I just completed my tour of duty as a potential juror at King County Superior Court. My summons arrived by mail at my old place, so I only found out last Friday that I was due downtown at 8 am Monday morning. I arrived ten minutes late, massively hungover from an epic house party I hosted over the weekend, and sat in a dimly lit room with about three hundred people. We watched a cheesy orientation video telling us all about how jury trials are the cornerstone of American constitutional democracy. There were posters on the walls scattered about claiming the same in case we forgot. Then a judge got up and said pretty much the same thing.
Then I waited two hours before being the 24th of the first 50 prospective jurors to be called up to a courtroom. I even raced down the hill on my bike in pretty heavy traffic, still somewhat hazy, to get there on time. Later, a bailiff would quip “We make you wait for hours but if you hold us up ninety seconds there’ll be hell to pay.” Government is nothing if not a paragon of efficiency.
One cool thing about the Superior Courthouse is that it is many stories but the elevators are relics from the 40s. Getting 50 people up to the eighth floor is no mean feat. Once to the upstairs lobby, we were instructed to sort ourselves in ascending order and were led into the courtroom where the attorneys, judge, and clients were waiting. By this point it was just after 11. The judge reminded us of how surely inconvenient yet valuable our service was, enabling a society in which disputes can be peacefully resolved without concentrating too much power in a few individuals. Justice is good propaganda.
Prosecution and defense attorneys introduced themselves and their clients; the judge introduced the case; and then each juror was given a chance to indicate if they believed their service on the jury for that case would warrant a hardship. We were each given a laminated placard with our number on it to identify us when we spoke by first raising it. The judge noted which numbers were raised and asked each juror to explain, in turn, the nature of their hardship. A few legitimate complaints: “I run a biology lab and we’re doing an experiment next week I’m on call for and I cannot be replaced”; “I have an nonreschedulable licensing exam this week that lasts four days and cost 600 unrefundable dollars and if I don’t take it I won’t be accredited until I pass it next year.” Mostly whining: “I pay my rent and bills, my parents are going to be short $5000 for next semester’s tuition so I need to work 40 hours every day this summer;” “My kid gets off daycare at 4 daily and there’s no one to watch her for an hour before I could be round to get her”. But the best story was this:
Judge: Number 37, please state the nature of your hardship.
37 (a heavyset neckbeard): *heavy sigh* Dad died three years ago, and now I’m the only source of transportation for her.
Judge: How often does she need transportation? Where does she go?
37: The store and the doctor.
Judge: How many appointments does she have in the next five days?
37: I don’t know, I’ll have to double check.
Me: *facepalm*
37: But sometimes she has to go unplanned. Her health isn’t very good.
Judge: And when was the last time that happened?
37: A couple weeks ago.
Judge: And there’s no one else who could take her if that were to happen?
37: No, there’s no one now that Dad is dead. *looks at feet*
Judge: Thank you.
I attended one of these selection panels each day, and to my surprise everyone who asked to be released for hardship was granted their request. Both days this ended up being between a quarter and a third of those assembled.
But now began the voir dire phase of the proceedings, where the attorneys of both sides got to ask variously leading questions. Sometimes they were discussion questions or polls targeted at the entire group; less often they were specific questions targeted at a particular juror. Each attorney got two 15-25 minute periods, alternating from plaintiff to defense, to say what they liked. After that, it was juror selection time. The very first phase was for the attorneys to once again alternate, removing without need to give a reason up to four jurors from the panel.
The first case I sat on a panel for was pretty boring-sounding. Some business had successfully litigated copyright infringement, but the sole owner’s lawyers had apparently still managed to screw the case up somehow, and he was alleging negligence and suing for damages. No details of what patent or even what business were mentioned, but we discussed the nuances of patent law and the “standard of care” at which any professional is obligated to perform.
The plaintiff’s attorney used an example about music licensing to ask us whether we thought the use of intellectual property should be compensated. I revealed my knowledge of some of the complexities of that particular area of law: namely, that musical compositions (i.e. songs) are copyrighted separately from musical recordings (i.e. recorded performances of songs). He found that to be of interest since it somewhat derailed the simplistic argument he was attempting to make, so he joked that there were some “well-informed jurors in the court today!”
But this led to a discussion of complexities of patent law. I mentioned that I knew about the concept of patent trolls, specifically in the software business, and how I thought it constituted an abuse of the patent system. I told how large tech corporations gobble up patents, often simply to have an arsenal with which to threaten potentially more onerous countersuit when other tech companies think their patents are being infringed; barring sudden and unexpected retraction, This American Life did some lovely reporting about this phenomenon last year. But he asked me whether I thought it would be wrong if someone else profited from an exact copy of some code I had written. I replied that I think that would be wrong, as well as illegal, as it would constitute a form of plagarism, but that my view was nuanced. Plagarism is rather like an invented concept, I said channeling Stanley Fish, and it was different in kind from actual theft. I observed a difference between theft and piracy: “I could make a copy for every person on earth of my code, and it would be cheap and easy. But if someone took a manufactured good I had made, it was gone from me and all my hard work would have been for nothing.”
I was the first juror to be released by the defense attorney. End of day 1.
That helpful infomercial taught badly hungover me that Washington state law is such that when summoned, one must stick around for two full days at a minimum to possibly be seated on a jury. So I was back the next day, ready for more. I became the ninth of 50 jurors, again in the first group to be chosen by lottery (I feel sorry for people who sat around all day and were never chosen for a panel), and if you can imagine such a thing, this case was more boring than the first.
Two women had been driving automobiles at some time in 2010, and the older of the two had admitted fault in causing a collision. However, for reasons never made clear, the other woman was alleging that the first had been negligent in her operation of the vehicle and was now suing for damages. Amazingly, the discussion tended toward an indictment of the civil laws and courts for fraud and abuse, as well as a poorly executed back-and-forth about the moral rectitude of suing for money as a result of harm.
Several interesting things were said. Just before the lawyers started their questioning, the judge asked if there was any reason any juror felt he or she could not be fair and impartial for the case. I said I didn’t know whether I had such a reason, but that I am a “militant cyclist who despises motor vehicles and, in the interest of disclosure, the attorneys ought to be aware of that.” Slight laughs all around, but I immediately emphasized my belief that this fact would not be disqualifying to my impartiality. It was immediately after this that I realized it was likely that the defense attorney would want to release me from the panel. I predicted as much to the woman sitting next to with whom I had been sparely conversing just before the proceedings began, a prediction which she found to be entertaining.
The first of two attorneys for the plaintiff went first and the discussion rapidly spiraled into pessimism and suspicion about the efficacy of courts and the utility of money as a means of redressing harm. I desperately tried to defend the judicial system and tort law; the attorney described as ‘eloquent’ my argument that despite the imperfect nature and execution of the law and courts, our duty in this proceeding and in trials generally is to apply the law as well as we can, continue to perfect the art, and “carry on with a system which has been stable for 230 years.” I saw some people agree with me, but I thought it particularly odd that I was the one presenting that argument given my well-known views about the failures and dysfunctions of the government, many of which can be read on this very site.
During this time, the defense attorney had been staring at me from time to time. When it was his turn, I was the second juror he asked specific questions.
He: So you’re the cyclist.
Me: Yes. One of many.
*laughs*
He: Do you own a car?
Me: No.
He: Have you ever owned a car?
Me: No.
He: Have you ever driven a car?
Me: Yes.
He: So why don’t you like to drive a car?
At this point I explained the environmental impact of burning oil, the economic and human cost of fighting wars to get more of it, and in particular the incredible danger driving cars entails. I called them “giant metal boxes” traveling at high velocity. Pretty much anyone can get a license, I said, and I don’t trust most people (laughs). Who knows if someone’s tuning a radio a little long, veering over the line on a narrow street; maybe you’re not paying attention either, distracted thinking about a bad breakup. Cars are incredibly dangerous, I ranted, and I’m surprised by how baked into American culture they are. He thanked me and moved on; if I was out before, I certainly was now.
But it got worse! His argument was mostly about shaming us into not suing: “How many of you have been in a car crash?” Everyone else’s hands go up; my neighbor expressed interest that I hadn’t been in one. “And how many of you sued?” No one. But if that was bad, the second plaintiff attorney was downright silly: “I like eggs. How many of you like eggs? And how do you buy them? You check the carton, right, to make sure none of them are cracked. Now, do you think you can make any assumptions about the state of the eggs in a perfectly normal looking carton?” I was rolling my eyes, but some jurors seemed to think it is possible that one could make a safe assumption that the eggs are fine if the carton is.
But before long we were back to shaming. A Christian woman who was proselytizing at me the day before said she thought we need to ooze a great deal of grace in this life. One man, probably a vet from Nam, put it even more bluntly: “Life is life. Not everything is fair. Sometimes a soldier has to go to war and a lot of things will happen to him that can’t really be fixed, certainly not through money.” The attorney asked if anyone had different thoughts about that, and my placard shot up. “First, ‘Life is Life’ is just tautological, and it doesn’t help us to even consider something like that. Not to say that I disagree with tautologies, since that would be stupid.” Laughs, and a head lolling from the attorney that seemed to say “This guy!” “Anyway,” I continued, “I keep coming back to tort law. We have laws on the book that exist to provide for a way to secure redress for harm, often via money, which is probably the best we can do for now to get strangers to be able to fix mistakes they make that affect each other. It doesn’t matter if any of us would sue in similar circumstances; the fact is that your client has sued, so we should be talking about that.” Another older gentleman put it well when he said “What matters here is the data, which we haven’t heard yet. Tell us the facts and we can decide how to proceed.”
The defense attorney waived his remaining time to question when it was again his turn, and he kept giving me a smouldering, almost malevolent stare. The plaintiff’s attorneys released my other neighbor, an obnoxious woman who had poorly related a whiny anecdote about how she had been burned by insurance companies in the past and “didn’t trust the system anymore.” And, as I had predicted hours earlier, I was the first to be released by the defense attorney.
I calmly left without a word. And that was the end.