A continuation of Law & Order It Was Not part 1 and part 2.

The jury box was awesome. The seats were like extra cushiony Captain Kirk chairs, and just like his, they swiveled, too. Not like Law & Order at all. We were allowed to sit wherever, there was no assignment, and then the judge had us take an oath. We were sent to the jury room through a side door shortly after, which was located off the long corridor behind the courtroom.

Once we entered what seemed like a tiny room for twelve individuals, we each took a seat along the wall or at the table and began to size one another up, as you do. Nobody said much as we waited for directions. The bailiff eventually entered in and gave us our juror credentials that were meant to be worn at all times so attorneys and clients would be sure not to engage with us outside of the courtroom.  We all thought we’d be dismissed for the day so the trial could begin on Tuesday, but not ten minutes later they had us back in the jury box listening to opening statements. It was awesome.

The opening statements were definitely not as impassioned as Jack McCoy’s (for the record, the closing arguments weren’t either). After the opening statements, the plaintiff took the stand. I won’t go into all of the details of the case, because though I found every little detail of it ridiculously interesting, you likely will not. Probably one of those “had to be there” moments, so I’ll offer a quick gist.

Essentially there was a car accident in 2013 less than two miles from my house. The defendant was cited for it by the officer that appeared after the scene and the plaintiff was looking for money from the defendant to pay for her chiropractic bills, some MRIs, a few other medical related items and for pain and suffering. The judge even admitted he was hoping to have us out of there by Tuesday afternoon because it should be a pretty quick case.

By the end of the day on Monday we had heard the majority of the plaintiff’s testimony and were dismissed a bit early because the judge had an appointment for his broken leg across the street. We headed back to the jury room to get our things and had already been instructed by the judge not to discuss the case with anyone, not even other members of the jury.

I will say this about the first day – after the prosecutor finished with the plaintiff, it was slowly getting hard to believe just about anything that emerged from the plaintiff’s mouth. She discredited herself repeatedly. By the time the defense attorney stepped up to the plate, it was seemingly all over because though the attorney didn’t get to finish by the time we had to break, she was a firecracker who knew her stuff, and she went line item by line item poking holes in everything the plaintiff had declared on the stand.  I was waiting for the call that there would be no need to come in on Tuesday morning because they’d settled outside of court. If I was the plaintiff, that’s what I would have tried desperately to do. Found out Tuesday morning in the jury room, that EVERYONE thought the same thing.

We were nine women and three men. It was a very culturally and racially diverse bunch that had been culled from a predominantly white suburban county. I was pretty impressed actually. I felt like it represented our American  Melting Pot pretty well. Maybe another guy or two could have evened things out, but both the defendant and the plaintiff were women so no surprise there.

Since the jury wasn’t allowed to discuss the case, and we had a lot of waiting to do at different times throughout the day, we bonded over television, movies, celebrity gossip and popular culture. These were my kind of people. We looked up images and facts of certain celebs, putting together timelines, trying to determine if plastic surgery rumors were true. We tried to deduce where certain shows or movies had been filmed based off of certain shots without using IMDb. We even analyzed the oversaturation of the superhero market to figure out when it will hit full saturation. I mean once you’re put on the Perry Mason path, it’s kind of hard to deviate. We sleuthed everything we could while in our holding patterns. Everyone was genuinely nice and got along like aces.

We heard more testimony on Tuesday. We heard from the officer who had written the citation. We heard from the plaintiff’s husband and from the defendant, too.  Once that was all said and done, it was time for closing arguments. Like I said before, not quite as impassioned as Mr. McCoy, but a power point presentation and an emphasis on the law were perfectly acceptable closings for what they were.

We were charged by the judge to determine who was at fault, at what percentage they were at fault, and how much money should be awarded, if any, to the plaintiff. And if the plaintiff was found 50% or more at fault, no money could be awarded at all.  After the charge, we were sent back to the jury room to deliberate a verdict. We had maybe forty-five minutes till the end of the day. We were all in pretty close to agreement when we first sat down, but the wonders that talking things through will do.

to be continued…

Most people that know me know that Law & Order is my jam. Not SVU, or Criminal what have you, or any other iteration or spinoff Dick Wolf dreamt up for the purposes of expanding the brand above and beyond any creator’s wildest machinations. I’m talking about the original. The one he purposed to outlive Gunsmoke’s legacy in the annals of television history. This is a show I can watch repeatedly, love richly, and apparently one I can understand in any language.

There were two American TV shows I watched while living in Italy, both dubbed entirely in Italian. One was Life Goes On (a story for another day), the other was Law & Order. I would sit in the TV watching room in that little apartment in Arezzo tied to my home country by one thing – Jack FREAKING McCoy. His passionate closing arguments, whiskey drinking ways, the soft sweep of such a perfect head of hair, oh, and the Big Apple backdrop, had me homesick. It’s truly what kept me connected whilst over an ocean away.

Now my sister, a lawyer, has told me for years that Law & Order is not the real deal. That it is an inaccurate depiction of the way things work. For example, there are no such objections as “prejudicial”. She says all answers to the questions being objected to are in fact anticipated to be “prejudicial” which is why they are being objected to, but the bottom line is that that answer being potentially problematic for opposing counsel is not a valid reason for the formal protest. Regardless, sitting on that red futon with the cool Tuscan tile beneath my feat watching Jack McCoy passionately stand up and declare “Obiezione!!! Pregiudizievole!!!” … I understood and I felt home.

Through the years, I have put a lot of stock in my comprehension of how our judicial system works using Law & Order as my model to do so. And when I received my jury summons, I was so excited that I’d finally be able to do my civic duty by showing up, book in hand, ready to spend my day with other Atlanta area folks offering their time and life experience in service to their country. I knew I wouldn’t be picked to be on the actual jury. I mean, I wouldn’t pick me and if you’ve met me, you likely wouldn’t pick me either. I was just happy to be there with my fellow Americans, proud to see fair and balanced hard at work.

90 minutes in, I was entering the jury box and taking an oath.

Let’s just say Law & Order is was not.

to be continued …