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October 08, 2006
Barone in the box
I've been thinking about jury service lately, and how different it must be to experience a trial from inside the jury box, a passive participant instead of a litigator.
Political maven Michael Barone recently served as a juror, and his observations are as astute as you'd expect from the Capital Hill maven.
I was struck by the high quality of the judge and of both the prosecutor and the defense counsel. Years ago, from 1969 to 1971, I served as a law clerk to a federal appeals court judge, and reading the transcripts of state criminal cases, as I sometimes had to do, left me feeling that the judicial process in big-city criminal courts was often pretty bad. I got a much better impression as a juror this year.
The judge did a fine job, keeping firm control of the courtroom, maintaining a serious but also a friendly tone, treating counsel, jurors, and every witness with courtesy and respect. So far as I could tell, his rulings on evidentiary matters seemed correct and fair.
The prosecutor and defense counsel were both well prepared and carefully professional. In their closing statements, they even rose to some level of eloquence. Defense counsel, by the way, was from the D.C. public defender's office. I couldn't understand the point of some of their questions, especially on cross-examination, but that may just be because I didn't understand the facts and the law as well as they did.
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A curiosity. One of the clerks, when she swore in witnesses, ended the oath with "so help you." The other ended it with "so help you God." Does the first clerk take the position that the First Amendment prohibits the use of the word "God" in court?
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One juror, who wore different colored wigs and football T-shirts to court and was missing two of her front teeth, made the point that we had never seen the knife and suggested that it was possible that the defendant used a bigger knife. I replied that it didn't make any difference, since there was no question that a stabbing had taken place. But as the discussion went on, I changed my mind and agreed with her and others that the point was worth noting.
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I have heard of D.C. juries over the years in which some black jurors refuse to vote to convict, saying they don't want to send another black man to jail. There was nothing faintly like that in our deliberations.
Barone's account of how the jury reaches a verdict is interesting, mainly because the deliberations process is such an opaque process to those of us who actually put on the show -- and almost never get a chance to serve.
Take a few minutes and read the whole thing.
Posted by Mike Lief at October 8, 2006 08:31 PM
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