StatelyWayneManor

Didn't Mean to Leave You Hanging

Wow....such a long break between posts...but don't worry I didn't forget about my brief encounter with courtroom drama, from the other side of the rail.

DAY 1

Jury duty---no one ever wants to do it. And I REALLY didn't want to do it on Monday morning...at precisely the time the US soccer team was kicking off its World Cup run against the Czechs.  Although in hindsight, I was spared the agony of watching a dull, listless and heartless performance by the Yanks, at the time I didn't know that.  All I could think was that I was wasting my time in the jury assembly room, knowing full well that I would never be picked for a jury.  In my prior experience, either you sit in the big room for a few hours and then get sent home because the case settled....OR you get called upstairs to go through jury selection and they find out you're a lawyer AND work for an insurance company and you are quickly "excused" by one of the attorneys who doesn't want you on the jury.

So I waited in the room, alternating between napping, reading the paper, and wondering why the two TVs in the room couldn't be turned on to ESPN.  To pass the time, I scanned for hot guys and found one particularly hot guy who looked like he worked on the docks....shaved head, goatee...kinda cocky looking....then he smiled...oops only had half of his TEETH...bummer!

Finally they started calling the list of names of people to go upstairs.  90% of the names were butchered by the clerk, but most people seemed to be used to it and knew when their name was called.  Sure enough, he called me and it was up to the 6th floor.  Once upstairs we learned that the case was  a criminal case, involving shoplifting (alleged) at  Old Navy.  I immediately thought, "everything is so cheap there, why risk getting caught?...better to hit Banana Republic"!   

The clerk upstairs read the list of the first 18 people to be called up to the box (out of about 75) and I was one of them.  The judge, who was a totally glamorous blond woman, asked the basic questions:  Name, neighborhood, occupation, family members, prior jury service.  I figured attorney for an insurance company was all I needed to say to trigger additional questions.  But, alarmingly, they never asked what I had done in my career.  If they had, they would have discovered I spent 15 years defending retail companies, often in false arrest cases, and even tried a case where I defended a security service.  But they didn't ask, and they didn't knock me off the panel, even though the other attorney on there, who clearly was eager to serve, got bumped.  Within a few hours it was all done, and I was STUCK.   

On of the highlights of jury selection was the classic SF characters doing their best to get off jury duty.  My favorite was a very short haired blond Caucasian woman who insisted she "didn't believe in the legal system", that it discriminated against people of color, that Old Navy made its clothes in illegal sweat shops and that therefore she couldn't be fair.  Since the defendant was an African American woman, I thought it ironic that this woman was prepared to abandon the defendant, leaving her to the whims of the corrupt, racist legal system in order to preserve her "principles" by avoiding service!  After a zillion questions from the Judge, she ended up getting rejected by the prosecutor.  We were left with a jury of 12...5 Asian, 4 white, 2 Hispanic and one African American woman, who was a retired security guard (and who was the ONLY African American in the entire jury pool of 75, despite the fact that the defendant, her accomplice, and the two security guards who testified were all black....very strange).  We were excused for the day and told the two young white male lawyers would present opening statements in the morning.  I was nervous for them, and suddenly happy that I didn't have to go home and prepare for the next day like they did....(to be continued)

Scenes from the Next "Law and Order"

Finally, it has happened.  I showed up Monday for jury duty, hoping to be excused right away so I could race back and watch what turned out to be a dreadful World Cup opener for the U.S. team, and low and behold, I was selected for the jury!  I don't know what the lawyers were thinking, but if they had asked more questions, they most certainly would have used one of their challenges on me.  I am dying to talk about the case, but I can't until it's over...which may be as soon as tomorrow afternoon.  Stay tuned...
   

Kind of Like Michael Jordan...

...only different!

Last night I momentarily came out of softball retirement as the Spitfire were short players for their City league game.  The results---3 hits in 4 times up, a couple runs scored, a couple runs batted in, 7 innings of excruciating back pain, alarming shortness of breath, dizziness from wearing the catcher's mask, and aches in muscles I didn't even know I had the morning after.

Why is it that no amount of "cardio" at the gym makes me as winded as moving three steps to field a ground ball during a softball game?  Why is it that no amount of weight lifting makes me as sore the next day as swinging the bat, running to first, picking up and throwing a relatively light ball for an hour and a half?  I have no idea, but it's always been that way...just a bit exaggerated now in my old age.

Oh well...it was all worth it...we won, I contributed and created some Spitfire memories of my own besides keeping score.