I, The Juror
Mar. 23rd, 2005 09:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stdesjardinsThis week I served on my first jury, in an eviction case. (Last summer I was an alternate in a gun case.) I arrived at the courthouse around 10:00, and wasn't called for a jury panel until nearly four. We had only two dozen people to choose eight jurors from, and the judge was pretty free with dismissals—if you said you would be inclined to have more sympathy for a tenant than a landlord, for instance, he dismissed you without the usual questioning of whether you think you could be fair anyway. One juror was dismissed for knowing one of the witnesses. After dismissals for cause, we had only thirteen potential jurors, and each side had three peremptory challenges. Either one side didn't use all their challenges, or there was some overlap, because we did seat a jury, but it was as close as I've ever seen it.
There wasn't time to start the trial on Monday. On my way out, I just barely made it onto the elevator with one of the other jurors, and realized only after I got on that the defendant was also there. She said "How are you doing" in an uninterested voice, then talked to her companion about how someone or other had their facts wrong, while I tried not to listen. The gentleman accompanying her uttered a sentence ending in the word "bullshit". Nothing that would affect my judgment, but I did feel compelled to tell the judge the next morning.
I'm not going to use real names, so I'll call the tenant "the tenant". The tenant had two children, one just entering school, the other a baby. Last January, her baby son's father's sister was seven months pregnant and staying with her; I'll call her B. She had two neighbors, T and T's son S, who are important figures. S visited her apartment nearly every day and often helped take care of her children.
The tenant was accused of keeping a "drug haven", based on an incident last year when five people were arrested in her apartment for possession of drugs and firearms. However, she wasn't in the apartment—she had to testify in court about an incident in another apartment, and B. didn't feel well, so she knocked on her neighbor's apartment and asked S. to watch the baby. While she was gone, there was a shooting outside the apartment building, and a witness saw the shooter run into her apartment. The policeman unscrewed the peephole, saw a gun in the apartment, and broke down the door. S., B., and the baby were in one bedroom; four others, troublemakers who ordinarily loitered in the hallway selling drugs, were in the other. Cocaine, PCP, marijuana, guns, and drug paraphernalia were scattered about the apartment, in every room except the bedroom with the people who had an actual right to be there. S. and the four others were arrested, Child Protective Services took away the children, and the tenant knew nothing about any of this until she got home that evening and discovered her apartment was a crime scene.
This, basically, was the case when the plaintiffs rested. The apartment complex's administrative assistant said there had been "complaints" about the unit, but she didn't give any details. There was evidence that S. had been convicted of drug distribution, but not that the tenant had known about it, or that he was dealing drugs anywhere near the apartment. At this point, the defense didn't even have to bother putting on a case—if they had simply rested their case without putting on any witnesses, I would have found for the defendant, because there just wasn't any evidence of an ongoing problem.
However, they did put on three witnesses, the tenant, T., and B., who all basically said the same thing, that there was a lot of trouble with people hanging out in the hallways, but that the tenant never let them into her apartment and hadn't seen anything to indicate that S. was involved in it. It had some technical value in that there testimony was worth more than what we assumed their testimony would be, but not much.
The plaintiffs then called one more witness, after the defense had rested. This witness was a police officer who testified that his unit had been keeping the apartment building under surveillance for the last few months, and that on at least four or five occasions he had seen known drug dealers entering her apartment, and a few weeks ago they had arrested someone in that apartment for shooting a police informant. He'd also seen the same people entering several other apartments in the building, so it wasn't clear whether her apartment was really any worse than the others, but under a loose "more likely than not" standard, without any evidence to rebut the testimony that drug dealers were entering her apartment, it seemed that the apartment did fit the legal definition of a drug haven. Testimony ended late Tuesday, and we went home after hearing the judge's instructions. I went home rather troubled; under the facts as presented, I didn't want to evict the tenant, but it wasn't clear whether she was legally responsible for what S. allowed to happen. (I think it is more likely than not that S. was a weak-willed person who let his friends hang out in the apartment when the tenant wasn't around.)
Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only person who was at all reluctant to find against her. I studied the written instructions the next day, and it seemed the apartment just barely qualified under the law as a drug haven, and she just barely had enough control over what was going on to be responsible. The other jurors had fewer doubts: if she authorized S. to be in her apartment, then she was strictly responsible for his actions (basically true); and if he authorized anyone else to enter the apartment, then she was strictly responsible for whatever they did (I'm not so sure this is true, but even under a looser standard I thought she was just barely legally liable). It was an uncomfortable situation. If I have to be argued into a position I don't want to hold, I want it to be by someone with as many doubts as myself. A couple of jurors said they doubted the tenant's credibility because she was on welfare and had an expensive coat (which she said was a gift from a cousin). I certainly hope that if I ever find myself in court, I'll have a jury which is more inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt.
It's hard to see where she'll go from here. I can't see how she can ever hope to get another apartment, or to get her life back on track without some place to live. The specific law isn't so much the problem as the complete absence of a safety net for the law's victims. The apartment complex could have accomplished as much, in terms of making the property safer, by barring S. from the premises. The police could have accomplished more by prosecuting the men arrested in her apartment. (They were never charged, because of doubts over whether it was legal to unscrew the peephole.)
Bah.
There wasn't time to start the trial on Monday. On my way out, I just barely made it onto the elevator with one of the other jurors, and realized only after I got on that the defendant was also there. She said "How are you doing" in an uninterested voice, then talked to her companion about how someone or other had their facts wrong, while I tried not to listen. The gentleman accompanying her uttered a sentence ending in the word "bullshit". Nothing that would affect my judgment, but I did feel compelled to tell the judge the next morning.
I'm not going to use real names, so I'll call the tenant "the tenant". The tenant had two children, one just entering school, the other a baby. Last January, her baby son's father's sister was seven months pregnant and staying with her; I'll call her B. She had two neighbors, T and T's son S, who are important figures. S visited her apartment nearly every day and often helped take care of her children.
The tenant was accused of keeping a "drug haven", based on an incident last year when five people were arrested in her apartment for possession of drugs and firearms. However, she wasn't in the apartment—she had to testify in court about an incident in another apartment, and B. didn't feel well, so she knocked on her neighbor's apartment and asked S. to watch the baby. While she was gone, there was a shooting outside the apartment building, and a witness saw the shooter run into her apartment. The policeman unscrewed the peephole, saw a gun in the apartment, and broke down the door. S., B., and the baby were in one bedroom; four others, troublemakers who ordinarily loitered in the hallway selling drugs, were in the other. Cocaine, PCP, marijuana, guns, and drug paraphernalia were scattered about the apartment, in every room except the bedroom with the people who had an actual right to be there. S. and the four others were arrested, Child Protective Services took away the children, and the tenant knew nothing about any of this until she got home that evening and discovered her apartment was a crime scene.
This, basically, was the case when the plaintiffs rested. The apartment complex's administrative assistant said there had been "complaints" about the unit, but she didn't give any details. There was evidence that S. had been convicted of drug distribution, but not that the tenant had known about it, or that he was dealing drugs anywhere near the apartment. At this point, the defense didn't even have to bother putting on a case—if they had simply rested their case without putting on any witnesses, I would have found for the defendant, because there just wasn't any evidence of an ongoing problem.
However, they did put on three witnesses, the tenant, T., and B., who all basically said the same thing, that there was a lot of trouble with people hanging out in the hallways, but that the tenant never let them into her apartment and hadn't seen anything to indicate that S. was involved in it. It had some technical value in that there testimony was worth more than what we assumed their testimony would be, but not much.
The plaintiffs then called one more witness, after the defense had rested. This witness was a police officer who testified that his unit had been keeping the apartment building under surveillance for the last few months, and that on at least four or five occasions he had seen known drug dealers entering her apartment, and a few weeks ago they had arrested someone in that apartment for shooting a police informant. He'd also seen the same people entering several other apartments in the building, so it wasn't clear whether her apartment was really any worse than the others, but under a loose "more likely than not" standard, without any evidence to rebut the testimony that drug dealers were entering her apartment, it seemed that the apartment did fit the legal definition of a drug haven. Testimony ended late Tuesday, and we went home after hearing the judge's instructions. I went home rather troubled; under the facts as presented, I didn't want to evict the tenant, but it wasn't clear whether she was legally responsible for what S. allowed to happen. (I think it is more likely than not that S. was a weak-willed person who let his friends hang out in the apartment when the tenant wasn't around.)
Unfortunately, I seemed to be the only person who was at all reluctant to find against her. I studied the written instructions the next day, and it seemed the apartment just barely qualified under the law as a drug haven, and she just barely had enough control over what was going on to be responsible. The other jurors had fewer doubts: if she authorized S. to be in her apartment, then she was strictly responsible for his actions (basically true); and if he authorized anyone else to enter the apartment, then she was strictly responsible for whatever they did (I'm not so sure this is true, but even under a looser standard I thought she was just barely legally liable). It was an uncomfortable situation. If I have to be argued into a position I don't want to hold, I want it to be by someone with as many doubts as myself. A couple of jurors said they doubted the tenant's credibility because she was on welfare and had an expensive coat (which she said was a gift from a cousin). I certainly hope that if I ever find myself in court, I'll have a jury which is more inclined to give me the benefit of the doubt.
It's hard to see where she'll go from here. I can't see how she can ever hope to get another apartment, or to get her life back on track without some place to live. The specific law isn't so much the problem as the complete absence of a safety net for the law's victims. The apartment complex could have accomplished as much, in terms of making the property safer, by barring S. from the premises. The police could have accomplished more by prosecuting the men arrested in her apartment. (They were never charged, because of doubts over whether it was legal to unscrew the peephole.)
Bah.
