Seven Days in the Life of a Rockingham County Superior Court Petit Juror
| Citado como | Vol. 50 No. 1 Pg. 0028 |
| Páginas | 0028 |
| Año de Publicación | 2009 |
2009 Spring, Pg. 28. Seven Days in the Life of a Rockingham County Superior Court Petit Juror
Volume 50, No. 1
Spring 2009
This article was dictated by the author during his day-to-day experiences from April 30 to May 14, 2001. It was posted in the online edition of the New Hampshire Bar Journal on September 1, 2001.
In response to a summons, I reported to the Rockingham County Superior Court in Brentwood, New Hampshire, to serve on a petit jury panel on Monday, April 30, 2001 at 8:30 a.m. I was obligated to report for jury panel selection every Monday for a consecutive four-week period. Since this was a new experience for me, I recorded my thoughts about my service as a juror at the end of each day. However, I am sure that what I experienced is not particularly surprising to a seasoned trial lawyer.
Since judges, lawyers, and doctors are no longer exempt from jury service, I didn't try to avoid serving and, in fact, hoped I would have, for a lawyer, a once-in-a-lifetime experience of serving as a juror in a criminal or civil case. When I was in law school at the University of Michigan in 1959, I was told that I had missed the opportunity of a lifetime, since I would never be able to serve as a juror, just by the fact that I was a lawyer. It was unclear to me just what roll or list that the county used for its jury panels: the motor vehicle rolls, voter registrations or some other diverse list.
After identifying myself as a juror, I was placed in a large room (the jury gathering room) which soon had every seat filled and it was overflowing with jurors by the time everyone had arrived. I would estimate that there were about 100 people there, serving on the initial panel. There was another lawyer present besides myself, who later told me he was initially chosen for a criminal panel, but had been challenged off. I don't know whether he ever served on panels chosen later.
Everything was smoothly organized by the Rockingham County Superior Court staff. After waiting around for about an hour with a helpful and genial bailiff telling us in general what was going to happen, we were marched into courtroom 2, a cavernous room, where Judge Kenneth McHugh and chief court clerk Ray Taylor awaited us. Judge McHugh gave us a very interesting and informative charge, "in good laymen terms" [as was noted by one juror who had served on a jury previously] of about an hour and a half, relating general instructions concerning burdens of proof, the difference between civil cases and criminal cases, what our role was, what his role was, etc.
He pointed out that he didn't allow jurors in his courtroom to take notes or ask questions and he explained his reasoning for this, although he said we might serve before other judges who felt differently. This issue never came up in our deliberations. I found his comments quite interesting, although the time weighed long on some of my fellow jury panel members. Judge McHugh was interrupted at one point by the deputy clerk who indicated he was taking too long and the chastised judge told us to note "who was really in charge here." After the judge finished his remarks, in a solemn moment, we were then all sworn in as jurors by court clerk Taylor.
We were taken back into the jury gathering room at which time those who wanted to attempt to be excused from the jury panel were left with Ray Taylor and the rest of us were led back into courtroom 2 again, with only those of us remaining (perhaps 90 of us by now) in the pool. For the week, four criminal juries of 13 persons each were to be chosen and one 12-person civil jury. The first jury chosen was the civil jury and I was the third juror called, as luck would have it. I was surprised but I still did not expect to sit.
My luck continued when I had to reveal in private at the bench to the judge and attorneys that I knew one of the two attorneys, with whom I had dealings, both with him on a case and against him on a case. As I approached the bench, expecting I would have an excuse, Judge McHugh jokingly said "And I was going to appoint you to be foreman, Charlie." However, both attorneys voiced no objection. McHugh then turned to me and asked whether I could make a fair judgment. I said, "yes" and so I was allowed to sit.
Since both attorneys had indicated no objection, I was not later peremptorily challenged (although a total of three peremptories were used) and I took my place as juror number three. [It turns out that it's important to remember your jury number because that is how you are referred to from then on]. The panel was finally constituted and was made up of seven women and five men.
The case is an automobile collision case with only about $2,100 worth of medicals, $100 of lost pay and no permanent injuries. There were to be only two witnesses, the plaintiff and the defendant. There was to be no medical testimony, the medical records being introduced by agreement. It was a small case by any standards, but obviously important to the contestants. It was expected to take no more than a day, and since evidence was to start later in the day at 1:00 p.m., we were given a long lunch hour (at our own expense) and were told to return by 1:00 o'clock to start the case.
As we gathered for our 1:00 o'clock deadline, we began to get to know and learn about each other. I quietly disclosed for the first time that I was a lawyer. No one ever mentioned it again.
The case started soon after 1:00 p.m. when each of the attorneys made their opening statement. The plaintiff was represented by a solo attorney from Dover and the defendant was represented by a Dover attorney from a small firm.
The plaintiff was a young woman still in college and the defendant was a middle-aged truck driver. After an hour and a half of the openings and the testimony of the two parties, the case was submitted by both sides. Since it was 3:30 p.m., the judge decided to let us go home for the day so that we will have closing arguments and the charge tomorrow and, hopefully, we will be through our deliberations by noontime. That's what I would expect.
My early impressions are that the jury is quite an interesting mix of people with only one voluble person in the group at this point, a whitehaired, mustachioed, gentleman who indicated during one of our waits that he had been an alternate juror in the federal district court (which he described as "very posh") and, then unfortunately, as he was an alternate, he never got to participate in deciding the case. That bothered him he said because he had strong feelings about the failure of the government to prove its case against the defendant, it being some sort of a perjury or lying under oath case. I predict that he will be very vocal in our deliberations.
Everyone on our panel has taken the judge's comments and the bailiff's instructions very seriously. We have not discussed the case. Everyone has been timely, and I would expect that we will have an interesting discussion tomorrow. There are not only opposite positions of the plaintiff and the defendant, but the issue will be one of comparative negligence, as raised by the defendant. The defendant essentially claims that the plaintiff, traveling south, got into a middle turning lane on Route 1 (where there were both right turn and left turn arrows) too soon before the intersection and the defendant struck her in the middle turning lane when he proceeded from a parking area directly across the traffic, across two lines of stopped traffic and turned north, having been waved ahead by the driver of a large SUV. The defendant admitted that the SUV obstructed his vision, as a result of which he did not see the plaintiff proceeding in the turn lane. It seemed clear that the defendant was going fast.
The plaintiff says that she turned into the turn lane where an arrow indicated she could make a left-hand turn in anticipation of the forthcoming intersection and was proceeding slowly along when the defendant suddenly darted out from behind the SUV into her lane of traffic. It is the defendant's position that she should only have gotten into the turning lane when the solid yellow line broke just before the intersection, the defendant claiming that with the traffic tie up, the plaintiff was simply using the breakdown lane as a travel lane.
On first impression, the plaintiff, a young college woman who attends New England College, seems very gentle and truthful and came close to tears when describing her injuries and particularly being all alone at the hospital since she lived with her mother and her mother was then away. She spent one night in the hospital on a heart monitor since she had forcefully hit her chest on the steering wheel and was in some pain and discomfort and the physicians were worried that she had bruised her heart. Her total medical costs were $2,100 and her lost wages were $100.00. The defendant is well dressed and appears to be very serious. Their stories of the accident did not differ a lot.
On the morning of May 1, 2001, the 12 petit jury members all assembled right on time in the jury gathering room just before 9:30 a.m., as the judge had instructed us to do. However, the bailiff came in to indicate that the judge had some other business and there would be some delay before we got started. It turned out to be about a 40-minute delay.
During that time, the jurors began to really get to know each other a little bit more. I learned that one of the jurors was a retired business owner who had been born in Germany and was bilingual. He turned out to be a very strong voice in the final negotiations toward an agreed-upon verdict. One woman (juror number one) had come in the day before...
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