Showing posts with label "Clara Shortridge Foltz". Show all posts
Showing posts with label "Clara Shortridge Foltz". Show all posts

Wednesday, September 27, 2017

Jury Duty

I spent most of last week on jury duty in downtown Los Angeles at the Clara Shortridge Foltz Criminal Justice Center. That’s 18ish miles away from where I love, pretty much the farthest they can legally send me.

I’ve served on jury duty there twice before. The first time I saw the name of the courthouse, I wondered who this Clara Foltz was so I looked her up. Turns out she’s pretty impressive. She was the first woman admitted to the bar in California and the first woman lawyer on the west coast of the United States. She also pioneered the idea of the public defender system. The courthouse was renamed after her in 2002.

This particular courthouse is where a lot of the big trials are held. We’re talking O.J. Simpson, Phil Spector and Michael Jackson’s doctor. I was on jury duty on an assault case when MJ’s doctor was arraigned. That was a zoo with all of the family present as well as media and protesters.

While I find trials and courtrooms interesting, I don’t exactly jump up and down with joy when I receive my notice. Generally, I groan. The courthouse in downtown L.A. is probably one of my least favorite places to go just because of the time it takes to get there. I’m not eager to spend 1 to 1 1/2 hours each way in bumper to bumper traffic. Given the nature of the cases tried there, I’m also afraid I’ll end up on a long trial that will disrupt my life for weeks.

Many, many years ago I served on a 6 week trial in a different courthouse. I know how tiring that can be. That one was particularly hard because of the nature of the case. It’s very difficult to listen to children talk about horrible things that have happened to them.

Anyway, I pulled up my big girl pants and braved the downtown traffic. I discovered, to my great surprise, that I kind of, sort of enjoyed the process this time around. The drive wasn’t as horrible as I remembered and the case I was on was fairly short. I met some interesting people and a couple of my fellow jurors bought one of my books.

Some things I noticed this time around:

There’s a new jury assembly room. The old one was basically just awful. This one has comfortable chairs, nice bathrooms, vending machines, a refrigerator, a microwave, tables and plenty of outlets for charging your electronic devices.

The courthouse was much quieter than I’ve seen it in the past, which meant it didn’t take me forever to get through security or get an elevator to my courtroom.

During the trial, interpreters were used for one of the witnesses. That’s something I’d never been exposed to before so I found that interesting.

In previous trials, I’ve seen the court reporter have to pick up their machine and stand beside the attorneys during side bars. This time around, the court reporter stayed where she was. The attorneys and judge talked into a small device that reminded me of a an old iPod. We couldn’t hear them, but the court reporter could through earbuds.

Overall, it was an interesting week, but I was still glad when it was over. I’m happy hanging out at home and working on my book.

Anybody else have any interesting jury duty experiences? Forgive my ignorance, but do my Canadian friends have jury duty as well?