Well, it’s over.  After two days of testimony, the defendant changed his plea to guilty, joining the 17 other defendants in this cocaine-conspiracy case.

I have to say that this was a fascinating experience; almost every aspect of it was interesting, although the way the information came in was often extremely boring.  On Thursday from 1:00 to 5:00 we listened to over 110 wiretapped phone conversations, many of which were in Spanish with a translated transcript, and almost all of which were filled with profanity and drug slang.

After the defendant changed his plea, the judge was kind enough to spend some time answering questions in the jury room with us, so we got a good overview of the way these trials usually go, the sentencing guidelines and requirements, and a lot of the other aspects of the case that we were unaware of from our vantage in the jury box.

One of the interesting things that came out was that I was an alternate, not an actual juror.  Assuming the trial had lasted two weeks as they had originally anticipated, I would have sat there for the whole thing, only to be told to go home without voting at the end.  Considering that, I’m even more happy to have gotten out of the experience early!

I wasn’t that excited about jury duty to start with, but I must say that now that it’s over I have a much greater appreciation for its role in the fabric of our society.  There’s something very hands-on and reassuring — very democratic — about a group of ordinary citizens being empowered to interpret the facts at trial to determine the guilt or innocence of the accused.  I’m sure that process can be abused or fall short of ideal, but it’s still a valuable method of binding us closer together as citizens.  I hope to serve on another jury someday!

Tags: Jury Duty

OK, so I was wrong.  I got picked (barely — I was the actual last juror called) to serve on a criminal trial jury for what they think will be a 7 to 8 day trial.  So effectively this week and next week are shot for work.  Obviously I can’t say anything about the actual case, but the whole process has been very interesting so far, if also somewhat boring.  There sure is a lot of downtime in court, particularly for the jury.

The judge is pretty sharp, though, and my fellow jurors seem like an interesting lot, so I’m looking forward to serving.  I’ll have more details after the case is done!

Tags: Jury Duty