While we were out of town visiting family in New York, the jury summons arrived. The summons was for October 23, at 7:45 AM, at the San Diego Superior Court in downtown San Diego.
Well, a few problems.
1) Downtown San Diego is about 45 miles from here, with some of the worst freeways around
2) Parking in downtown San Diego is prohibitive and scarce. The summons warns jurors to take public transportation
3) Public transportation in San Diego is pretty much of a joke. We have some pretty good trains that run along the coast, but they don’t run very often, and for most of the route there’s only one track. The train departs about 20 minutes from here and stops downtown a few blocks from the courthouse, but the journey from North County to downtown takes about an hour by train.
4) I had to be there by 7:45 AM. I normally get up around 7:00 AM, so this isn’t going to work very well.
I noticed that they had, in very small print, a number you could call to talk to someone about moving your jury service to a more convenient location. I called the number but it was just a robot. I eventually got to the point where it asked me the location where I wanted to serve, and it replied there were no spots available there. It would have been at the courthouse in Vista, a few minutes away from here, much closer than the train station for the train to downtown. From Vista, I could have come home for lunch.
The summons also said you could show up two weeks early or two weeks late to serve your time. I just had a hard time understanding that as it was counter-intuitive.
I was making several mistakes, as I will explain below.
In order to get to court by 7:45 AM, I had to catch a train an hour or more earlier than that. They have a train that leaves daily from Oceanside Transit Center (20 or 25 minutes from here) at 6:33 AM, arriving at San Diego Santa Fe Depot at 7:38 AM. The courthouse is not far from the train station, but it isn’t that close, and I had the disadvantage of not knowing exactlyhow to get there. Also not knowing exactly how to get to the transit center, or exactly how to purchase a ticket. And prior experience with jury duty back in Texas seemed to indicate that I needed to allow time for the security theater at the entrance to the courthouse. So I elected to take an even earlier train, at 6:02 AM, getting to downtown at 7:11 AM. (Remember, I normally get up at 7 AM, when ‘do not disturb’ expires on my electronics and they start chirping.)
I reasoned backwards, allowing time for getting cleaned up and dressed and pouring myself some coffee in a commuter mug. We still have some of those. I decided to get up at 4:30 AM. Man, that’s early.
In fact, I got up at 4 AM, got cleaned up, and stumbled around in a not-very-well-lit closet trying to find some black slacks. I couldn’t tell the difference between black and navy blue, and finally gave up and used a pair of slacks that I knew were navy blue. Later I found the black slacks and they were so covered with cat hair it was hard to believe. I put on a dress shirt and used one of my sport jackets. The dress code on the summons said ‘business casual’.
I managed to get most of the way out without waking my wife, somewhere around 5 or 5:30 AM. When I got in the car, I tried to set up my iPhone to navigate to the transit center, where I had not been since some time in the middle of the Reagan presidency, or maybe it was the first Bush. I put my backpack and coffee down in the back of the car while I brought in the newspaper. Forgot the coffee was in the back.
I drove off and realized my phone was not talking to me. I stopped in the parking lot of our clubhouse and looked at the phone for a while, and then remembered the coffee. I picked up the travel mug, and it was empty. All the coffee had dumped out in the back of the car. This day was not starting off well.
I realized that ‘do not disturb’ was probably causing my phone not to talk to me. I figured I could find the transit center without it. There should be a sign on the freeway. So I took CA 78 (normally a parking lot but not at 5 AM) over to I-5 and sure enough there was a sign at the Mission Avenue exit for the transit center. Of course, there were no more signs for the transit center! I guessed it must be down by the railroad tracks. Pretty smart. They even have a fancy new parking deck so I could get my car out of the California sun.
I had learned there is an iPhone app for the North County Transit District, so I could buy my ticket on my phone. Half price for seniors.
It took me a while to figure out where to stand to wait for the train, but I was ridiculously early.
The Coaster train is pretty nice. It has multi-level cars, with some seating up high so you can see the beautiful California coast, including a stretch at Del Mar where you are to seaward of the billionaires. Eventually the tracks will become too dangerous due to erosion. I can’t imagine the legal battles when they try to move the tracks. I don’t want to be on that jury! The train is comfortable but is a little bit tired looking.
Once I got to downtown I could not quite figure out where the courthouse was and used my phone to navigate. It is only three or four blocks from the train station but my initial steps were in the wrong direction.
The courthouse is in a new, modern building. There were some security people outside that stopped me and asked if I was a juror. I guess I didn’t look like a lawyer or a client. I had to show my summons to get in. The security was about 85% like airport security. They wanted coats off, belts off, electronics out, no metal, but keep your shoes on. On the second day they wanted my wallet out but not on the first day.
I went up to the jury room, which was big enough to hold 400 or 500 people. There was no coffee and I had not had any after dumping mine in the back of the car. A guy came along and started a movie about jury duty. Same stuff you always hear. Then a judge came to swear us in and complete the orientation. At this point I began to understand some of the mistakes I had made:
1) I could have gone to Vista instead of downtown. The judge said you can serve anywhere in San Diego County.
2) I could have gone two weeks early to get it out of the way. One slight concern in the back of my mind was a planned trip starting November 10. I did not want to postpone for fear of ruining that, nor did I want to get on an O.J. trial that would drag on.
3) “Business casual” in California means you don’t even have to have clean clothes on. I was so overdressed!
We had a few panels called before they gave us a break. There is a café on the same floor as the jury room, but there were 400 jurors ahead of me. I heard someone say there was a coffee cart down on the ground floor with a short line. I went down there and finally got some coffee.
A guy from the Superior Court gave us all transportation passes for the trip home. I had a round trip ticket on my phone already, so I figured I would use it on day 2 or just use it for fun if I didn’t get picked
We were released for lunch, and I wandered around and found a Corner Bakery. After eating I still had a ton of time before returning, so I walked over to Seaport Village to see if it was still there. A beautiful walk.
Later I was called on a panel to go to a court, up on the 17thfloor.. We then sat on the incredibly hard benches in the hall until they got around to bringing us in.
When we got into the court, there were 48 of us on a panel to be whittled down to 12. In Texas it would have been 30 or so. The case was, sad to say, an adult who was accused of having injured a child. Voir dire was painful, with people whining and complaining about how ‘emotional’ it would be because they had children the same age or they had been abused or whatever. They had a standard list of questions for everyone to answer. All jurors were referred to by number. I guess this is for safety’s sake. They asked you to state your name during voir dire, but they didn’t write it down and no one used names to address us.
After a very long voir dire, they excused the malingerers and started seating jurors. Then the lawyers did their peremptory challenges, and it seemed like they would never run out of them. I had a fairly high number (36) and was confident they wouldn’t get to me.
I was wrong. They got to me for an alternate juror. Evidently in California they pick fourteen people so they can continue the trial if a juror or two become unavailable for some reason. I was very unhappy. Jury service itself is one thing, but the 90 minutes each way commute was really painful.
It was pretty late so the judge released us to come back at 10 the next day.
I took the Coaster back up to Oceanside Transit Center and drove home, getting home well after dark. We ate after 7. It was a very long day.
At the end of day 1 the judge told us we would start at 10 the next morning. The clerk came and got us around 10:30 or so. We had opening arguments. The attorneys were both young and earnest. I figured out after the trial that the defense lawyer was from the San Diego Public Defender’s office.
The case came down to some facts in dispute. The defendant said a neighbor kid spat on his car. Nobody checked the car for spit. The kid said he spat at the car but missed. The defendant then supposedly went to the kid’s house to talk to his mom (this is in a trailer park) but instead saw the kid with some of his friends. The defendant asked who spat on his car. One kid replied but before he could explain that he didn’t hit the car the defendant pushed him hard in the chest using two hands an knocked him down into a rocky area, where he sustained injuries.
The defendant denied shoving the kid.
The charges were causing injury to a minor, and battery, both misdemeanors.
We had 8 witnesses:
· A police officer who responded to the 911 call and took some photos and some statements. We saw injuries to the child in the photos, but the photos didn’t prove who caused the injuries. This officer did not appear to be overly truthful. I gather the investigation was somewhat botched and she was very defensive.
· An eight year old who witnessed the push that injured the child. He did not ID the defendant
· Another eight year old, who ID’d the defendant.
· The nine year old who was injured. He pointed to the defendant. These kids all were remarkably calm and spoke very clearly. The DA did a good job of keeping them relaxed and comfortable, and with some simple questions established that they knew the difference between truth and lying. The defense attorney could not really cross-examine very hard and was at a disadvantage.
· The boy’s mother. She didn’t witness the push but was out there trying to get between the defendant and her son. She and the defense lawyer did not get along.
· A neighbor, a middle aged Mexican man who testified in Spanish. He was forthright and very convincing. He saw the whole thing. The defense lawyer tried to make him look bad but he hung in there. He had an interpreter, but I listened carefully for practice (we are taking Spanish classes) and understood nearly all of his testimony.
· The defendant’s girlfriend. She was six feet tall, slender, beautiful, and extremely Caucasian. She said nothing happened. She is the mother of the defendant’s son; he has children with two other women, at least one of which he was married to.
· The defendant, a small Filipino-American man who had no accent. He gave me the creeps and I didn’t believe him at all. Basically he denied everything.
We got out of there promptly. I stopped at the juror service desk and got another train pass for the next day. I caught a train and Jody picked me up at the Carlsbad Village station, a bit closer to home than the Oceanside Transit Station, but with much less parking available.
The next day we began at 9. We heard closing arguments and then the judge gave his instructions. The jury went into the jury room at around 10:30 or 11:00 and the two lonely alternates (I was one) had to hang around in case one of the twelve became indisposed. I had found a little place to have lunch a couple of blocks away from the courthouse and ate there, and walked to Seaport Village to get my 10,000 steps. Seaport Village is a shadow of what it used to be, but the view is still pretty.
At around 2 PM, I was hanging around the main jury room when the clerk called my cell, and said the jury had reached a verdict. It sure surprised me – I thought there was enough to talk about for a while longer than that. The clerk said I could just leave, or come to the court to find out what the verdict was – it was my choice. I chose to find out how it ended. After sitting around in the hall for a while, we went in and heard the guilty verdict pronounced.
We got out of there and I went to the train station, but the trains don’t run very often in the middle of the day, so I had to wait 90 minutes or so for the next Coaster. For some unknown reason, At the Old Town stop, nearly all the seats on the train were filled by Japanese tourists.
After the trial, I looked up the judge. He is Joseph Brannigan, and he spent time as an Army officer (just too young for Vietnam) and as an FBI agent in New York. He went to St Peter’s in Jersey City, graduating in 1972. His dad was portrayed in a movie (“Brannigan”) by John Wayne, and the judge made a token appearance in the movie. I would like to have spoken with him, but he’s not retired yet.
Sentencing did not happen when we were there. I don’t know what sentence was imposed, or if it has been imposed yet.
I don’t expect to have to do this again. In California, they are not supposed to call you for three years if you were actually on a jury, and by that time I will be over 70, no doctor’s note will be required if I claim a medical exemption. But if I get called for the nearby court, I probably will go.
