Not too long ago, for the first time in awhile, I got called in for jury duty. I used to be summonsed about every two years, ever since I settled permanently in Manhattan back in 1972, because I was self-employed and Da System assumed I didn’t have a real job. My long break came about because the last time I’d served time, in the late 90s, it was a grand jury bit – a full month, no excuses. For anyone who imagines that our judicial system is fair, I recommend 30 days, essentially in partial lock-up, on a grand jury which doesn’t decide anything grand. My stint was all about undercover cops looking and acting exactly like the thugs they’d arrest, testifying in buy-and-bust drug cases, grand theft charges, and domestic abuse disasters.
It seems that from time to time Riker’s Island, where arrested people are held awaiting trial, gets overcrowded; the judges’ dockets open up a little, and the State Attorney General’s office calls a grand jury seeking quick indictments for routine crimes.
The experience brought out the worst in our panel. At first we were divided into factions based blatantly on race. The vast majority of cases involved black and hispanic suspects, and during the first couple of days the black and hispanic bloc on the jury solidly voted to dismiss each one, despite the evidence, because most of the cops and prosecutors were white/anglo, and the ones that weren’t were Uncle Toms and Tío Tomáses. A grand jury vote to indict required a ¾ majority at the time, and during the first two or three days the racist bias of the Latinos and African-Americans was enough to exonerate a couple of people who had, beyond reasonable doubt, done horrendous things. O.J. Simpson, anyone?
But very soon the sheer grinding viciousness and stupidity of the crimes broke down the racial loyalties. We developed a sort of collective Stockholm syndrome, trying to please the people who owned us, and our grand jury began working like a well-oiled machine. We almost started trying to set “Personal Best” records for the number of cases we sent to trial during a given day. The DAs and the people with the legal guns were very happy with us. And I don’t know how many innocents we voted to indict.
On a grand jury one hears only the arresting officers and the DAs. Defense lawyers can bring in their clients to testify, but the lawyers can’t speak, and the clients are seldom persuasive. But the prosecutors can call alleged victims of the crime at hand and coach them through their testimonies, which are often so poignant they elicit tears from the jurors. The procedure is openly weighted on the side of the State, and the presumption of innocence which governs trial jurors is specifically excluded. It’s a Star Chamber Tribunal, and 30 days serving on it make grand jurors complaisant, willing to do anything Da System asks, just to make the time pass faster.
We were supposed to be a random cross sampling of American citizens living in New York, but I met an Irishman who told me the INS had promised that if he served, his green card would be pushed through, even though he hadn’t a clue about the American judicial system. And there was an old Italian guy who spoke next to no English. I’d just begun studying Italian back then, and I tried to translate what the cops and robbers were saying. But my Italian wasn’t up to it, and the poor man kept asking me why he’d been arrested. Another man, a one-time champion figure-skater (you do meet interesting folks on jury duty) put it in a nutshell. “This isn’t about justice. The system’s clogged, and we’re just plumbers. Not even good ones.” I confess that I gladly joined my fellow plumbers in flushing the clogs down the tubes, trying to forget that they were composed of human beings.
When I got called again, for a routine petit jury, it was almost painless. Since my last trip downtown, the State of New York had eliminated automatic jury-duty exemptions for doctors, lawyers, pols, corporate CEOs and other bigshots, grabbing up every warm body except single mothers with children below the age of twelve, and even they had to show up with documentary proof that they were the sole support of their kids. As a result, jury pools got a lot bigger, and Da System worked more efficiently. We were even treated with a degree of courtesy entirely absent during my previous stints. The clerk who ran the jury room reminded me of one of my less vicious sergeants in Basic Training, full of well-worn little jokes to soft-pedal his absolute power over us.
We watched a video about the vital importance of the jury system in upholding Truth, Justice and the American Way, narrated by Diane Sawyer and the late Ed Bradley. It had solid History Channel production values, but it cut through the history of jurisprudence since the Greeks and Romans hastily, maintaining that from the fall of the Roman Empire to the 17th century, the only way to determine the guilt or innocence of an accused felon was trial by ordeal; and that only in colonial America did the jury system begin to flourish. No mention of the thousand years of Anglo-Norman Common Law which informed the magistrates of early New England, a system which routinely accorded an accused criminal the right to a jury of his peers.
But the purpose of the bullshit video was to make us jurors feel smug about being part of an enlightened system found only in the Land of the Free (or at least not-yet-incarcerated). Yet as I watched actors playing accused medieval felons being half-drowned or having their hands burned in boiling water, I thought that trial by ordeal perfectly described the experience, in our time, of far too many people wrongfully convicted of crimes they didn’t commit, and imprisoned for long stretches, only to be released when DNA evidence finally proved their innocence.
It was very cold in Manhattan when I went downtown, and I was happy that the main jury room and the three smaller jurors’ lounges adjacent to it were kept toasty warm. The chairs were comfortably padded, and after our jokey drill sergeant had shown us the video, he distributed forms which required almost as many intimate details about our lives as those you get when visiting a new doctor for the first time, but without the guarantee of doctor-patient confidentiality. And then he left us alone to rest in those comfy chairs, probably confident that most of us would grow drowsy enough not to worry that we’d just added another telling document to Da System’s dossiers on us.
Many of us didn’t nod off, not because they were paranoid about spilling their guts to Da System, but because they were driven workaholics who had brought their laptops with them. The jurors’ lounges were equipped with multiple electric sockets and there was even a computer or two with online access for those who hadn’t brought their own machines, amenities which were added after the court’s net began to haul in people who, during my past jury services, would have contrived to get excused. Since the Internet has made it possible for well-paid business people to keep on working while they are out of their offices, nobody can plausibly maintain that his or her absence is an economic hardship (even if jury duty only pays forty bucks a day). Actually I’ve wondered for awhile why vast office buildings still exist. Watching the obsessed hustlers in their expensive business attire keeping the hustle going on their laptops confirmed my feeling that all those towers should be converted into cheap housing for people who can’t afford computers (including wrongfully convicted ex-prisoners), and that those who can, should all work from home.
I settled in one of the lounges, listening to the minute whisper of fingers on laptop keyboards, and looking around at my fellow jurors. In addition to the standard chairs there was one fully-cushioned armchair, and a muscular young woman sporting motorcycle boots and a spiky haircut had claimed it, making a nest of her parka, placing her hefty shoulder-bag in front of the chair as a footrest, and arranging her bottle of water and her coffee cup on its arms. She was making a temporary home for herself, and woe betide trespassers.
The vague sense of déjà vu I felt as I’d gone through security on the ground floor of the court building finally sharpened: the jury room was an airport lounge, and we were all passengers waiting for flights to destinations we hadn’t chosen, stuck in limbo biding on announcements by authoritative voices. And as in an airport lounge full of weary passengers settling in for a very long wait, we were all trying to stake claims to tiny private spaces.
I felt like an idiot for not recognizing the airport analogy the moment I walked into the courthouse lobby. I keep a small Swiss Army knife on my key-chain, a useful little tool-kit, and it’s my third. I lost the first two due to heightened airport security after 9/11. Of course the court cops – I noticed that since I’d last been on jury duty their uniforms had changed from bland white shirt and neat gray slacks to dark blue combat fatigues complete with high-topped black boots – confiscated my wee weapon of mass destruction, but at least this time I signed a form assuring me I’d get it back at the end of the day. I even joked with the desk sergeant about forgetting about knives and security, and I told him about the two others I’d lost since 9/11.
“Well, we aren’t going to steal your knife,” he said. He was a man in his late forties, with a military buzz-cut and the body-language of an ex-athlete gone a little to fat but still capable of kicking ass and taking names. “But 9/11, well, it changed everything.” He pointed to a large memorial plaque on the wall of the courthouse lobby. “We lost some of our best people…”
“Court officers? I thought it was only the NYPD and the firemen.”
“We were first responders,” he said. “We dropped everything and got the hell down there to do whatever we could, because we were so close to the Towers. My guys and I were there when the second tower collapsed. Sign for the knife, please, sir. You can get it back when you leave the building.”
I got called to voir-dire on the first selection. A civil case, thank the Jesus, since those are usually settled quickly. I was further cheered when the luck of the draw put me in seat eleven. A civil jury in New York State is made up of six jurors and two alternates, so I wouldn’t wind up on the case unless three people in the eight seats of the front row were dismissed. The voir-dire rooms were located off a short corridor leading directly out of the jury room, another improvement on my past experiences, when we were sometimes marched to other floors, or even to other buildings. I was feeling positively coddled.
And Counsel for the Plaintiff continued the coddling. He was a plump pink-and-white guy, late forties or early fifties, in a slightly rumpled suit, his graying hair a little disarranged and even the knot of his red power-tie a bit askew. Everything about him proclaimed, “I represent the Little Guy.” He had the affable manner of the favorite uncle at a family reunion before he gets drunk, and he was concerned about our comfort. “Chairs OK? Hey, this room is really small! I feel as if I’m sort of standing over you folks in the front row – is it OK if I sit down?” Counsel for the Defense, a chiseled woman about ten years younger, with glossy raven-wing hair, obsidian eyes behind designer glasses she probably didn’t need, in a trim dark business suit whose skirt was cut short enough to reveal a lot of shapely leg, gave us a knowing little smile suggesting that her esteemed brother-at-the-bar was as full of shit as she would prove his case to be. Those of us who had done time on civil cases before twigged instantly: personal injury suit, Ambulance Chaser v. Heartless Corporate Lawyer.
Close enough: the case involved a guy who was suing his landlord for big bucks because the front door of his apartment building had a broken lock, which gave a thug entry and eventually resulted in an assault and robbery which left the plaintiff with very severe injuries. But the ambulance chaser made things more interesting: there was a second plaintiff, another man who had been in the apartment during the crime. He hadn’t been hurt physically, but he was the injured man’s gay partner, linked to him by a civil union duly enacted by the State of New York. His partner’s injuries had deprived him of conjugal relations and economic support during the time the victim had spent recuperating. In short, he was claiming the right to sue for the collateral damages which a heterosexual spouse is routinely granted under existing law.
So it was an interesting little law affair, testing the legal limits of the gay civil union, and perhaps setting a small precedent for the legalization of full gay marriage in New York State. There were further revelations: the thug who had robbed the couple and beaten up the principal plaintiff was a woman, and the criminal trial had happened back in 1999. The woman had been found guilty, and she was still in the slammer. So it had taken eight years for the victim and his partner to set up a civil suit for damages incurred during the assault and robbery. And since the convicted woman obviously didn’t have any money, they’d gone after the landlord, over the broken lock.
I’m a little sorry I wasn’t picked for that jury, but I was too far down in the pecking order to be chosen. The ambulance chaser mostly questioned the front row about their attitudes toward big-money personal injury awards, asking if anyone had ever been assaulted, initiated a law suit, and so on. I knew seat five would be dismissed the moment he began to talk. He was part of Da System himself, an undercover operative for the District Attorney’s office, who had actually worked on the criminal case in 1999, providing evidence in court which helped to put away the woman. He not only knew the plaintiffs, but all the cops, defense lawyers and prosecutors involved in the criminal trial. Da System’s a small world, and it was amusing to see the ambulance chaser shift into legalese instantly when talking with him. Two insiders dazzling the rest of us with jargon we could more or less recognize from cop-shows on tv, but still not quite understand.
The other person in the Front Eight whom I suspected would be kicked off the final jury was a model-thin woman, possibly in her early sixties, sporting skin-tight leather pants, an expensively-styled mane of dyed blonde hair, a face which billboarded the skill of her plastic surgeon, and a clear compulsion to be the star of the room. She was asked if she’d ever been the victim of a violent crime, and it was her cue to pitch the memoir I knew her agent was already selling to the Abused Women’s Self-Help publishing niche.
“Well,” she began, in a tiny, breathless voice, “I was on vacation in the Caribbean once, and I was…(long pause)…um, sort of…(deep sigh)…raped.” She went on at grisly length to describe the incident, reveling in the sympathetic clucks she got from the ambulance chaser and most of the jurors, but I was still stuck at her opening revelation. “Sort of raped?” Isn’t that like being sort of pregnant? I glanced at the landlord’s Dragon Lady lawyer and knew exactly how she planned to destroy the poor road-company Blanche Dubois. In voir-dire everyone is supposed to answer truthfully, but some folks use the occasion to tell more about themselves than even the lawyers want to know. Part of the Stockholm Syndrome, again. But also, we live in a rancid time when a lot of people offer up their ugliest secrets for a chance to get on tv, or even on a jury. To be kinder toward the sad woman, voir-dire, like finally being on a plane after a long delay, prompts people to babble too much to strangers, assuming that when the flight is over they will never meet again.
We were dismissed for lunch, and I got a sandwich and a cup of coffee at a deli across Lafayette Street. The desk sergeant’s comments about 9/11 made me think about taking a walk to the hole in the ground. I had never visited the site of the atrocity in the years since it happened, perhaps for the same reason that makes me despise the rubberneckers on the highway who slow down to goggle at the scene of an accident. But I’d always felt vaguely guilty for not going down to look at the vacancy where the Towers had been, if only to pay some respect to the thousands of people who died on that lovely fall day.
But it was about a half-mile away, and my arthritic knees and feet were already aching from the walk from the subway station that morning. So instead, rather than taking my lunch into the womblike warmth of the jury room, where I couldn’t have a smoke after eating, I sat on a bench in Collect Pond Park next to the court building and stared at the vast gap in the downtown skyline whose old outline I remembered from past jury services. Despite the cold snap, it was March, and the sunlight was warmer than it would have been a month before.
So I was reasonably comfortable on my sunny bench, bundled in my parka and scarf and wool hat, looking at the empty place where the two biggest teeth in the skyline’s mandible used to be, and indulging in Deep Thoughts about hatred born of religious fanaticism, the mindless greed of the various factions whose squabbles over profit had kept the grave of the Towers uncovered for so many years, the perfidy of the Bush administration, and blah blah blah. Extremely aggressive herring gulls gathered around me, pecking at the pigeons who joined them, trying to extort crumbs from my sandwich, until they gave up on me and arced into the sky in a single swoop, the backlighting sun turning their synchronized wings momentarily into the spread vanes of a vast gray and white Japanese fan.
There were three other humans in the park. One was an older woman, probably on break from jury duty herself, wearing a fancy coat trimmed with fur, who was lifting her face to the sun trying to catch some Vitamin D. The gulls hadn’t bothered her, because she wasn’t packing any food. The other two were a pair of weathered men down on their luck. I remembered from past jury stints that the little parks around the court complex were usually frequented by people gone bust for one reason or another, chronic old juicers and druggies kicked out of the overnight holding pens in the downtown police stations because they hadn’t done anything bad enough for Da System to send them to Riker’s. They were fixtures of the court area, as were the cops on break having a smoke, and they had almost a symbiotic relationship with the policemen, the kind that the old hobos who rode the rails during the Depression had with the railroad bulls. The bums were easy arrests for a cop needing to fill out his dance card and impress his superiors, and certainly in winter the older derelicts welcomed being arrested and spending at least one night in a warm, supervised jail where they wouldn’t be molested by the younger, crazier homeless people who ruled the city’s brutal shelters.
One of the men had a face as seamed and leathery as an old baseball mitt. He was in a filthy, ripped parka, on his feet stumbling around like a punchy boxer. The other guy, sitting on a bench, was younger and with a cap and gloves, a bit better dressed for the weather. He was patiently enduring the monologue, which he’d obviously heard before.
“Well, we ain’t spring chickens no more. Someone hits me, he’s gonna hurt me, break something, you see what I’m saying? But I always let him know, you know, motherfucker, I may not retaliate immediately, but eventually I’m gonna get you. Not with my fists no more. I’ll pick up something and hit you with it.” The other guy nodded.
The older man laughed, and went on. “Listen, when you see John, tell him hello from Jimmy. He’s the only one of the crew I used to run with who did something with his life. He said he was sick of this situation and he did something to change it. He’s working for a carpet company, am I right?”
The other guy finally spoke. “Yeah, on Delancy Street, I think.” He stood up. “I gotta go. Good to see you, Jimmy. Take care of yourself.”
“Hey, I always do,” Jimmy said. “I just told you.”
The other guy gave Jimmy a little pat on the shoulder and walked away. My break was up and I returned to the voir-dire room, where I wasn’t surprised to learn that I hadn’t been selected. I was sent home, and I didn’t have to come back until nine the next day. The jury room was almost empty. Da System had grabbed up all the jurors it needed the day before, it seemed. But we remnants still had to sit around all morning, just in case.
We were let out for lunch, and I got the same sandwich and the same cup of coffee and sat in the same park. It was a little warmer, but not much, and the scary gulls were still interested in my sandwich. The same down-and-outer was there, this time lecturing a different guy. As before the older man did the talking, pacing, with his long gray hair whipped around his leather face by the sharp breeze. It wasn’t crazy ranting at all, although it was bitter and resentful: mistakes and missed chances. His companion nodded patiently, as his friend of the day before had done. And as before, the younger man finally got up to leave. “OK, Jimmy. You’re OK?”
“Never better, man.”
“You take care, now.”
“You got it, buddy.”
“Watch the birds.”
“Absolutely.”
The other man left and Jimmy rambled around the little park, flapping his arms to keep his circulation going. I ate my sandwich, and had to wave my own arms at two gulls who settled on the bench right next to me and began to peck at it. And I understood why Jimmy’s friend had told him to watch the birds. Collect Pond Park was his home, his apartment, his Manhattan condo. As I sipped my coffee and lit a cigarette, Jimmy curled up on a bench for a snooze, and a gull alit near his head. He shooed it away, cursed, and moved to another bench, curling into an even tighter ball and shielding his head with his arms.
I thought about tucking a couple of bills into his parka, but he wasn’t fully asleep and I was afraid he’d be offended. Although I’d been in his bleak little home twice, eating and smoking, he’d never asked me for anything. So I let him be and went back into the warm, deceptive comfort of the jury room, read the book I’d brought, and dozed, until Sergeant Feelgood announced that we could all go home, with the gratitude of Da System for performing our civic duty. I looked for Jimmy in the park as I walked by, but he was gone. I hope he’s watching the birds, because nobody else, certainly not Da System, is watching them for him.
