The Trial: Day 7 (May 13th)

Day 7

This was a wild day in the court. Like yesterday, we started pretty close to on time today, which was nice. We heard more testimony from the detective, who to be honest came off as confident but not deeply interested in being exact with details. This seemed a little distressing, but he's also been a homicide detective for close to a decade, and a police man for longer than that; I can see how this could wear you down after a while.

After lunch, we had testimony from, FINALLY, a defense witness (yes, the entire trial so far has been the prosecution), who was a crime lab technician. This was actually kind of interesting for several reasons. For one thing, like Michelle Madrid the crime scene investigator, she's very young; she basically just got out of graduate school, but has testified in court around sixty times. She was insanely formal, to the point where, believe it or not, she had prepared a PowerPoint that included a history of blood splatter research that went on for two slides. The presentation was mostly incredibly pointless, but when we got to blood splatter, it got interesting, and we heard more exact details about a sweatshirt found on the main defendant that was splattered with blood.

What was funny is that once she was done with her testimony, the prosecution used the EXACT same tactics the defense has been using all trial, namely trying to discredit her as an expert. This time it worked better than usual, mainly because of her youth; she got a bit tripped up over certain things, but it was clear from the beginning, even when the defense was questioning her, that she didn't know that much about the case. She was probably not the best person to call to the stand for the defense.

We then took a ten minute break so she could shut off her computer and store it (I'm not sure why the jurors had to leave the courtroom for this), came back around 2:45, listened to fifteen more minutes of cross examination from the main detective, and then took our standard break at 3. For some reason, we got a longer break than usual, and we went back into the courtroom around 3:30.

When we got back in, as we were sitting down, I made a side comment that I needed a break as a joke. This made everyone around me crack up, but we were quickly silenced by something stunning happening. The other defendant was actually speaking, even appealing to the judge! We have not heard a thing from either defendant the whole trial, and here was one speaking out of turn! The judge kept trying to order him to keep quiet, but the defendant was having none of it. After a minute or so of this, we were ordered out again. I got my break!

We were outside for half an hour, and at one point the prosecution left the room and joined us outside! We obviously couldn't talk to them, but it was still surprising. They went back in after about ten minutes, and then we were called in five minutes later, only to be immediately sent out again! Clearly, there was some kind of chaos going on in the courtroom. At 4, we were called back in...and dismissed for the day! Unfortunately, we have to report back two hours early tomorrow, to make up for how long we were outside of the courtroom today. So as you can see, strange things are starting to happen. We shall see what's going on tomorrow.

Random Notes

The cafeteria lady and the parking attendant at the free juror lot are both starting to recognize me. I can't tell if this is a good thing or depressing that I've become a regular at a courthouse.

What do homicide detectives often call the big file that contains all the info for a specific case? A "murder book."

There were some real characters in the court today. There was a creepy guy who went in and out of the court three times. We only saw him exit the first two times, but when we left, he threw the door open hard and close to ran out of the room. Needless to say, we all stayed far away from him. There was also a clan of people (I mean, we're talking about around twenty people), all related, who rode up in the elevator with myself and one other juror, walked into the courtroom for all of two minutes, and left just as quickly. You got me.

With all the breaks and sidebars we had today, I had time to do three crosswords...in the courtroom while there were sidebars. Based on my average times for Wednesday, that means we were waiting around in the courtroom for about twenty minutes today. Man.

My jury has become extremely chummy. I definitely got on the right jury; the other jury is older and seems much less energetic and interesting in general (I overheard a conversation today in the bathroom between two of the jurors from the other jury that was about, get ready, the prostate). We have such a great mixture of people on our jury, and we're all incredibly nice as well. I really hope I can stay in touch with most of these people.

The judge was hysterically funny today. At one point, he looked at one of the defense attorneys with an incredulous expression as he was following an admittedly bizarre line of questioning. He also predicted an objection before it happened and overruled it! The prosecution couldn't believe it.