June 25, 2003

• Due Process

  
  

  Last night my husband was reading "One Morning In Maine" to our youngest and I was blanching broccoli with our eldest. It was a wonderful, bucolic, family farm-life sort of evening in which, for once, no-one was irritated, scolding, upset or otherwise uncooperative. But I couldn’t keep my mind on the timeless story of Sal and her loose tooth, nor that pungent greener-than-green odor of broccoli.

  
  

  I was thinking about the woman in the powder-blue jacket.

  
  

  I was wondering where she was now. Whether she’d shed the nice jacket, and her fancy sandals, stretched out her painted toes, maybe taken off some of the jewelry, maybe actually felt relaxed. Whether the people with her (she wouldn’t be alone; she wouldn’t have chosen that) were telling her she’d done really well; held herself together fine. Whether there was any mention of how it might go tomorrow, or whether people were avoiding that topic. How she really felt.

  
  

  I first noticed her the way you notice people, casually, when you’re waiting in a large crowd with nothing else to do. She struck me as over-thin and overagitated. "She’s either anorexic or on something," I thought to myself, with that idle cattiness your inner voice develops for the one-glance summation. She rushed through all the people to hug a man in a loud polyester shirt and gold necklace. "That’s her father," someone in the press murmured to someone else, sotto voce.

  
  

  Then we were all called in, over fifty of us. As we paraded solemnly to our appointed seats, I didn’t even notice, at first, where she was. I don’t think it was until the questioning started that I actually registered that she was the party against whom the State was claiming Count 1: Possession of Cocaine, and Count 2: Aggravated Vehicular Homicide. Beside her sat her senior lawyer, male, in a gray suit. Her secondary lawyer, almost as thin as the accused, wore expensively styled hair that didn’t hide a receding chin, and a miniskirted pinstripe that revealed, under the bare table, quite an expanse of slender leg.

  
  

  The senior lawyer stood to address us prospective jurors, picking up a wooden yardstick from his table.

  
  

  "Everyone deserves an impartial jury," he said. "But because of certain personal experiences, preferences or beliefs, not all of you can be an impartial juror in this particular case. What we need to do now is verify that the jury will be impartial. I’ll begin by explaining just a little about the case. You may be surprised to learn that we don’t intend to deny certain events. That my client was driving a vehicle, and that she was left-of-center." He held the yardstick balanced between both hands, and moved one hand to the twelve inch mark. "That her car struck an on-coming truck, and it’s occupant is now dead." Twenty-five inches. "That my client had, as her blood tests show, ingested both cocaine and Valium prior to the accident." He held up the yardstick in one hand, and it was now clear that the end had been chopped off. "A judgement to convict must meet certain requirements. It must measure up. I want a jury who will sit with me until the end, and decide whether the prosecution has met those requirements, or…." He brandished his shattered stick "….not."

  
  

  There was a pause while he put down his stick and we digested this. The woman in the powder blue jacket looked at our fifty judgmental eyes, shifting her own dark haunted ones from face to face. Her fingers tapped nervously on her leg. I wondered if she still used.

  
  

  "I’d like to ask a few questions. Mr…." her lawyer consulted the prospective jury list. "…Crawbrook? If you had to tell me, right now, whether my client was guilty or not, what would you say?"

  
  

  Mr. Crawbrook had two studs in his left ear and a white button-down with the sleeves undone. We’d learned, earlier in the questioning, that he was an interior decorator. He responded inaudibly.

  
  

  "You’d say you don’t know? That’s very reasonable, Mr. Crawbrook; a logical response. But I’d like to remind you – and everyone – that by law – by the law of the United States – the accused is innocent until proven guilty. I don’t have to prove her innocence. He.... " he gestured toward the attorney for the State "....has to prove her guilt. Is there anyone who is uncomfortable with this? Anyone who doesn’t think they can abide by the judge’s instructions in this regard?"

  
  

  We all shifted in our seats. The lawyer consulted the juror list again, and as he did so a group of people entered the courtroom. They wore heavy clothing, much of it leather with red wings emblazoned. Their weathered faces were wary. They glared at everyone in general. I glanced at the woman in powder blue, who stared fixedly at the wall above the newcomers. For me, the previously unadorned fact that the deceased was in "an on-coming truck" suddenly had a context. Now I knew what kind of truck. I knew what bumper-stickers. I knew where he fit in the social construct.

  
  

  The friends and relatives of the deceased shuffled into the remaining seats. The lawyer cleared his throat, rattling his list.

  
  

  "Ms. Brown? Ms. Brown, I have a very important question for you – for all of you. There is no ‘right’ answer. You have sworn to tell the truth, and I need you to think very carefully about this. Ms. Brown, would you want someone like you to be on the jury, if you were my client, or if your child were my client, facing these charges?"

  
  

  Ms. Brown, somewhat more self-assured than Mr. Crawbrook, straightened her solid-citizen back, flipped her no-nonsense gray hair, and said stoutly, "Yes. Yes, I would."

  
  

  The questioning of the jurors took all morning and half the afternoon, and finally the twelve, and the two alternates, were seated. The rest of us, dismissed, mingled in ungainly procession out of the courtroom into the glaring afternoon sun, leaving the woman in the powder blue jacket, and her father and relatives, and the relatives of the deceased, and all the rest of the paraphernalia of due process, in the courtroom.

  
  

  When I was explaining my experience to a gaggle of curious colleagues at work, a technician passing by suddenly said, "Oh, were you at that trial? Yeah, I know that girl. She was a great friend of my sister’s. God, she got messed up with the wrong crowd. She was one fucked-up chick, she was. She was just over at my place last night. She’s been in rehab since it happened. She said she was left-of-center because he was in her lane, so she swerved into his, then he swerved back – and that’s when it happened." The technician’s boyish face crinkled into a big grin. "That’s her story, anyway. Who knows? I mean – she had her five-year-old in that car, without a belt. The kid just got bruised up, but still – that wasn’t good. The guy she killed was no angel either – he was on the dock himself a couple years ago; shot his friend in the head playing Russian roulette." The technician rolled his eyes. "I mean – would you play Russian roulette? What’s the fuckin’ point, anyway? Who wins that game?"

  
  

  I walked up the stairs slowly. I stopped to chat with the engineer one cubicle over. I’d been looking forward to telling him the whole thing, since he’s the kind of man – a rarity among them – who not only tells a good tale, but can hear and appreciate one too. I’d just described the woman in the powder blue when he uncharacteristically interrupted.

  
  

  "Oh – yeah. The guy she killed was my wife’s cousin. He was forty-four – two kids. Yeah, that lady needs to be put far, far away."

  
  

  "Ohmigod!" I said inadequately. The rest of my story deflated into a mumble or two.

  
  

  For me, my co-workers’ remarks recreated my courtroom experience. No longer was it just a great story, or a good day’s amusement, but the tangled, sad tale of a man and a woman with histories and connections – connections, if in a tenuous way, to me.

  
  

  Thinking about the impact I would have unwittingly had on my colleagues’ lives by actually taking part in that jury, I also started thinking about judgement. About the question of "impartiality." About what sort of juror I would want, sitting in judgement of me. I thought how I’d judged the woman in powder blue from the instant I saw her. How I’d judged the other jurors, and the relations of the deceased, and the lawyers. How I’d thrown all those standard, instantaneous first impressions into my judgements: clothing, accent, gesture, manner of speech, the playing of Russian roulette.

  
  

  I’d judged them on their past and present, their appearance, and their pursuit of happiness.

  
  

  Judge not, lest you be judged (Mathew 7:1)

  • 1:40 pm
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