Posted by: Dale Franks on Wednesday, May 16, 2007 Well, that didn't take long. The jury has been picked, and I'm not on it, so I can go back and print my notes from the last two days. NOTE: All of the names below are pseudonyms.
Or something like that. The judge tells us that this is merely the charges. it isn't proof of anything, and we are to make no determinations about Mr. Herrera based on the charges. We are introduced to Mr. Herrera. He has a mullet hairdo and a big zapata mustache and tiny goatee. He is paunchy, and of slightly below-average height, wearing a light gray shirt, striped tie, and gray slacks. He looks like the average criminal defendant, a loser dressing up badly for court. In fact he doesn't look much different from any of a million young Hispanic men who toil daily at gardening, or day jobs. You wouldn't look twice at him on the street. He has no visible gang tats or any of the other "Hey, look at me! I'm scary!" visual cues that might indicate the habitual offender usually seen haunting California courtrooms. The judge begins questioning the jury. My. Isn't he the nosy one. "Where do you live? Where did you live before that? What do you do for a living? What degrees do you have? What do your parents do for a living? Your wife? Your kids? Their spouses? Do you have any direct or indirect law enforcement experience? Do you know anyone in the legal profession? have you ever been a juror? Did you come to a verdict? have you ever committed a crime? Have you ever witnessed a crime? have you ever been a party in a lawsuit?" It goes on and on. I see the reasons for asking the questions, but I'm uncomfortable baring my whole life to 80 strangers. The judge talks to four jurors before lunch. Great. Only 71 more to go. 15 May/15:07: It's going a bit faster than I thought it would. Line of the day: "Juror 18, if you are married, what does your spouse do?" "I'm between wives, your honor." The judge is doing a lot of questioning about psychological experts. He explains that the case will not address a "not guilty by reason of insanity" defense. The jury will, however, have to weigh some of the elements of the crime in light of psychiatric expert testimony, and determine if they are met for a guilty verdict for murder. A couple of the jurors are, in fact psychologists, all of whom are counselors of one type or another in the junior college system. I suspect they can look forward to going bye-bye on the first round of challenges. 15 May/16:00: The judge has finished questioning the first 24 jurors. He shuts court down half an hour early, and the defense and prosecution will ask questions tomorrow morning. One of the jurors is a retired BATF agent with 30 years service at the agency. He's some sort of explosives expert. The judge drills him on how he'll respond to testimony from other law enforcement officers. He says he'll be scrupulously fair, of course. Not that that'll help him. If I was the defense attorney, I'd bump him at the first opportunity. Which, by the way, assuming they get to me, is why I figure I'll be bumped. I can't imagine allowing law enforcement officers deciding my client's guilt or innocence if I was a defense attorney. Another juror is a retired Army infantry NCO, who's worked for the last 15 years as an armed guard at the nuclear power plant at San Onofre. He's a total ass. If you've spent half your adult life in law enforcement as a sworn peace officer like I have, nothing gets up your nose faster than a security guard with no law enforcement experience, who acts like he's the lead homicide detective for LAPD. He regales any juror who'll listen with his amazing breadth of training and innate talent for law enforcement. Under questioning from Judge Goldman, he actually corrects the judge on a few minor points. Again, total ass. Lots of questions, too, about whether jurors will apply the law, as the judge explains it, even if they don't agree with it. He tells them they must apply the law as he explains it, and asks if they can do so. Huh. Jury nullification is evidently a sore subject in California courts. I wonder how I'll answer that question if I am asked. [Musings on jury nullification moved to a separate post—EDF] A lot of jurors have advanced degrees. Except for a couple of young people, everyone has at least a bachelor's degree, and the vast majority have at least one Masters. Is this usual?
The defense asked some questions, and made some interesting statements about the case. Mr. Herrera did, in fact, kill Mr. Allen (a human being, in case you've gone astray again into thinking that we was a narwhal, or something). This doesn't look too good for Mr. Herrera. Even his own attorney says he's a killer. I guess the evidence on this one is so rock solid that everyone involved knows Mr. Herrera is going away for a while. What we are going to hear psychiatric expert testimony for is to determine Mr. Herrera's degree of culpability. I.e., the defense is gonna try to cut that murder charge down to something more manageable, like manslaughter. To that end, we will hear evidence that Mr. Herrera is mildly off his rocker, except when he takes his meds. Which, according to the defense, he wasn't doing when he gutted Mr. Kieth like a catfish. The defense attorney, Mr. Richmond, asks Total Ass if he could discriminate between varying levels of culpability based on Mr. Herrera's psychiatric condition. As expected, Total Ass replies that if Mr. Herrera didn't take his meds, then he's guilty, no ifs ands or buts. Compassionate guy, Total Ass is. Conversely, another juror has a son-in-law who howls at moonbeams if he doesn't take his meds, so now Bleeding Heart tells the defense that he wants to hold Mr. Herrera, and gently stroke his silky black hair. I don't know where I stand. I have to take my little Avandia and metformin pills every day for diabetes. If I don't, Bad Things will happen. Surely Mr. Herrera knows this. On the other hand, that happens a lot with crazies. They know they have to take their meds. But they feel fine when they do, so they think they've got that barking mad deal licked and stop taking them. Then the next thing they know they're waking up in an unfamiliar hotel room with dried hooker blood all over them. Maybe they don't relate to the meds in the same way the sane do. One juror, Stoner Rock-Boy, answers all questions put to him with monosyllabic grunts. He gets line of the day, too. "Where do you work?" "Vons." "Is that a full-time or part-time job?" "Full-time." What do you do when you're not working?" "Stuff." OK. Thanks for playing, Mr. Vague! If I was guessing, I'd say five jurors will make it, out of the first 24. 16 May/12:20: OK. When we came back from break, Total Ass was gone. So was Bleeding Heart. So was another juror, though I'm not sure what for. Anyway, all the psychology/counselor types got dumped off the jury, as did Stoner Rock-Boy, and some young girl who didn't look old enough to cross the street without adult supervision. But, surprisingly, from the first 24 jurors, 11 were actually seated on the panel. And they are the most educated of the jurors, too. As nearly as I can tell, all of them have Masters degrees. Four of them are electrical engineers. And the retired BATF agent is on the panel, too. This was totally unexpected. You know, the old joke about juries is that they are filled by people too stupid to get out of jury duty. But that's clearly not the case here. Maybe it's because the defense is already stipulating that Mr. Herrera killed the victim. I mean, if you're a defense attorney trying to get your client off scott-free, maybe you want a bunch of unlettered rubes you can fool into acquitting. But if you already know your client is going up the river, and you need to shoot for manslaughter, you want really educated technical people to weigh expert evidence. I dunno. But it isn't what I expected. So, now we only need 1 juror and a couple of alternates to pick. I am juror 56. At this point, I'm pretty sure they'll never even get to me. We start the voir dire for the next 13 jurors. 16 May/15:07: The judge is done with his questions for the second 13, so the attorneys will get a crack at them when we return. New line of the day: One of the jurors relates that he had a bipolar stepson who was arrested for some nasty road rage incident. Judge Goldman asks, "What happened in that case?" "We hired a hotshot defense lawyer who got him off." We laughed and laughed and laughed. 16 May/16:00: We're done. From the second thirteen, only one juror was dropped, then both the prosecutor and defense told the judge they were satisfied with the panel. After a quick sidebar, the judge picked three alternates. The physicist, by the way, became Juror 12. So, for this trial, they've got a jury that could serve as the faculty for a pretty decent little technical college. For the rest of us, we're done. I was really happy to get out of there, except that it means I have to actually go to work tomorrow. |
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