This is the last post about this trial, I promise. Instead of starting directly in with trial details, let me write a bit about jury duty itself, which should expose a few details that might be of general interest.
When I arrived on Monday morning, there was a line for the metal detectors at one of the two public entrances to the courthouse. You would think that after learning of the metal detectors - which they should know are set far too sensitively when they pick up candy foil wrappers - that people would leave their hunting knives at home. But no. Maybe they think it’s amusing when they have to check their foot-long knives with the sherrif at the detector. Whatever.
Also on the hitlist at the detector were cell phones with cameras. I guess you’re not allowed to take photos inside the courthouse. I’m not sure whether this prohibition extends to regular cameras or other devices with cameras embedded, or if it’s just with phones. In any case, you can avoid holding up the line by simply leaving the thing at home. But how irritating!
Enough with these annoyances, though. What can you expect as a juror ar Chester County Courthouse?
Well, you go in the building and they send you to a little room in the basement. I suppose that this will eventually change when they finish the construction on Market street, but here is my hypothesis: The room that they currently use to gather potential jurors was never intended for that purpose. So as they overfill rooms in the new building, they will eventually push lowly jurors into whatever rooms in that basement that become available, and the situation will return to normal.
Think about it as cramming 200 people into a basement closet.
Anyway, they make you line up and sign in, then give you your juror’s manual. I make it sound like a concordance, but it’s really just a few photocopied sheets that describe the court process. It doesn’t actually tell you much about what it’s like to be a juror.
While you’re sitting there - and you will sit for quite a long time - you will do nothing. This is my first bit of advice for anyone selected for jury duty: Bring a book. Or something. You will be bored. You fill out one form, and then there is nothing. You report for duty at 8am, and the courts don’t even really get rolling until 10am. You will sit and do nothing for hours waiting for something to happen.
After a while, they seem to send word to gather a panel for jury selection. They will start to organize you into large groups. My group contained 37 people. Out of those 37, they select the jury.
There was a lot of confusion about ordering. What happens is that everyone is assigned seating in the courtroom so that your name is attached to a seat number. This way, the court knows who you are and can correlate your seat to the data you’ve supplied on your marital status, number of kids, how many crimes you’ve been caught doing, etc.
After they’ve arranged you, you will sit for a while longer until they are ready to pick a jury. From there, someone leads the whole panel to the courtroom where everyone is re-seated in specific seats, as I just described.
After everyone is seated, the judge talks for a bit about jury service, describes the case very briefly, and starts to ask questions about whether you would be able to properly render a verdict based on your familiarity with elements in the case. For example, if you had ever sued for malpractice, the judge will want to know if your experience would bias you in deciding the case before the jury. This is all kind of weird.
First off, most people say that it won’t affect them. And I’ve seen that this is simply not true. My personal experience on this jury leads me to that conclusion, from people who have had related experiences that were not asked about during voir dire. Secondly, the people who said that they had experiences and that it wouldn’t affect their choice were the first people that the attorneys crossed off of their list of potentials. It’s farcical.
After the judge asks his questions, the attorneys get their change to choose who they want to remove from the pool of selected jurors. They don’t get to pick you directly, but they can say, “I don’t like that shifty guy there, so he’s out.”
During my time on the jury panel, the judge was describing the history of the judicial system in Pennsylvania, and giving facts about the current census. I think I was paying a bit too much attention to this, since the lawyers didn’t knock me off their lists. Beware.
Also, the guy I was sitting next to - who was quite the annoying person, really - was looking for the correct question to answer during voir dire that would get him tossed out of consideration. The question was directly related to prejudice, like, “If you think that these types of suits [against doctors] should not be brought to court, please raise your hand.” And the judge told him that he didn’t have to answer any more questions. I guess that’s the swift way to get yourself out of sitting on a jury, but there are two resulting problems.
First, there’s no guarantee that you’re going to get to go home right away. Most of the time, the panelists who are not selected are recycled back into the system. Second, you have to live with yourself when you answer the question. I guess it’s one thing if that’s what you really believe, but if you’re just answering that way to get out of being on a jury, then you’re pretty well scum in my book. This particular guy kept saying, “Everyone’s taking this so seriously.” Well yeah, dude - Deciding on the fate of a doctor and the livelihood of his potentially brain-damaged patient is pretty serious.
Anyway, it’s during this process of jury selection that you want to be sure not to be selected as an alternate. Being an alternate sucks. You don’t even get to be present for deliberation, much less influence the verdict. You will be dismissed before the jury goes to deliberate, and you will have to sit in on everything, including the lengthy remarks concerning the relevant law surrounding the case at hand. What I mean is that the judge will lecture about law for an hour and a half, about what you need to consider while deliberating, and they you will be sent home before you even see the deliberation room. It’s a rip off. Start acting like a crazed babboon if you need to get out of alternate service. Seriously.
While you’re on the jury, a guide will take you from the jury room to the courtroom and back. He gives you some instructions. If you need to talk to the judge, then you need to talk to the judge, not this guy - he doesn’t know anything and doesn’t want to talk to you about it. Our guide, Henry, was pretty friendly.
Depending on the lenght of the trial, you may get to take notes. Bring your own pen. They recycle their pens, and the sick juror who was chewing on his pen yesterday is the one whose pen you are using today. Your notes will be destroyed at the end of the trial, and you will probably not get to see any of the written evidence during deliberation.
Different judges have different policies about beverages in the courtroom. Ours was pretty cool, and we could bring something with us. Other judges are more strict.
While you are a juror, you will be expected to wear a sticker that says you are a juror. When you wear one of these stickers, nobody will talk to you. It’s weird. I’m going to get a few of these printed just so I can avoid being talked to on demand. It’s strange to think about, but jurors aren’t supposed to talk to anyone, either.
One of the jurors in my group was becoming anxious because of this woman in the gallery who was staring directly at her and pointing all the time. In a strangely hostile move, this juror approached the woman and said, “Do I know you?” The woman replied, “I don’t think so.” And the juror said, “Well, I don’t like being stared at,” and she continued with the rest of us out to lunch. When we returned, the judge pulled her aside an had some words.
Apparently, the woman in the gallery was a lawyer from the defence’s firm, and was watching the jury to see how the persentation of the case was affecting us. It’s kind of disturbing to be watched this way, but I guess it’s something that happens. Anyway, that was a bit of excitement in court that day.
On Friday, the plaintiff’s lawyer got very upset that one of the defense experts did not bring his billing records, which were under subpoena. He was nearly literally spitting in anger or frustration. Of course, it was all an act, but it was just the kind of hysterical excitement that will wake you up from dull afternoon testimony.
I commented to Berta that evening that they were really going to have to do something special if they wanted to continue to raise the bar on the excitement level. I was suggesting topless dancers and fire jugglers as witnesses, but I think that Monday’s bomb scare was probably more effective.
Yes, we were evacuated from the building and continued court at the bar association offices. Very weird.
There were a few other details I left out from yesterday’s writing, and I’m in no shape at the moment to detail them in narrative, so I’ll just skip directly into the details, shall I?
Perhaps my favorite part of the case was when defense counsel was cross-examining Kobus’ supervisor. The question was something like, “If Mr. Kobus’ performance was truly degraded, as you’ve testified, then why did he receive a national award for top salesman for the year after he had his supposed ‘brain injury’?”
The answer was that this supervisor had worked with Mr. Kobus before the operation on securing a $1.5 million account. At that time, their client was obligated to finish out their contract with a different supplier before they could begin the contract that Mr. Kobus had arranged. As such, their company would not receive the payment for the contract until the following fiscal year. Since the payment occurred during that fiscal year, Kobus was not credited with that sale amount until then, and when he was, it put him at the top rank of sales for that year.
The look on the attorney’s face was priceless. She was completely shocked by the answer. You’d think that a lawyer with enough experience to try a case like this would know the answers to her questions before she asked them.
That’s another weird thing. She kept trying to get witnesses to answer questions in a way that would seem to benefit the plaintiff, and then posture herself in such a way that meant for us to find that testimony uncredible. For example, she would ask something like, “Isn’t that long enough to wait?” Her position is that it is long enough to wait, but then she isn’t surprised when the witness would say emphatically, “No, it’s really not.” And then she would put on this completely unconvincing “yeah, right” expression. Well, no… He said it’s not. Your expression is really doing nothing to change my mind. This tactic is not working for you, lady.
She also needs a hair stylist because it looks like she’s wearing a dead beaver on her head. It was difficult at times to even concentrate on what she was asking with her hair looking so… stiff? fake? sponge-like? I don’t even know. All I’m trying to say is when your hair looks like the fur of a dead animal, you need to change barbers.
Oh, did I mention the verdict?
The jury found for the defendant. They said that the doctor did not practice medicine that was below the standard of care, therefore he was not financially responsible for damages related to any injury caused by the operation.
I think that stinks a bit because there was something obviously wrong with Mr. Kobus, and I think that the standard of care to which doctors are required to perform is oddly low. But that’s the law, and now everyone is stuck with those results. Not that I would have decided differently, but the whole incident seems pretty unfortunate to me.
Have I purged all of this from my system now? Hopefully. We’ll see if tomorrow returns me to the usual tripe to which everyone had been accustomed.
