Reflections on Jury Duty, and All the Other Stuff
I was called in for jury duty in Lancaster this week along with maybe 250 other people, and they picked me for one of two juries! Everybody's always down on jury duty, but I was hoping they would pick me. I highly suggest participating. Some random notes and observations:
The judge looked like a chubby David Lynch. The prosecuting attorney looked like a young Vincent D'Onofrio. The defense attorney looked like a serious Rob Reiner. The court stenographer looked like the 55 year old daughter of Marisa Tomei and Jennifer Aniston. The judge's clerk looked like a composite of every 25 year old male you would see in a Brooklyn coffee shop. Inside the courthouse, but outside the courtroom, there was a real Night Court vibe. I half expected to see Bob and June Wheeler.
Jury duty is one of two ways that citizens can participate directly in the operation of the government, along with voting. It has such negative connotation that most people forget its importance. The judge said that in some areas of Pennsylvania it is very hard to get people to participate, which could result in some cases getting thrown out. Violent offenders could be put back on the streets because they ask for a jury trial that could not be produced.
When picking the jury, the judge asks if anyone has any members of law enforcement in their family or as close friends. Then they ask the nature of the relationship and if they could still be an impartial juror. One guy said that he could be an impartial juror, because he'll always believe the cops. The judge explained in a legal way that he was saying that he would not be an impartial juror if he was simply going to believe the cops based on their authority, versus careful consideration of all the evidence. The guy had to admit that he would not be an impartial juror. That made me realize the importance of jury duty. Without people who have the ability to look at the case impartially, it would simply be that the cops were always right.
On the other end of the spectrum, an older Mennonite lady said that she would have moral objections to participating in the jury because she is nonviolent and it was a gun case. In my view that would make it more important for her to participate. I'm not sure if she meant that anytime any officials make anybody do anything, it is with the implied threat of force, and she would be participating in that system. Either way, she's certainly enjoying the benefits of the system, namely that there are no marauding bands of criminals ravaging the countryside that she has to worry about.
I liked that the judge emphasized that there were absolutely no wrong answers in the jury selection process. He reminded everybody that this is a country in which you can believe anything that you want and that he was simply trying to find jurors who would be objective. One could stand up and tell the judge that they think that the whole system is a sham and he has absolutely no authority. No problem! He'd be thankful that you told him that, because he doesn't want you on the jury.
The case involved the gun possession of a person who is not allowed to have a gun. A car was parked illegally, cops asked the two occupants to get out, and the passenger had a semi-automatic gun tucked in the crevice between the seat and the door. The driver gave a false name, the car was unregistered, and the gun was unregistered. The crux of the case was that the passenger wasn't actually holding the gun and it wasn't his car. So is that possession? But... it had his DNA on it, it was within his reach, he had personal items in the trunk, and he was sitting on a 34-bullet magazine that had 19 bullets in it. A rough case for the defense!
The defense's case rested on the fact that the first cop who handled the gun sat it on the seat, and it could have got some DNA from the seat. The problem is that sweat has no DNA of its own and would have needed to contain skin cells that passed through two layers of clothes. His argument was that shoddy police work gave us enough to reasonably doubt the prosecution. We didn't buy it, and certainly the defense attorney didn't buy it either, although he had to pretend to. He could only play the hand he was given. Guilty, no doubt.
One expert had to drive down from State College just to attest to him getting a sample of DNA, packaging it, and sending it out to Pittsburgh for analysis. The DNA expert had to drive from Pittsburgh for only 10 minutes of testimony explaining what DNA was and how it was relevant.
Want to know what the DNA expert said the chances were of the DNA on the gun not matching the defendant's cheek swab? You don't hear this number too often- a 1 in 831 octillion chance!
Not only were we warned to not accept police testimony as fact, but to weigh it on its own merit, we were also advised to not accept what experts said as fact without weighing it.
Even though it was a rock solid case, we debated it for an hour or two. What does possession mean when you're not physically holding something? Can we really know someone's intent? Doesn't intent reside completely inside the mind? What is the limit to a reasonable doubt? I really enjoyed the debate.
The jury is solely responsible for determining guilt. I'm not sure if I understood that before. I always thought the judge kind of helped them, but the judge strictly helps the jury understand the law. If guilty, the judge then decided the punishment at a later date.
They cautioned us to be sure to use our common sense. After we determined the defendent guilty, we chatted about what we would have thought if there was no DNA evidence. Some of us were uncertain... but in retrospect, and with the knowledge that he's been in a bunch of gun battles, that seems like a ridiculous burden of proof we would be requiring, and a total waste of resources. Without DNA evidence, he was obviously guilty. The body cam footage showed the gun in the crevice clearly, and the fact he was sitting on the magazine. Still, the gun COULD have just been there. I'm not saying we would have found him innocent, but we would have had more to think about. The problem is that we would have been ignoring all common sense. If I have any suggestion for anyone serving on a jury, take the judge seriously when he says you should use your common sense and all life experience. We have to accept the fact that there is not 100% certitude in situations like this.
If you are ever involved in a case like this, listen to the judge when they tell you to not talk to anybody about the case or look up details about the case. Immediately after the case was over, I googled the defendant. We knew that something happened in 2018 which prevented him from being allowed to possess a gun, but we weren't certain what it was. It turns out that he was shot twice in two separate gun battles. Not certain what his role was in it, but it doesn't seem good. Then in 2020 he was in an argument in downtown Lancaster and shot up the car of a person trying to get away from him. If I had known either of those facts, there's no way I could have made a clear-minded decision on the specific case I was involved in, but those other incidents honestly had nothing to do with it. This was it's own case, with its own charge, with its own punishment.
The judge talked to us afterward. Someone asked him how often he agrees with the jury's decision. He said he agrees with the jury 100% of the time. He agrees with them by definition since they are the jury and they determine guilt. It's not a cop-out, he said, he believes in the system. I do too, and I will guess that you would too if you were there.
It's a strange experience being personally involved in deciding someone's guilt. What gives me the authority? Anybody who's picked has the authority, based solely on the fact that they were picked. Some people don't think they have the right to judge, but I don't think they are being completely honest. Everyone thinks they have the right to judge positively, so why not negatively. In this case there is simply no doubt that a guilty verdict made the county safer. Contrary to the non-violent lady who was dismissed, the jury decreased the likelihood violence in the county, not her.
Perhaps most importantly, subsequent to the verdict, I believe a harsh sentence is the only way the defendant stands a chance to live a full life. If anybody in the community was saved, it might have been him.
All-around great experience. Zuzu turned her room into a spa, and I'll give jury duty the same rating I gave to it- 5 stars.
November 19, 2022
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Voltaire- "It is better to risk saving a guilty person than to condemn an innocent one."
It might also be better to risk saving 10 guilty people than to condemn innocent one, but perhaps not a thousand, so where in the middle do they meet? That has something to do with the definition of reasonable doubt.
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I wish I could help it, but I'm looking forward to the Trump-Christie-and-Whoever-the-Democrats-Run Showdown of 2024.
November 19, 2021
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That wasn't hair dye streaming down Giuliani's face. He IS the swamp.
November 19, 2020
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Obama's tan suit was about Satanism.
Sorry, I meant "ABOUT SATANISM" is an anagram of "OBAMA'S TAN SUIT."
November 19, 2020
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It's nearly comforting to know that a short pamphlet could be printed that would explain away all of the voter fraud conspiracies in less than a thousand words.
NEARLY comforting, because anybody who needs to read it, won't read it, or will immediately believe the pamphlet itself is part of the conspiracy.
How is it so hard to believe that Trump won Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania in 2016 by a combined 80,000 votes, and that the most marginal of the marginal Trump supporters from 2016 decided to go the other way???
I guess it's hard if your starting point is that Trump was handpicked by God Himself.
November 19, 2020
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Gene Tierney's 100th birthday. Robert Osborne's favorite actress.
November 19, 2020
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In the defender's defense, even indefensible claims deserve a defense, but I can't defend a defense when the defense itself is indefensible.
November 19, 2020
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The president continues to refuse to say what the voters of Alabama SHOULD DO, somehow in response to a Senate candidate's credible accusations of child molesting. He just can't decide, just can't do it. His surrogates are all saying that we'll see what the voters of Alabama WILL DO. "Should do" versus "will do"...that's a moral question versus a nothing question. He's incapable making moral statements, of course because his own accusers (which he still intends to sue?) are also credible, and of course there's his own private admission. Former Bush advisor Matthew Dowd was asked today what the president should do- he should come clean, admit what he evidently did, ask for forgiveness, and become free to criticise what others have done. That's not what he WILL DO but it's what he SHOULD DO... a moral distinction he's evidently incapable of making. It seems absurd to even consider him doing the right thing. That's a problem!
November 19, 2017
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When Trump nominates his people, he's not nominating the best. It's ALMOST as if he's overlooking talent and respectability and focusing solely on loyalty. And of course his primary race brought out the worst ones for him.
Jeff Sessions- “Fundamentally, almost no one coming from the Dominican Republic to the United States is coming because they have a skill that would benefit us and that would indicate their likely success in our society."
I have had excellent employees who came from the Dominican Republic.
November 19, 2016
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Thanks to Dan Rather for putting it so bluntly, and so perfectly. I don't think I need to think about this nonsense anymore. Until next time.
Rather:
Bullies are often thin-skinned, quick to overreact when challenged, and undone when people are no longer afraid to speak truth to their face. Great presidents are almost always the opposite in all those categories.
Reflecting on Donald Trump's complete overreaction to a statement made at the end of a performance of Broadway's Hamilton: An American Musical, I couldn't help but think - doesn't this man have more important things to worry about? Hasn't the theater long been a stage for political art? And isn't this a man who broke so many norms as a candidate, insulted so many people - individually and as groups - that he now has the nerve to demand an apology when he never gave one himself?
I know there are many who say that this incident shouldn't be blown out of proportion. Yes, when compared to cabinet posts or paying out $25 million in a fraud case against "Trump University," a Tweet maybe might not seem that important. But being president is to have every word you utter scrutinized. And these words are intimidating and unfitting of the office of the presidency. But more importantly, they show a real weakness of vanity and small-mindedness that our enemies abroad will likely look to exploit. I can also imagine that Trump's political foes at home are noticing - once again - how easily he can be rattled.
I imagine this is not the last we will see of these kinds of incidents.
November 19, 2016
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People, please stop saying things that offend Trump. He gets triggered easily, and needs the entire country to be a safe space for his delicate feelings.
November 19, 2016
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The first person who ever said "holy shit" was either a genius or a madman, probably both.
November 19, 2012
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Don Quixote realizes that he's a character in a novel???
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On this day in 1863, perhaps the greatest case of linguistic one-upsmanship in the country's history took place. Edward Everett gave a 2-hour speech in Gettysburg, followed by Abraham Lincoln's 271-word Gettysburg Address. I love that he says, "The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here," but 160 years to the day later we can still marvel at its clear, concise, precise and powerful perfection.
"Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.
Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this.
But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate—we can not consecrate—we can not hallow—this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."
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A big meteorite crashed near Odessa, Ukraine on this day in 1881.
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After a failed uprising and mass escape attempt on this day in 1943, the Nazis liquidated the Janowska concentration camp in Lviv, Ukraine, murdering at least 6,000 Jews.
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On this day in 1969, Apollo 12 astronauts Pete Conrad and Alan Bean land at Oceanus Procellarum (the "Ocean of Storms") and became the third and fourth humans to walk on the Moon. And nobody gave a shit!
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One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest was released on this day in 1975.
From Cinema Shorthand Society:
"Author Ken Kesey was so bitter about the way the filmmakers were "butchering" his story "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" (1975), that he vowed never to watch the completed film, and even sued the movie's producers, because it wasn't shown from Chief Bromden's perspective (as the novel is). Years later, he claimed to be lying in bed flipping through television channels, when he settled onto a late-night movie that looked sort of interesting, only to realize after a few minutes that it was this film. He then changed channels."
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If you think about it, there's an Introverts Day Parade everyday. Look out the window, I'm sure there's one going on right now.
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President Garfield, was born on this date in 1831. I have a hermit crab named President Garfield.
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Italian director, Gillo Pontecorvo, was born on this day in 1919. I believe that Brando said that he only took direction from three directors- Kazan, Coppola, and Pontecorvo in Burn!
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Dick Cavett was born on this day in 1936.
"It's a rare person who wants to hear what he doesn't want to hear."
"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?"
"I think I have many spenglerian moods about the country, and that some day people will look back and think 'this was a really goofy, unadmirable stupid time.'"
I love Dick Cavett. A link to a different era. A total original. I am going to be distraught when he leaves us.
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Phillies catcher, Bob Boone, was born on this day in 1947. I said it before, if Pete Rose didn't catch the ball he nearly dropped, he would forever be known as Bobble Boone.
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Dickie Noles was born on this day in 1956. Here he is throwing to Bob Boone, knocking down George Brett, and helping the Phillies to the 1980 World Series Championship.
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Charlie Kaufman was born on this day in 1958. From Synecdoche, New York:
"Everything is more complicated than you think. You only see a tenth of what is true. There are a million little strings attached to every choice you make; you can destroy your life every time you choose. But maybe you won't know for twenty years. And you'll never ever trace it to its source. And you only get one chance to play it out. Just try and figure out your own divorce. And they say there is no fate, but there is: it's what you create. Even though the world goes on for eons and eons, you are here for a fraction of a fraction of a second. Most of your time is spent being dead or not yet born. But while alive, you wait in vain, wasting years, for a phone call or a letter or a look from someone or something to make it all right. And it never comes or it seems to but doesn't really. And so you spend your time in vague regret or vaguer hope for something good to come along. Something to make you feel connected, to make you feel whole, to make you feel loved."
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One of my top five Phillies was born on this day in 1979- Ryan Howard. I stood next to him while he was still in the minor leagues, goodness, what a presence!
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The French prisoner known as The Man in the Iron Mask died on this day in 1703.
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Russian existentialist and religious philosopher, Lev Shestov, left us on this day in 1939.
“No science, nor any art can give us what darkness gives. It is true, in our young days when all was new, light brought us great happiness and joy. Let us, therefore, remember it with gratitude, as a benefactor we no longer need. Do after all let us dispense with gratitude, for it belongs to the calculating, bourgeois virtues. Do ut des. Let us forget light, and gratitude, and the qualms of self-important idealism, let us go bravely to meet the coming night. She promises us great power over reality.”
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Charles Manson died on this day in 2017.
“Death is the greatest form of love.”
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Ping pong ghost serve:
https://www.facebook.com/share/r/6fWaCrmwwDRGQMcY/
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Gid Tanner and His Skillet Lickers- Soldier's Joy
https://youtu.be/RpZ8umpz42c
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Politico- Trump: 'Hamilton' cast harassed Pence
You might have heard about this incident...if this article is true it seems like a nice, open dialogue, with the cast admonitioning the boo-ers. Someone in the comments wondered whether Trump/Pence desire "safe spaces" that they've been mocking for months.
http://www.politico.com/story/2016/11/trump-hamilton-mike-pence-231661
November 19, 2016
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The Atlantic- 'Human Rights Are Largely Irrelevant to the Emerging Trump Doctrine'
To someone without a concept of right and wrong, human rights don't factor in to any decision. They aren't even a thought. It's like asking a musk ox what it thinks of human settlements on Mars.
https://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2017/11/trump-human-rights-asia-trip/545843
November 19, 2017
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Washington Post- What Barack Obama’s memoir leaves out, by Fareed Zacharia
There's plenty of legitimate criticism of Obama, I think that even he would even agree, but it would be hard for me to shake the idea that he's a fundamentally good person and that even his worst decisions came from a good place, at the very least. I like what Fareed says about Obama seeing things from both sides. And read what he said about how well-written the book is. Maybe it was ghost-written by Cormac McCarthy, not literally ghost-written, Cormac is still alive at 87.
"The first time I met Barack Obama, he struck me as different from any other politician I had ever met. He was smart, well-read, affable and energetic, but that isn’t what made him stand out. It was the way he asked questions. Most politicians ask a question to answer it themselves. After giving you a brief opportunity to respond, they jump in, “Well, here’s what I think . . .,” and proceed to deliver some packaged piece of wisdom they have doubtless recited dozens of times. But Obama would ask a question to which he actually wanted an answer. He would listen and ask another question. He genuinely wanted to understand how someone else might view an issue."
"That unusual politician comes through clearly in his new book, “A Promised Land.” It is well written, certainly the best-written presidential memoir I have read. Obama has an easy and stylish way with words. Describing walking through the West Colonnade of the White House, he says, “it was where each morning I felt the first slap of winter wind or pulse of summer heat.” Describing a helicopter ride, he writes, “I gazed out at the rolling Maryland landscape and the tidy neighborhoods below, and then the Potomac, glistening beneath the fading sun.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/what-barack-obamas-memoir-leaves-out/2020/11/19/cd5d783e-2aa7-11eb-9b14-ad872157ebc9_story.html
November 19, 2020
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Philip K. Dick- "Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away."
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Spinoza, Theologico-Political Treatise, 1670- "Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.”
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Woody Guthrie- "I ain't a communist necessarily, but I've been in the red all my life."
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Norman Lear: "We're all just different versions of each other."
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George Carlin- "Tell people there's an invisible man in the sky who created the universe, and the vast majority will believe you. Tell them the paint is wet, and they have to touch it to be sure."
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Campbell- "All religions are true but none are literal."
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Kaufman again, from Eternal Sunshine- "Sand is overrated. It's just tiny little rocks."
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Vonnegut- "Do you realize that all great literature — "Moby Dick," "Huckleberry Finn," "A Farewell to Arms," "The Scarlet Letter," "The Red Badge of Courage," "The Iliad and The Odyssey," "Crime and Punishment," the Bible, and "The Charge of the Light Brigade" — are all about what a bummer it is to be a... human being?"
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Sagan- "I would love to believe that when I die I will live again, that some thinking, feeling, remembering part of me will continue. But as much as I want to believe that, and despite the ancient and worldwide cultural traditions that assert an afterlife, I know of nothing to suggest that it is more than wishful thinking."
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