A Day in Court -- Nonfiction

Jefferson County Courthouse

The courthouse is rather impressive, doncha think. You can see why the locals call it the Taj Mahal.

As you may recall from a post back in March Luck of the Draw, I was summoned to serve as a juror in our local County Court. As it turned out, I called the court as ordered and my number was well within the range stated by the recorded message. Lucky me.

The summons required that we be there by 8 a.m. explaining that the courthouse opens at 7:30.

They warned that parking would be limited due to ongoing repair work and recommended that we take public transportation -- a welcome excuse to ride the light rail. Checking the light rail's schedule online. I planned leave home at 6:45 to be at the station by 7 then catch the train at 7:15 and arrive at the courthouse by 7:24. So about 40 minutes. The courthouse is maybe 20 minutes from my house, if I drove. But this was to be an adventure. I wanted nothing so mundane as driving my car when I could take the light rail.

Having been retired for a number of years I'd gotten used to not wearing business attire and makeup which means I'd forgotten how long it takes to "get ready" to go. I thought I'd gotten up in plenty of time.

After worrying about what to wear, I'd settled on black pants and a teal, long-sleeved shirt. Dark enough to be serious, but not severe. And my Washington, D.C. shoes.

I bought those shoes almost six years ago to wear on a vacation trip to D.C. I wanted them to wear when I visited some of the churches. They're black sandals made by New Balance so they're intended for walking and D.C. is definitely a walking town. In addition to NOT being sneakers, they're almost closed-toed, so they meet my standard for "respectful." Long story short -- I forgot to take them on that vacation.

Well, I ran out of time to get ready, so my husband kindly put my breakfast in a plastic container. I put my mascara and lipstick in my purse and off I went. The sun was just coming up while I waited for the train. It was a beautiful morning, clear and cold.

At the courthouse, there were hundreds of people in line waiting to get into the jury gathering room. Hundreds! All with their summons in one hand and various bags and books and the necessaries we arm ourselves with for planned days of waiting. The people were all ages, all ethnicities, and many different levels of physical fitness including a man with a walker and on oxygen.


I needn't have worried about what I was wearing. Or makeup. There were people dressed to the nines -- men in suits, women in dresses and heels and professionally coiffed. There were men and women in jeans and t-shirts or sweatshirts. Footwear ran the gamut from shiny dress shoes to sneakers to well-worn work boots.




No flip flops, but even being March in Colorado with patches of snow left from the last storm, there could have been. Coloradans are a hardy lot. (This was the view looking toward the foothills from the courthouse that day.)

                                                                              

The people around me knew as little about what we were doing as I did. We didn't know what kinds of trials were held in this court. Or how many were on the docket for this jury pool. Or what kind of food would be available in the cafeteria. (I was just relieved to hear there was a cafeteria in the courthouse.) But we all agreed we probably had little chance of being chosen for a jury.

As we filed into the gathering room, we turned in the portion of the summons which we had completed with our names, addresses, if we had family in law-enforcement, if we had ever served on a jury, and if we ourselves had ever been involved in a court case.

There, they explained how it all works. They use three-person juries for civil cases, six-person juries for more complex civil cases and some criminal cases, and twelve-person juries for more serious criminal cases.

We would be called by name and follow a bailiff  to our assigned courtroom. If we were then NOT chosen for the jury, we would be told whether to return to the gathering room or we would be released and could go home. Whether or not we were chosen for a jury, this would meet our responsibility for jury service for this calendar year.

My name was called next to last of the first 20. Then in the courtroom I was in the first group of twelve to be installed in the jury box. Six of us would be impaneled. If they decided not to keep six from this initial twelve, they'd call up more from our original 20.

They explained that this would be a criminal case which gave me pause. The prosecution and the defense, each then described to us various scenarios involving whether or not we thought we could tell if someone was drunk or under the influence of drugs by their behavior or speech

My husband had said "they don't want smart people on the jury." I pooh-poohed that. But maybe he right. The first to be excused was a high school science teacher. Then a woman who said she had an in-law who drank too much and she could tell when he was drunk. Then a nineteen-year-old who said he'd been arrested for Driving Under the Influence and he didn't think he'd been treated fairly by the court.

Then there was a member of the ski patrol. Being from Oklahoma, the ski patrol seemed quite exotic. They provide medical and rescue services to injured skiers. He had some kind of medical certification. He explained that it was necessary to determine if alcohol or other drugs were involved before providing emergency medical care to an injured skier. He was excused.

It became clear pretty early on that whatever the case was, it involved alcohol or other drugs. I was one of the chosen to serve -- three women and three men. At 71, I was the oldest and the only retiree.

The youngest was a 21-year-old woman who worked at a department store and had the most amazing fingernails. Quite long and each had sparkly bits and ornaments. Beautiful, but how in the world could she put lotion in all those nooks and crannies in her ears. Colorado is so dry, ears get crusty without moisturizer.

The rest were a mix of business people.

Our case was Driving Under the Influence. The defendant had refused the proffered blood test and relinquished his driver's license for a year. They had not offered him a breathalyzer test. The prosecution's only witness was the arresting officer. The officer's descriptions of what had happened and where seemed unlikely, given that it was rush hour and we jurors were very familiar with that stretch of I-70. There's no way the officer could have seen the traffic pattern he described from where he was getting on the highway. The defendant's explanation of what happened and his witness's testimony were much more reasonable. I don't know why the prosecution had pursued the case.









Not guilty. Case closed. Back to the light rail. That's Green Mountain behind the light rail station and my house is just on the other side of the mountain.