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*The Martini: Hollywood-speak for the last shot of
the day when filming a movie.
Date: Mon, 18 Aug 1997 22:08:18
Today marked Day One (of Five) of Mr. Morrow's Ordeal, aka "I Couldn't Come Up With Any More Good Excuses to Weasel Out of Jury Duty."
The alarm rousted your fickle scribe at the ungodly (since Satan is, after all, the Prince of Insufficient Illumination) hour of 6:00 am today. The first day of the rest of the week, I said cheerily to myself as I vaulted out of bed (no mean feat, since the recent engineering project that elevated the sleeping quarters a couple of meters to eke out more storage from my postage-stamp condominium).
Arrived at Seattle Municipal Court (12th floor of the "Public Safety Building" between 3rd and 4th, James and Cherry -- in case any of you are planning an upcoming field trip of your own) at the astounding time of 7:50 AM. Can't for the life of me understand why people do this voluntarily, especially those who aren't involved with the care and feeding of poultry or hooved mammals. Caramba.
Got my official juror number. Number 418. (Overheard as I was sleepily reading the official "Welcome to Jury Duty" pamphlet: "What's my number?" "Four Two Five." "Is that four two five, or four hundred, twenty-five?" Oh god, please don't ever let me fall into the gears of this system.)
Watched a 20-minute pep video, narrated by none other than Raymond Burr. (I couldn't make this stuff up.) Gist seems to be: "This sucks, but you'll feel so much better when it's over" (roughly the same thing my high school cross-country coach said, right before I developed shin splints, a recurring hernia, and a compressed lumbar disk -- all of which still bother me from time to time, thank you very much).
For six hours, read everything I could get my hands on: the entire August issue of Premiere; the complete Seattle Sunday Times; two back issues of the Seattle Weekly; a backlog of clippings from the Wall Street Journal and The Economist, sent to me by a thoughtful friend (the gist of which seemed to be how radical French Deconstructivists and misguided feminists are destroying the American educational system).
Along about 3:00, got herded into the elevator and sent down to Courtroom 3. A solicitation-of-prostitution case involving a young Hispanic male (who required a court translator) and a Seattle police person (obviously female, but I was trying to avoid any gender-labeling terminology) posing as a sporting gal.
Judge started the "voir dire" (French for "looky here") process by droning through a set of cue cards on his desk. When he got to the "does anyone have any reason why he or she thinks he or she or it can't render an impartial decision in this case," I had to raise my hand and say "harrumph." Judge (and later, prosecuting attorney for City of Seattle) and I got into a spirited, if attenuated, conversation about why I thought the gummint didn't have any right sticking its nose into financial transactions between consenting adults, and how Prohibition didn't stop people from drinking in the 20s and 30s, just helped create a powerful new criminal class, blah, blah, blah. This seemed to galvanize a couple of other lumps (two myn, one womyn -- one of whom was reading the most recent John Grisham novel, I kid you not) into objecting as well. Just call me a rabble rouser.
Attorney for the defendant, attempting to establish that everyone understood the concepts of "presumption of innocence" and "reasonable doubt," elicited a frightening torrent of hogwash from one grizzled old fart, who opined that since we were dealing with misdemeanors, he would be comfortable returning a verdict of "guilty" even if reasonable doubts were still bumping around his noggin. The reason? Well, since this wasn't as serious as those felony things, even an erroneous guilty verdict could be an "educational experience" for the defendant.
Slack jaws of amazement all around. I struggled against, and finally overcame, the temptation to jump up and thank him (à la Blazing Saddles) for his authentic "Western gibberish."
Defense attorney embarked on an interesting tack, involving a famous episode of Seinfeld: the "frilly-shirt episode." Actually pretty clever, since even for those who don't watch the TV series, it was simple to summarize: Seinfeld meets a woman in a cafe; she talks in such a quiet, mousy little voice that nobody (except her absent boyfriend) can understand what she's saying; to be polite, Seinfeld says "yes" a couple of times when it appears she's asking him a question, even though he has no idea what she's asking. Turns out he has agreed to wear a ridiculous frilly shirt she has designed on a nationally-televised telethon.
Attorney asks "Is Seinfeld legally -- or even morally -- obligated to wear the frilly shirt?" Very clever cuz his client doesn't speak a word of English. I think you can see where he was going with this -- client was just nodding his head "yes" when solicited by RoboHooker, even though he didn't have a clue what the crazy gringa was talking about.
Cool, I think. Then he turns to me (why were they picking on me?) and works on a variation of his theme:
"Mr. Morrow, do you speak any languages?"
"Besides English, you mean?"
"Well, yes..."
"Okay: Spanish, French, Portuguese, and a little Arabic."
"Well, is there a language you don't speak?"
"Oh, hundreds. Thousands. Take your pick."
"Hmm. How's your French?"
"Pretty rusty, I'd say."
"All right then! Suppose you were in Paris, and this guy comes up to you on the street, starts rattling away. You don't comprehend everything he says, but respond 'yes,' or rather 'oui,' a few times. Later on, you realize you've agreed to buy his car for an exorbitant sum. Are you legally obligated to do so?"
"Oh, you know, verbal contracts aren't worth the paper they're written on."
"Heh, heh. But what about your obligation?"
"Hmmm. How big is this French guy?"
Didn't get chosen for that jury. Dang.
End of day one.
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