Part Three of Three, or: Fun with Civil Service!

I recevied a letter during break notifying me that at 8:30 on Monday the 3rd, I had to report to the courthouse for jury duty. Somewhat excited by the prospect of free money and a free parking space downtown, I wormed my way into the line of cars filing into the parking deck. We received special juror parking passes and everything! Already, this was very exciting. The courtroom was filled with about 260 people, and it took almost two hours simply for all of us to be checked in, given our $25 checks and Civil Jurors Handbooks made from a folded sheet of blue Xerox paper, and seated in order of juror number. Because I was number 54, I was in the second row. Once everyone was finally in place, the judge arrived and welcomed everyone. "This is a very rare day," he said, "because normally we have several cases going in three different courts, and if you weren't picked today you'd be back the next two days for other cases. But because of the holidays and all we only have one case in one court, so if you aren't in this jury you don't have to come back." There was a ripple of excitement among the jurors. $25 and a quick, clean getaway seemed imminent for all of us. The lawyers for both parties soon arrived and the judge explained the case:

On May 31st, 2001, J.P. rented a moving van from Budget to move across Athens. When he was finished he visited a drive-through ATM, but the top of the moving truck bumped into the overhang of the ATM kiosk. He stopped the truck, got out, inspected it and the kiosk and saw no damage, continued his transaction on foot and then went home. He called the manager of the bank that afternoon and told him what happened. The manager told J.P. that the ATM looked fine from his office window and people were using it like normal, but he would check it out himself and call back later that day if anything was off. A week later, the manager called J.P. to say that the kiosk and ATM machine both needed to be replaced for $21,000. And this is where conflicts arose.

The judge and lawyers then proceeded to whittle down the 260 jurors. People who had any kind of relationship to the specific bank or insurance companies involved eagerly came forward to explain their disqualification and were allowed to leave. That freed about about 40% of the group. As the questioning went on, the judge saved time by allowing entire blocks of jurors in the back rows to go. How unfair! Among everyone around me, there was a definite sense of entitlement to free money without effort-- that we had earned the money simply for our blessing the courts with our attendance. I oscillated between this and some nobly childish desire to take part in the legal system and devote my day-- nay, my week if needed-- to seeing that justice was served in this matter. Around lunchtime, when it was down to 48 people and I was still there, I got over this impulse and began the appropriate grumbling. The judge freed us until 1 o'clock with another check for $7 to cover food.

You know, I'm not trying to make this write-up as tedious as the experience itself was; that's just sort of happening on its own. My overelaborate and wordy style is blameless, of course, but I'll still try to speed this up.

Okay! So, we got back from lunch for several more rounds of questioning-- mainly, we were asked about our professions or majors in school. The lawyers than began to compile their lists. Like everyone around me, I was confident I would not be called. At the very least I had the priveledge of being the 12th name. Everyone else was dismissed, and after we were officially given our charge, we took a 15-minute recess. The jurors room was small and stuffy with a long table, a dry-erase board, mini-fridge stuffed with Coke products (sans Vanilla Coke, of course) and a coffee maker from the '70s at earliest. We spent the time sitting around and chatting; some of the other jurors were students, but most were just the random assortment of citizens one would imagine. Everyone seemed very nice and even friendly. When the lawyers were ready we were called back in and the trial began.

As the case had been brought against J.P., the prosecution got to lead everything, which included giving the first opening and closing statements and calling the first witnesses. The prosecution had to prove beyond doubt that J.P. was negligible in the events that occured and responsible for the damages caused. He called witnesses for the truck rental and bank but several of them seemed to lack important knowledge about the events, and the evidence he introduced didn't show essential things, like that any serious damage was caused to necessitate over $21,000 in replacements. We couldn't understand, though, why the bank was willing to pay an extra $3,000 to replace the entire ATM (Diebolt-made!) and kiosk instead of repairing them, yet had not chosen to post any sort of low clearance warning or protection. Installing a metal L-bar that blocks people from hitting the kiosk would have been only $700; half a gallon of red paint is even cheaper, I suspect. The defense's questioning of one of the bank reps revealed that this was the only ATM out of the 30 branches in the region that had no protections or warnings whatsoever, which made the bank seem a little, how you say... negligent. But when the prosecution questioned J.P. himself and asked if he had had concerns that the truck was too tall for the overhang, he admitted that he had. So why, then, had he willingly risked damage to the kiosk instead of simply parking the truck and using the ATM on foot? None of us could understand this, either. It was a little after 4 o'clock when both lawyers made their very eloquent closing statements, each beginning with a promise of brevity and still taking about fifteen minutes. We were given another charge to guide our deliberation and dismissed back to the jurors' room. We were required to elect a foreperson to guide the deliberation, but when no one offered, not even the middle-aged schoolteacher, I surprised us all by volunteering. I told everyone to go around the table saying, briefly, what verdict they would recommend and their reasons for it. When people prattled on for too long or spoke over someone else, I got us back on track. Very, very fortunately, almost everyone had come to the same verdict on their own: that the bank and defendant were equally negligible, which meant the bank could not get any money from the defendant. The others wanted to find entirely for the defendant, but with some explanation agreed to the verdict of equal negligibility since the end result was the same. Oddly enough, the written verdict did not even go into specifics-- either we awarded the bank X number of dollars, or we found for the defendant.

I filled in and signed the verdict and we were shown back into the courtroom, where I had to stand and read it for the court records(!). And that was all. The case was closed and the jurors were dismissed, some stopping briefly to shake the hands of the lawyers and J.P., who was sweaty but happy. None of us really said goodbye, but we did wave to one another as we drove out of the parking deck. Even the judge seemed very thankful that we'd finished settled the case in one day.

That was rediculously and unforgivably long, wasn't it? In any case, this concludes my fragmented holiday update. Seeing as the new semester begins in a couple hours, I'd say I finished in good time.