My Jury Duty Experience: Slow-Talkers, Stoners and Breaking a Hip

Oh my God, he’s a slow talker.  I hate slow talkers.  I can recite an entire scene from Star Trek The Wrath of Kahn between his carefully-chosen, finely-dictioned words.

I’m sitting in the jury box.  How in the HELL did I get here?  I mean, it’s been a joke for weeks that I’d never end up on a jury.  I’m “Too” apparently:  too opinionated, too smart, too outspoken, too analytical, too sarcastic, too prone to outbursts of dry humor.  I am “Too.”

They called 75 numbers and ordered us to show up at noon on Tuesday.  They really did order us to show up, it’s a subpoena—which means if you don’t show up you can get hauled off to jail and fined.  Even if they don’t keep you in jail, they have to book you in, which means the old squat and cough thing has to happen.  Showing up at noon on Tuesday is an order and the threat makes it happen.  Yeah, yeah, there’s a voice in the back of my head that says it’s a civic duty and that if I were on trial I’d rather be judged by a group of people rather than an egomaniac who wants to be a judge who also has to be a politician half the time to run for the right to be a megalomaniac.  Not that all judges have over-sized egos, but let’s just say that gavel should be used to pound some of them back into manageable sizes—at least in my experience.

I check in with about 25 people.  There are about three people my same age, the rest are older, retired.  It’s an interesting mix of people.  We all exchange looks that say “God, we really don’t want to be here.”  Because you are supposed to not want to be on a jury, and it’s also my experience that people tend to behave in ways that society expects them to behave (SEE?!!  How can any sane, rational attorney want someone who thinks that way to be on their jury?).

Some of the people in the group stand out.

There’s one woman who is probably five feet tall and looks like a little grandmother who should be home making cookies for all her grandchildren—if you ignore the scowl that sits on her face and is so engrained there that the rest of her face has molded around it like basset hound cheeks.  She’s already complaining.  “This is bullshit.  I can’t believe they aren’t getting this over with.  I’m not going to fucking stand around and wait for them all day,” she mumbles to no one in particular.  Wow, my grandmother never talked like that!  There’s the woman who might be my age or she might be 80; it’s hard to tell.  She’s got brown hair that needs to be re-dyed…the color is flat and dead and her gray roots are two inches long.  She’s hunched over slightly and leaning against the wall, eyes half lidded like she’s going to go to sleep. There’s a big guy who takes the only chair in the small waiting area where we’re all gathering.

The clerk of courts is checking us off, he’s taking us up.  He has to make sure the elevators and the stairs are clear so no one contaminates us.  He yells “Jury Walking!” before leading us up the steps.  “I’m reminded of the movie The Green Mile when they yell “Dead man walking” or was it that movie with Susan Sarandon?

Who cares?  Oh my god, why is this guy still talking?  He’s setting up the story of the case.

Before they pick a jury, they make us watch a movie about jury duty and the procedure and what happens.  In the corner of the movie is a small little item that says “Fourth Grade Level.”  Great, I’m being educated on a fourth grade level, and I swear to God that if I get stuck in a small room with the cursing-like-a-sailor grandmother who thinks she knows everything this courtroom is going to have to worry about a lot more than this civil case because I can’t really be expected to listen to Mr. Slow-Talker Monotone for hours and then be trapped in close quarters with that.

After the movie, they explain that the computer picks the first eight jurors and then the attorneys can each throw off three for no reason.  Others can be thrown off for other reasons like a connection to the case, knowing the parties involved, or whatever.  I’m expecting to know everyone.  I know a lot of people.  I know the judge.  One of my best friends on the planet is the public defender.  I used to be a reporter who dealt with the courts and the police.

But this is a civil case, a malpractice lawsuit.  The attorneys who walk in are both from the Toledo area.  The lady suing is an 88 year old woman from Pennsylvania who was staying with her daughter in Oak Harbor three years ago when she fell.  They’re suing the doctor---ooh, he’s local.  Oh crap, he’s the only specialist in the northern half of Ohio who hasn’t seen my ex-husband.  For a second there I thought I might have a way out.

Still, there are about 25 people here.

But apparently the computer likes me.  For the first time in my life I’m chosen first, I win the lottery, I get lucky. 

Now, this is serious.  No more joking about someone getting the chair or about the thrill of sending someone to prison for the rest of their life.  I have not planned to be off the rest of the week from my real job.  You know, the one that pays more than $30/day.  Slave wages!!!  I thought slavery was illegal, your Honor.  Oh, wait, no one is allowed to talk to me because now I’m “on the jury”.

I start to plot. I have to get off.

Mr. Excitement is questioning the first eight people.  He’s asking if anyone has a medical issue that keeps them from serving.  Three people raise their hands.  WHAT THE FUCK!?  They’ve been sitting for an hour, then they watched this hour long film which was so boring I considered gouging out my eyeballs, and they all seemed fine and now they suddenly have back problems that keep them from sitting more than a couple hours at a time?  I call BS!

I’ve got a great idea.  We actually have a doctor in the courtroom.  How about we ask him to check these people out? 

The three are replaced from the gallery.  People who roll their eyes as they step up to the jury box.

It’s become very apparent that my family has been entirely too healthy. My parents aren’t debilitated and I’ve never had to care for them.  In fact, my ex-husband is the only trump card I have and after 3.5 years of not working because he was sick, he went back to work the minute my paycheck stopped supporting his lazy ass.  Oh, for the love of God, why couldn’t this case be about some guy who didn’t want to work or was making some workers’ comp claim?  I could never put aside my preconceived notions about a situation like that.

One guy comes on and says, “I think all these people suing doctors is ridiculous; it’s making all of our costs higher.”  Holy Crap!  These people are professionals!  And the number of backups in the gallery is getting smaller and smaller.  I’m in big time trouble here.

They call up the woman who looked like she was sleeping earlier.  She walks by me and I get a whiff.  Honestly, I have not smelled pot so strongly on someone since college.  I’m surprised the sheriff’s deputies let her in the building.  If I’d leaned closer and gotten a contact high, maybe this slow-talker wouldn’t be so flipping irritating.

He likes to play with his perfectly folded handkerchief in his pocket.  Honestly, I think it’s one of those fake handkerchiefs; you know like those turtlenecks you put under a sweater that don’t have a shirt with them.  He’s short.  He’s standing behind a podium, but he’s short.  I wonder if he’s wearing platform shoes.  He’s asking the new juror if she’s taking medications for her bad back—everyone’s suddenly got a bad back.  He will like her.  She talks just as slow as he does.  She says she’s taking homeopathic medications.

I sit on my hands so I don’t make air quotes and mouth the word “homeopathic.”  It’s a struggle.

The homeopathic lady is excused quickly.

The grandmother who used to be a sailor gets the seat next.  She was a nurse before she retired.  I wonder if her last name is Ratched.  She’s clearly one of those old style nurses.  The ones who made you want to get better because you were certain if you didn’t, they would kill you.  They get of her.

They’re done.  CRAP!  CRAP!  CRAP!!  I’m on the jury. 

Part of me wants to say to all those naysayers:  “HA!  See, they will put me on a jury!  You said it would never happen.”

 A medical malpractice suit.  An old lady was asked to walk in a hospital room.  She fell.  She broke a hip.  They say the doctor should never have asked her to walk since the nurses had been assisting her to get up out of bed and standing by when she walked to the restroom. Why did they not ask the right questions?

I kept an open mind.  I did.  I listened to the experts who they flew in from all over the country.  I tried not to be pissed off when they brought the old lady up in her wheelchair and asked her questions that only proved that she not only did not remember what happened but she couldn’t remember her name without prompting.  I will say that if I’m ever accused of medical malpractice (granted the chances of that are very slim considering that I’m a writer, but you never know, people are getting crazy out there) I will hire the attorney that the doctor hired.  She chewed up Shorty Slow-talker, spit him out, and stuck him under the table to dry.

Three days of my life, concentrating on every word, taking all emotion out of it and doing what in reality for all my talk is a pretty important thing.  I mean, three years of the lives of these people were involved, countless hours, and most likely tons of money.  Three days of testimony.

I try not to think about what I've heard.  I think only of the little step at the end of the jury box and how if I trip (which I'm prone to do due to my lovely coordination) I can't jump up and say what I normally would which is:  "Don't worry, I didn't break a hip."

Finally, closing arguments.  Oh, shit, it's slow-talker dissertation time.

We’re allowed to talk about it after a few hours of listening to the drone.

While the baliff is copying the jury instructions, we start analyzing each witness.  And we’re all agreeing.  It’s really strange.  I really had a couple of these eight pegged for people who wanted to make the doctor pay for the little old lady breaking a hip.  But we agree.  He didn’t push her; he isn’t subject to the same rules as the hospital staff, he didn’t make her run or walk a 5k.  And he didn’t stand back and just let her wobble and fall.  If he could have, he would have stopped it.  All the experts have said they’ve done the same thing on a regular basis for years and years and no one has ever fallen.

End conclusion.  Old ladies fall.  When they fall, they break their hips.  It wouldn’t be a joke if it didn’t happen all the time.  If she’d wobbled, the doctor would have been warned and grabbed her to steady her.  And there was no way in hell the angry daughter and son-in-law who spent their time glaring at the jury (to be fair the rest of the jury said they hadn’t noticed, but we only talked about this after we already had a verdict) were going to get that doctor to pay for 5 and a half more years of nursing home care.

Actually, the daughter said she fully expected her 85 year old mother to come back home and do all kinds of things with them.  The woman never went back home. But this broken hip prevented that, she said.  Yep, lady, your mother was going to come home and be all fixed up from the hospital so she could do somersaults in the front yard.

The slow-talker turned his back on us when we walked out.  Of course, they knew how we’d decided before we went in.  We did a blind vote on pieces of paper after 15 minutes of discussion.  We were all on the same page.  We agreed to sit around for another 30 minutes just out of respect for all of the work and time everyone had spent on this case.

In retrospect, I think I’d take back that 30 minutes.  I mean, this never should have been brought to court or been allowed to go on.  Turns out the guy who got dismissed from the jury early on was right.  This kind of crap is why our medical bills are so high, this is why the doctors have to carry crazy expensive malpractice insurance.

A fortune was spent; and in my opinion it was spent because when their mother broke her hip, these people thought they’d won the lottery.  Like me getting picked for the jury.  Some lotteries you aren’t meant to win and others you are.

On a bright note, I didn’t jump out of the jury box and shake the short guy demanding he speak quicker or pull his little handkerchief out of his pocket and mess it all up.  My only regret is he doesn’t know that he really came out a winner in this.  Of course, if I had jumped out, I probably would have tripped and broken a hip.