The Trial: Day 1 (May 5th)

As promised, here is the first of I believe thirteen installments of the day by day happenings of the court. I'm only going to edit this stuff for clarity/misspellings, but I want to keep my daily impressions as intact as possible.

Day 1

The main activity of the first day of the trial...sitting around doing nothing. Seriously. The inefficiency of the judicial system was on prime display today. The judge even apologized for it at one point. There are two juries for this case, given the two different defendants, and sometimes one jury has to sit outside of the courtroom while information pertaining to only one defendant is presented. I actually have a feeling that we, since we are the jury that has to decide whether someone aided and abetted in the crime, will be outside of the courtroom more than the other jury. But not so today.

What happened was that the two defense lawyers in the case had to make separate opening statements to the appropriate jury, so one jury had to sit outside while the other jury heard the opening statement pertaining to their defendant. My jury had to sit outside first. We were waiting for probably twenty minutes or so, and were then called in to listen to our opening statements. The first, from the prosecutor, was extremely intense and passionate, but sounded like they didn't have a lot of evidence regarding the defendant we have to reach a verdict on. It lasted about twenty five minutes. We then had to break for lunch before the defense lawyer had his opening statement, and were told to come back fifteen minutes later than usual(1:45) due to a sentencing for a separate trial. We came back...and then waited until close to 2:15; the sentencing took a lot longer than expected.

We then went back in and listened to the defense lawyer's opening statement, which lasted, and i'm not kidding here, for close to forty-five minutes. It was interminably long, but in the end, he made a rather amazing, if incredibly long winded, summary of the case and was rather convincing in terms of showing that his client was innocent. But of course, that doesn't mean anything right now; the evidence needs to come out.

Now remember, the other jury was waiting outside this whole time, and when you include the extra half hour we were all waiting for the sentencing to end, we are talking about over an hour of just sitting and doing nothing; at least they had a nice view of the city from the huge, beautiful window in the hallway of the courthouse. But man, what a crazy deal.

The other example of inefficiency came from the first person to testify, who was an eye or at least earwitness to the crime. It was all going very well and was straightforward until she was asked questions from the defense lawyers. They were asking her to remember specific details...from three years ago. She clearly had tried to put the whole thing behind her, and I don't blame her. But the line of questions, and the nature of the questions and her answers, threw her memory of the night into serious question. I was amazed to see how quickly I could go from trusting someone's memory to not being sure at all. I know she's not trying to be malicious or trying to lie, but I'm not sure what to think. Seriously, though, consider this situation. This crime was committed three years ago, and we're only now putting it to trial?! How could someone remember minute details about something as far back as that unless they had been taking notes? Amazing.

So my current status: Other defendant: really guilty. My defendant: innocent. However, this doesn't mean anything after only the first day. We shall see.

Random Notes:

The court reporters look like a mother/daughter duo. Both blonde, white, similar height, similar facial features. However, one is rail thin, wears suits and very little makeup. The other is buxom, wears colorful clothing and wears tons of makeup (I'm making her sound like she looks weird, but she's actually gorgeous). I'll let you guess which one is which.

The judge was falling asleep a little bit at points during the trial. I don't blame him. He basically has to sit there doing nothing.

I somehow got out of paying the full amount for parking; I forgot to validate my ticket, and when I only had three dollars instead of the 7.50 I needed, the person only said "You're coming back, right?" I said yes, not truthfully (I wasn't going to the same lot after lunch) and she let me through! I felt guilty and went back to pay the difference after lunch. But still...

Remember how I kinda made fun of how you're only in the courtroom for an hour and a half? After today, I see the reason why. It's exhausting stuff, listening to testimony, especially about this kind of subject matter. However, what is amazing is how easy it is, at least for me, to notice discrepancies in testimony.