RECAP OF MY FIRST JURY EXPERIENCE (continued)
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MY FIRST JURY
The case involved a Black, male taxicab driver who'd been charged with three crimes: disobeying a dispatcher's lawful order to stop, assault with a vehicle, and possession of a concealed weapon. Only the first and third counts were being tried during this session, presumably because of some subtle difference between criminal and civil charges. The accused's attorney was a large, tall Black man with a lisp and a good-ole-boy attitude (he introduced himself to the jury as "Bobby"). The United States' Prosecuting Attorney was a meek, short, thin little blonde woman who was completely void of brains, assertiveness, and logic. (Though I wouldn't have wanted either lawyer to ever represent me for anything.) Aside from the two individuals for the defense and one boring witness, no one else in the entire courtroom was non-White. And aside from the judge and I, there was probably no one else in the entire courtroom whose I.Q. was over 100.
Still, through all the murky testimony, pointless questions, and unasked significant points, it seems the crime happened like this: It was a cold, busy night at National Airport (they always say "on or about October 16" yet that WAS the day it happened!) and hundreds of people stood in line waiting for cabs. The procedure there (I've been through it and know the hassle) is to wait until you have come to the beginning of the line and then the dispatcher hails you a cab from the line of cabs sitting off to the side behind concrete boundaries. (Over 10,000 cabs service National Airport.) Because of the volume of cabbies and the fact that once in the long line (within the boundaries) there is no escape (which could be hours), it's a law that only one person per cab is allowed unless the people are already travelling together or unless someone else in the passenger waiting line asks a cab driver to take him/her TOO and the cab driver gets approval from the dispatcher-sent first passenger. But it is strictly forbidden for the cabby himself to solicit anyone.
So, apparently the cab driver in question got one passenger from the dispatcher and she sat in the back seat behind the cab driver. Then everyone saw the cab driver lift another lady's bags over the concrete divider and put them in his trunk and motion for that lady to come to the front of the line where he'd soon be and she could get in. The dispatcher saw this, hated the driver anyway, and yelled to him that he couldn't take two fares. So the cab driver motioned for the lady to come over and get her bags (or to come over and get into the cab ... no one knows for sure) and the next thing that happens is that the second lady gets into the cab and the driver speeds off. Now, bear in mind the intelligence of those involved when no one could remember exactly where the second lady sat (front or back seat?) and neither attorney even had her testify! Not about that, not about whether she did the soliciting or the driver did, not about what happened later, nothing. Brilliant, eh?
Anyway, by this time the dispatcher has gotten on the two-way radio and alerted other dispatchers, the FAA police, and the local police (Arlington County). When the driver reached another taxi point later down the road, a second dispatcher ran out in front of the cab, yelling for it to stop, and the cab driver says he came to a screeching halt to avoid hitting the guy. He said that the dispatcher then put his hands on the car's hood and when the car started inching up, the dispatcher jumped onto the hood and later rolled off (thus, the nature of the second count of assault with a vehicle). Finally, down the road a bit the FAA cruiser and the police car pulled the cab over to the right side of the road, everyone saw the driver bend down in an "unnatural position" as if to put something under the driver's seat. The driver was taken off to jail for refusing to stop for the dispatchers and the two women were asked a few questions. Then the FAA officer took an inventory of the vehicle's contents since it was about to be impounded and this is apparently standard procedure to insure that the owner can't claim anything was stolen while he was off in the slammer. Lo and behold, that inventory yielded a loaded .25 caliber handgun under the front seat, but with no distinguishable fingerprints.
So the trial lasted a couple of hours and I had more questions after sitting through it all than I did before I heard testimony. However, it was time for the jury to receive our instructions from the judge, to hear what the law said about each of the charges, and to seclude ourselves away and decide UNANIMOUSLY the fate of this man.
No one wanted to volunteer at first for Foreman (in the future, I'll gladly volunteer), but eventually an egotistical, fat slob from the Justice Department said he would. There was no order or direction, however, and the first hour was spent with most of the twelve people yelling at each other, calling each other names, talking at the same time, and going off on personal tangents of their own about experiences with handguns, taxicabs, National Airport, previous juries, etc. (You should all see the movie from the 1950s called "Twelve Angry Men" with Henry Fonda, Lee J. Cobb, Jack Klugman, E.G. Marshall, etc. It speaks accurately of the jury experience.)
It wasn't difficult to find the defendant guilty on the first count; it was obvious to everyone that the U.S. proved that he did, in fact, disobey orders to stop. (And they appeared to be lawful because of the appearance of the situation (two fares) and since it involved two dispatchers.) But it was more difficult deciding whether the U.S. proved beyond a reasonable doubt that the cab driver had "on or about his person a concealed weapon". No vote was taken for awhile (another of the brilliant instances of the leadership of the Foreman) but it seemed that practically everyone felt it was proven that he was guilty. My only problem was deciding whether a concealed weapon under the seat satisfied the "on or about his person..." criterion, but I learned it did. Furthermore, the driver testified that he owned that cab, that he was the only one who drove it, etc. The registration for the gun could only be traced as late as 1977 and it wasn't registered to the driver so some of the jury kept arguing that it wasn't proven that the driver owned the gun. I kept insisting that that was a moot point (though I didn't use such a big word or they wouldn't have understood); that he wasn't being accused of owning the gun, just concealing it on or about his person, knowingly, willfully, and unlawfully. Since it was his cab and he said no one else ever drove it, and he served National Airport (which involves hours of sitting in line with nothing to do but watch TV and get familiar with your surroundings (i.e., what's in your car)), I had no problem with "knowingly". I don't spend 20 hours a day in my car, yet I do know what's in it (even if someone else left it).
Yet some of the jurors fantasized that the Russians put the gun there, that the FAA cop planted it, that someone on the way to the airport once put it there realizing he had it with him and wouldn't be able to get on a plane, etc. Brilliant stories, huh? Even if I could believe someone's dumping a gun somewhere, it would be in a hurry, might have some fingerprints on it, and probably wouldn't be under the driver's seat. But what most bothered the dissenting jurors was that they didn't think the cabby bent over to make sure the gun was pushed under the seat, but that he bent over to pick up his TV that had fallen from the center hump onto his leg when he pulled off for the cops (his version of why he bent over). Here would have been a good place to have gotten the second passenger to testify and find out what she saw (since she was probably in the front seat), but no one thought of that.
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