Jury Duty

I received a jury duty summons about a month ago. The date for my appearance was August 13^th – last Monday. I put it on my calendar, and did not really think about it. I have been called to jury duty three times before, and only empanelled once. I did not think that I would get through the voir dire process.

The day of the summons came, and my sweet ever loving volunteered to take me to the Jury Assembly Room, as there is little parking around that building. Also, it has been very hot here in Houston – highs breaking 100 for the past couple of days. This was a generous offer that I accepted happily.

The assembly process is pretty slow. But at about 10:30 (I arrived at 8:15) we were shuffled off to the courtroom. We were told to wait in the hall (with 130 other potential jurors outside the courtroom. There are exactly 24 chairs on that floor (the 15^th floor of the Harris County Criminal Court Building).

We got called in for voir dire at about 11:30. There were 65 people in the room, and they had to select 12 jurors and an alternate. Again, even though I was juror number 16, I did not think that I would be picked. The defense attorney even called me out to ask what it was my company did.

But yeah, howdy, when they called off the juror numbers, mine was amongst them. I shuffled into the jury box as the rest of the people were dismissed.

It was another couple of hours (they bought us pizza) before the trial started.

The trial was the alleged theft of 760 cartons of cigarettes (worth $21,568.05) from a Grocer’s Supply truck. Well, sort of. It was not really all that simple.

Here are the basic facts of the case:

A Semi-truck with the cigarettes and other grocery supplies was parked in a motel’s parking lot. Sometime during the night, someone (unknown. Not this defendant) broke into the truck and stole the cigarettes. Somehow these cigarettes got from this secured, monitored parking lot to a street behind a 12’ security fence in a residential neighborhood.

That evening, our defendant (Charlie Smith, Jr) was driving down that street behind the parking lot for the motel, and spotted the cigarettes. He and his buddy (to whom he had loaned the truck that day) got out a started collecting the boxes of cigarettes. A roller (police cruiser) happened by and spotted them loading the truck.

The policeman stopped, told them to get on the road (at gunpoint, according to the cop, no gun, according to Charlie) on their bellies. They complied, and some moments later two more rollers showed up. The suspects were cuffed, questioned, and ultimately released.

They were arrested a couple of days later for the crime.

That is really pretty much it.

We, the Jury, decided that the prosecuting attorney did not prove Mr. Smith’s guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. That process took about two hours. (the first vote was 7 to 5 to acquit) It took a lot of jawboning to get the numbers switched to 12-0.

Did I mention that Mr. Smith had been in the Big House several times before for theft? That did not really matter to the jury – it barely came up.

Did I mention that Charlie’s friend plead out? We didn’t know that until we rendered our verdict.

Justice was done, and I am proud of my part in it.