Jury Duty Cont'd...

UPDATE: District Attorney is a typo. Replace District Attorney with court appointed lawyer. Thank you.

I failed to mention what the charges were against the defendant. Basically he was charged with possession of narcotics (cocaine) in the third degree. The defendant supposedly tried to sell cocaine to an undercover cop.

The second round of Voir Dire was more of the same. Other quotes taken not from verbatim include "I was convicted of a crime twelve years ago... They will try and use that against me!" and "I am also being tried for copyright infringement." Each of those quotes drove the judge nuts. The judge barked back informing the potential jurors that we are not suppose to know about the conviction twelve years ago because this is not the time to discuss such details and we cannot base the credibility of the prosecution and/or defense solely on this factor. The judge also informed us that there is no copyright infringement in this case nor ever being any copyright laws being broken and to ignore that statement made by the defendant. In both situations the judge went back to chewing on his pen viciously.

After the second round of Voir Dire 20 jurors remained to go through a Voir Dire session. The second round of Voir Dire ended up being a lost cause. They did not choose anyone. Possibly because more than half the pool of the potential jurors in the Voir Dire session stated they could not be impartial. (I personally think the 18 potential jurors just did not want to take on a week or two-court case.)
So the 20 of us remained. Right before they started to call the names for the third round of Voir Dire a district attorney sitting in the first row of benches behind the defendant shouted. "You're honor... I would like to call on an emergency meeting with you. It is important!" The judge immediately ordered all the jurors out for 10 minutes. The 10 minutes became 25 minutes. When we returned the names were called for the third round of Voir Dire. Immediately the judge asked if anyone couldn't be impartial. Three people immediately were excused and the remaining two jurors joined the Voir Dire session. The judge noted the changes that took place in the meeting stating you will notice the defendant has requested assistance from a district attorney who has been in the front row watching the past two days. The defendant is still acting as sole counsel but will now have some assistance from here forward. BIG IMPROVEMENT! The Voir Dire session was a major improvement and the defendant pretty much stuck to a script only a few times going off into opening and closing statements. The judge rarely bit into his pen. After the Voir Dire session I was given another 15 minute break. I learned afterwards that I was to go to lunch and back to the Jury pool because I was not selected for this case. No big deal really. It was a very silly case and I have enough crazy stories to blog about to you all.