habitual insurance fraudster. It appeared that every time her worker's comp ran out she would get a new job, get in an accident, and then sit back and collect money.
This incident involved an auto accident between a semi and her car. The defense fully admitted that the accident occurred and it was the semi driver's fault but... They felt the injuries claimed by the plaintiff were not a result of the accident. When the doctor examined the plaintiff and did some basic tests she complained of pain no matter what he did! Even when he did a 'control' test that should have not resulted in any claim of pain she said it caused pain. The doctor was doing a very good job of painting the plaintiff as an insurance fraudster who was going with the idea of, "tell the doctor everything hurts" because she had no real injury.
For example, she was complaining of a back injury but, when he did a test to determine if there was any leg pain she would say yes, even if that test was a control test that the patient with a back injury should answer 'no pain' to!
The plaintiff's attorney saw his case falling apart and I think he knew he was going to lose!
Oh yes, there was also a third lawyer present representing the insurance company as the main defense attorney represented the trucking company.
Funny thing is, that if she had just sued for a small amount and hospital bills she would have gotten it and been on her way. Instead she chose to sue for an amount that would let her retire and she got caught!
I did some work once in a case on the defense side that involved a semi v. Leggs distributor truck. The semi rolled right over the Leggs truck and completely destroyed it. The poor woman in the Leggs truck died. I've seen grisly crime scene photos, but there were photos from this accident that were worse. The woman was just sort of jellied. The larger bits of her looked like trash bags full of cottage cheese. It was pretty horrible.
Working on parental rights termination cases can be tough. I assumed she prosecuted domestic violence cases as well. Kudos to both of you for your work.
Is your state quick to terminate parental rights? In CA the goal is family reunification. In theory I am all for that too. My problem is that they give parents too many chances to clean up their act. By the time parental rights are terminated the kids have even more emotional problems due to being in foster care, etc. They are also generally not in the cute state any longer and thus their odds of being adopted by a loving couple or person are greatly diminished.