Beacon Street

Harkening back to the moment I saw the jury summons among the envelopes I pulled from my mailbox a couple of months back, I remember the knot that formed in my stomach. I groaned, then complained to my husband that it seemed like I’d just had a summons.

The knot returned on the second night of check in, when I saw online that I was ordered to appear in the morning at the San Fernando courthouse. I found it hard to concentrate, even with our exalted L.A. Kings winning their playoff game 4 – 0. As I later printed out a map and instructions, I tried not to think about how obviously scared I was.

Fear brought on a mild malaise as I waited in the jury assembly room, and escalated to nausea when I actually entered the courtroom. But what, exactly, was I afraid of? All I could think about was, how can I get out of this? Nobody likes jury service, right? Everybody tries to avoid it. It must be horrible. Continue reading →

I couldn’t make myself look at the defendant when the verdict was read. It felt so unreal, or surreal, actually… like I was in a movie or play. I had to constantly remind myself that this was real, it was happening, it was serious and the man we’d found guilty would be going to prison for some unspecified amount of time.

One of my fellow jurors later told me that the defendant didn’t flinch. Not a blink, not a twitch. By all accounts, he was a pretty tough guy, but still—I expected him to make some kind of response. This was a serious charge. We were saying we agreed with the People, the State of California, that this man had willfully, with intent, assaulted a man with a deadly weapon and had done great bodily harm to that victim; worse, we were saying he tried to kill the victim. Continue reading →

We were each given a steno book and a pencil, but warned that excessive note-taking could cause us to miss important comments. Ms. Allen, attorney for the defense, explained that the case we were about to hear was all about the charge, not the crime. Something about assault vs. attempted murder. Richard Quinones presented that the case was clear enough to go for the more serious charge.

For 2.5 days we listened to testimony, including that of the victim and of the E.R. doctor who treated the victim’s stab wounds. We heard witnesses who pieced together the events leading to the attack, some credible, some fraught with obvious mistruths. One was openly hostile, two admitted to criminal records themselves.

I was mesmerized. At some point on the first day, I was elected to replace Juror #3, a woman whom for some reason was deemed unfit to continue. (I suspect it was a language barrier.) Now, at least, I would have a vote at the end of it all. Every time we left the room we were reminded by the judge not to discuss the case with anyone, including fellow jurors. It was an awkward kind of atmosphere; how do you not say anything about that which consumes your every thought? “Sure is warm out today. How about those Kings?” Continue reading →

Like some – I won’t say most, because I couldn’t know – I was annoyed when I receive my latest jury summons in early May. I was mad when I was told to report to San Fernando Courthouse on  June 5, the second day of my service period. But I was downright petrified when I was called into jury selection that afternoon.

There were sixty of us. A literal soup of garden variety Angelenos – albeit picked from diverse gardens. Young and old, male and female, brought together from neighborhoods near and far. The well-dressed businessman, repeatedly checking his watch; the youth, whose eyes only occasionally left the screen of his iPhone; the young mother, swaying to comfort an infant in her arms; the middle-aged woman on the phone, arranging alternate appointments for her customers or patients. And me, trying not to act too shell-shocked when we were all called upstairs to Department “C”, which is just another name for the courtroom of the Honorable Daniel B. Feldstern.

Sixty individuals, all handed numbered cards at random. I got #51, and immediately breathed a sigh of relief; surely they’d find fourteen suitable jurors among those first fifty, right? Continue reading →