Observations from Jury Duty

 I had jury duty for the first time in a couple of years today.  In the 33 years since I've been eligible to be a juror, I had only sat through three voir dires before today.  I never made the jury on any of them.  The first was a criminal case in Brazos County when I was at A&M.  The second was a criminal case in Harris County shortly after I left the D.A.'s Office where my friend and former co-worker Wendy Baker utilized a State Strike on me because she thought I was too good of friends with Defense Counsel Mark Bennett -- as I pointed out to her later, I never drove Mark to the hospital when he was in labor, but whatever, Wendy!  The third was a civil trial.

Since I had a jury summons for a Monday morning, I was pretty sure that I would at least be called to a panel today.  And I was right.

And truth be told, it was all pretty painless.

Thanks to my frequent visitor badge, I got to skip the metal detectors and got logged in on the computer and sent to my assembly room.  We watched a short video where District Clerk Marilyn Burgess spent about five minutes talking about how she had helped secure more money for jurors for their service and ways to use the gift card that we would be receiving the money.  About fifteen minutes later, Deputy Momin came and collected 65 of us for voir dire in the 180th District Court, Judge DaSean Jones presiding.

So, my first observation is a big shoutout to the 180th Court and its staff for being incredibly efficient.  We were seated and in the courtroom by 9:30 (if not earlier).  Standing around in the hallway is boring and we didn't do it for very long.  Deputy Momin got us there quickly, got us lined up, and got us in our seats efficiently.  There was a brief moment of entertainment when a female defendant (who may or may not have been on meth) in the hallway started yelling at jurors to get out of her way.  This got Deputy Momin's attention, and he chastised her for talking to his jury like that.  The bailiffs are the Court's first ambassadors that the jurors meet and the 180th has a great one.

Different judges do voir dire differently and for varying lengths of time.  Former 351st District Court Judge Mark Kent Ellis used to famously talk for four or five hours for his portion alone.  Some judges I've seen over the years didn't talk at all.  Judge Jones' voir dire was short and to the point.  He and I've known each other for about fifteen years and he called on me to answer some of the basic questions.  He covered some of the major themes that needed to be covered, but he didn't talk for long at all.

Each side was given thirty minutes to ask questions on an Assault-Family Violence Impeding Breathing case.  That's not just a ton of time to talk on a type of case that can potentially have some pretty deep issues.  The State was represented by the Felony Three assigned to the Court and his Chief sat with him.  The time allotted to him wasn't enough for him to get too fancy and he did a fine job of covering the basics.  He spent the majority of his time gauging the attitudes of the panel towards State involvement in matters of family violence.  He had a couple of scaled questions that were good ideas, but I think he spent too much of his limited time following up with their numerical answers without getting anyone struck for Cause.  He also made a point of going over "the State doesn't have to prove motive" which I've been seeing coming from several prosecutors lately.  I don't think that's really necessary.  His presence was good though, and I'm sure those lessons will be learned in time.

Defense Attorney Brennen Dunn was representing the Defendant in the case, and he was great.  I don't know him except in passing but he is well-known as an attorney who isn't afraid to go to trial, and it showed.  He was clearly ready to get through his points in a short amount of time and he did it very well.  Any defense attorney will tell you that we freely steal ideas from one another, and I'll definitely be stealing some things from Brennan -- particularly on how he covered the presumption of innocence, the burden of proof, and the 5th Amendment.  He got plenty of strikes for Cause.  I was a little surprised at some of his questions on self-defense, but all in all, he had an outstanding presence in front of the jury and did a great job.

After both sides were done, we went out in the hallway for about fifteen minutes.  When we came back in, both sides spent about five minutes wrapping up making their peremptory strikes, and they seated a jury.  I was juror number 49, so I didn't get reached.  I was out of there right around noon.  It couldn't have gone any smoother.