The Trial: Day 3 (May 7th)

Day 3

I want to note here that my assumption about the defense attorneys in the case is almost certainly wrong, even though as public defenders, they both work in the same office. It's interesting, though, that I made this assumption, and that I still can't guarantee that it's not true. I think it's more a matter of not only two very different styles, but also the public defender for the other defendant, i.e. not our defendant, having virtually no chance of proving his client innocent.

Today it got quite testy in the courtroom. One of the defense attorneys (actually the one representing the defendant we have to concern ourselves with) is ridiculously detailed with his questions; I have a feeling that what's really going on is that the two defense attorneys have collaborated on the questions they want to ask, and that the lawyer I mentioned earlier gets stuck with all the boring, detail questions. I'm guessing this is the case because our attorney is asking questions that don't really pertain at all to his client, but to the other client. The only other reason he could be doing it is to make the defendant's testimony seem inconsistent, which he is succeeding at but because there doesn't seem to be any ill intent, I accept it much more as faulty memory from a while ago than intentional lying under oath.

What's funny is that virtually every witness has gotten angry at our defense attorney for "twisting their words." Today it got to the point where the prosecutor objected on the very shaky grounds that the defense was "badgering" the witness (all he was doing was asking the witness about specifics in her preliminary testimony), and the judge smirked at the objection. Before the judge could say anything, our defendant's defense lawyer, who had been getting some verbal abuse from the witness who was getting annoyed with the questioning, offhandedly commented that it was really badgering the attorney, and the whole courthouse erupted in laughter. Also in a quick note, as soon as the other defense attorney started his line of questioning, which took approximately an eighth of the time it took the other attorney, the witness seemed to become much more relaxed, even though the other attorney was asking about the same events.

An interesting moment today was that we actually got to hear the full 911 call that brought the police to the scene. The actual call didn't sound that intense, but it made the witness on the stand, who had been very composed the whole time, break down in tears while listening to it. We also got to hear police testimony for the first time, from one of the officers (who is now a detective) who arrived on the scene first. It was actually fascinating to hear a testimony from a professional. He was calm and very honest about things he wasn't certain about. Definitely a change of pace.

This trial is going to be pretty dull until we get to the actual evidence, which at least for our defendant, is going to be absolutely critical in determining his innocence or guilt.

Random Notes

The other jury, which as far as I can tell doesn't include anyone under 35, had a number of people falling asleep off and on today, including the woman I mentioned yesterday. THIS is the jury you want to have deciding if a defendant was guilty of first degree murder?! To be honest, we should probably switch defendants. However, in a way, my jury likely has the harder decision to make, since the concept of aiding and abetting is relatively complex. Another thing about the other jury is that I see almost none of them taking notes, while most of the people in my jury take copious notes.

I mentioned the projector from yesterday being out of focus. It was used again today, and it was still out of focus, but the prosecutor adjusted it for less than ten seconds, and guess what? You could actually see what she was talking about! Incredible.

We got to look at the official transcript of the 911 call while it was being played. On the first page, the following was written: "Please hold while we redirect your call. Enjoy the music while you are on hold." I couldn't make this up if I wanted to. Unbelievable.

One of the prosecutors (I'm assuming the assistant DA) keeps giving me bizarre, intense looks. I wouldn't describe them as good or bad looks, just intense ones. She's being doing this since the first day I returned for jury selection, when we passed in a hallway. I have no idea what's going on, but it doesn't exactly make me uncomfortable, just confused.

The foreman was dressed in all blue today, as in blue suit, blue pants and blue tie. He actually looked incredibly stylish; not many people could pull that off. Apparently, foremen make a lot of money; he's been dressed in a different suit every day, and they've all looked pretty expensive.

No official person in the court, especially the judge, covers their mouth when yawning. Apparently, yawning out loud in a court while someone is talking is not offensive...like it is in pretty much every other social situation I can think of.

The court reporters had to swap today in the middle of questioning. While they were swapping, and therefore anything said was off the record, the two started to crack jokes with the jury and be generally lighthearted. It was actually very endearing, but quite bizarre; we effectively went from talking about the exact color of blood splatters on a sweatshirt to self-deprecating jokes about court reporting in the span of two or three seconds.

There was a funny incident in the very beginning of the day. One of the jurors in the other jury from mine, who was wearing dress pants and ratty white sneakers with no socks the first day I saw her (believe me, it wasn't a quirky look; more like plain awful), was sitting in the box with what sounded like a radio playing. The judge was clearly annoyed and trying to figure out what was going on. It turned out her cell phone was turned off but still somehow playing music from sort of mp3 player in it. One of my favorite jurors in my group, who doesn't speak often but when she does cracks me up every time (when questioned about a statement she made in her questionaire during jury selection, she responded that she had had an Orwellian moment and would indeed be able to trust police officers; I was uncontrollably smirking), commented under her breath that it was probably "one of those ridiculous, stupid iPhones." Indeed, it turned out to be exactly that, and the security guard ended up having to confiscate it and "take it around back." Apparently, you can't remove the iPhone's back cover to get to the battery and shut it off in case of something like this. So now I have yet another reason to not pick up an iPhone (this is in addition to the fact that I hate how it feels on your ear when you actually use it as a phone, that it seems to randomly decide when to show you that you get texts, and that virtually none of the applications I've tried on it work all that well, including the internet).