Benton asked Trader who the Public Defender was. Trader told him that the Public Defender on the case was Tom Casey. Benton paused for a moment and then looked at Trader and said, “Casey is more nauseating than a blob in a lava lamp. He is obstreperous, antagonistic and uncooperative. I will try to get someone with a little trial experience to come over and help you when the trial starts.”
At 1:15 Trader left his cubicle and headed towards the courtroom, alone, with a single file, and his Evidence Code Book and a copy of the Penal Code. When Trader arrived outside the courthouse elevators, he saw a young girl with a woman, obviously her mother, standing near the elevator doors. He walked over and he asked, “Are you Vanessa?” The young girl nodded yes, and then his mother introduced herself. They both acknowledged that they had received a call from the District Attorney's office and told to come to the courthouse. The got onto the elevator and were alone. Trader told them the case was going to trial and he would call Vanessa to the stand to ask her what happened. Vanessa was quiet and had a serious and anxious look on her face. He told Vanessa that she could not make a mistake in the courtroom, since she was the person who witnessed everything. The elevator doors opened, and Vanessa suddenly put her hand to her mouth, and with a frightened look on her face, said, “That's him.” Trader turned and saw a fifty year old Mexican male wearing jeans and a long sleeve shirt standing outside the courtroom doors. He was talking with Tom Casey, a 60 year old, gray haired man of medium stature carrying files with “Public Defender” stenciled on the tan manila folder. They walked into the courtroom without looking in Trader's direction. Tom Casey was dressed in a subdued plaid suit with flared bottoms and wide lapels. It was a relic of a previous fashion life. His tie was very wide and did not match anything, except possibly the tablecloth in the nearest Italian restaurant. Trader told Vanessa to wait in the hallway until she was called to testify in an hour or so.
Trader entered the courtroom and put his file and books on the table closest to the jury box. Casey and the defendant who Vanessa saw outside the courtroom, Alex Hernandez, sat at the other table. Neither looked in Trader's direction. A few minutes later the court clerk and court reporter quietly entered the courtroom. A moment later the judge entered the courtroom, sat in his chair and called the case by its number. “I will call the case of the People versus Alex Hernandez, Case 409876. Will counsel please identify themselves.”
Trader said, “John Trader for the People.”
Casey stood up and said, “Tom Casey for Mr. Hernandez, who is present in the courtroom today.”
The Judge asked if there were any motions. John answered, “No”.
Casey said, “Your honor, we would like to exclude all witnesses, and we would like to insure we have all discovery from the Prosecution.”
The Judge said he would exclude all witnesses until they testify, and asked Trader how many witnesses he has. Trader said the victim and the police officer who arrested the defendant. The Judge then asked if the Prosecution had complied with all discovery. Trader said, “Your honor, all I have is in the file on the table. It contains the police report and the defendant's RAP sheet and a few scheduling notes by the DA's office.”
The Judge turned to Casey. “Do you have that discovery?”
Casey responded that he did.
The Judge looked at the courtroom sheriff's deputy and said, “Bring up the panel of jurors.”
A few minutes later about 50 potential jurors walked silently into the courtroom. John turned towards the courtroom door and watched each of the jurors as they entered the courtroom. He tried to figure who would be good jurors, but he admitted to himself he had no clue. There was one young guy who had spiked hair, several metal chains on his vest and pants, and lots of piercing. After the jurors sat in the courtroom chairs, the court clerk swore in the panel, and the Judge called out the name of the first twelve potential jurors, and each of them settled into the more comfortable jury box chairs.
The Judge then told the jurors that the case was a misdemeanor charging the defendant, Mr. Hernandez, with indecent exposure.
The Judge looked at Casey and nodded, “Voir Dire, Mr. Casey?”
Casey stood up and moved in front of the jurors seated in the jury box. “My name is Tom Casey and I am the Public Defender representing Mr. Alex Hernandez who has been wrongly accused by the Prosecution and sits in the courtroom as an innocent man and was badgered by the police after multiple denials by him that he was guilty.”
The Judge jumped in, “Mr. Casey, this is not argument, this is Voir Dire. Please question the jury and hold off on argument until the conclusion of the presentation of evidence.”
Casey looked at the Judge and said, “Yes, your honor”. Casey then questioned each juror, asking them if they had ever had anyone expose themselves, or ever been a victim, witness or defendant in a criminal trial. He followed up on some of the questions to several of the jurors, and after about a half hour, Trader felt he knew a little about each one of the jurors.
When the Judge nodded towards Trader, Trader stood up and introduced himself. Trader then asked the first juror if she could be fair and impartial. Trader expected a simple “yes” to his question, but he looked squarely at the potential juror as the juror answered. He wanted to try to determine it the juror was a solid citizen, worried about crime, and had the capacity to make a decision for guilty. He followed with the same question to each juror, hoping there was some magic in each juror's answer that would let him know that they would not be sympathetic to the defendant. He couldn't see any jurors with a disposition one way or the other. When he got to the young man with the piercings, the young man answered like all the others, that he could be fair and impartial. John then asked him if he had ever served on a jury before. The man answered, “I have been called a couple of times, but always excused. Look at me. Nobody wants me on their jury.” A subdued chuckle came from the jurors.
A loud wailing alarm started in the courtroom. Everyone looked at the deputy who spoke into a microphone clipped to his shoulder. He looked at the Judge and said, “Your honor, the building is to be evacuated immediately.” The alarm continued to wail.
The Judge turned to the jurors, told them not to discuss the case with anyone, even among themselves, and to exit the building immediately. The Judge stood up and walked to his chambers. The Jurors left the courtroom, and Trader followed with his file in hand. The hallway to the stairs was filled with people nonchalantly evacuating the building. When John finally got outside, it was a clear, brisk day that had warmed appreciably since the morning. He walked among the milling crowd outside the courthouse. Trader passed a deputy and asked, “What is happening”
The deputy replied, “It's a bomb threat. We have been getting them about once a month lately. It shouldn't be too long.”
“Thanks,” said John as the deputy walked off.
Trader leaned against a concrete light post and began to thumb through his file notes and the police report. He closed his eyes for a moment as the sun warmed his face.
“Are you a D.A.?” he heard a feminine voice asking.
Trader opened his eyes and looked at a younger woman, blond with a pony tail, with red blotches on her forehead and cheeks. John guessed she was in her late twenties. She was thin and appeared nervous. Trader had to think for a minute before he realized he should answer. “Yes.”
“I need some help. Can you help me?” she asked. John could tell her voice had been on some long journeys. She looked from side to side, but not for something or someone. She pulled out a cigarette and lit it.
“I don't know. What would you want me to do?” he asked.
“Look,” She said. “I am here on a drug charge.” She pleaded, “I need some help. I can’t do this anymore.” She paused for a moment. “Maybe I can help you,” she said, “but you've got to help me. I know every meth dealer in this state. I know a lot of Hell's Angels, how they produce and distribute. I've been with them for years, and I know every meth lab west
of the Mississippi. I have to get out of this. Can you help me?”
Trader heard the voices of several deputies calling out that the evacuation was over and everyone should return to the courthouse. People started to slowly file back into the courthouse.
“Maybe you should talk to a deputy. I don't know what I can do for you but maybe I could find out. I have a generic business card from the office. Let me put my name and my direct phone number on it if you want to talk to me later.” The woman took Trader’s card, and without another word, turned around and quickly disappeared into the crowd. Trader walked back into the courthouse and wondered what he could do for her, and had a nagging feeling that he had failed somehow.
Trader returned to the courtroom, sat at the Prosecution table and waited for the courtroom to fill with jurors. His mind was distant in the courtroom after his short, but strangely compelling talk outside with the blond girl. He snapped out of it when the Judge entered, and the Judge's entrance restored the room to its pre-evacuation silence. The Judge looked at Trader and said, “You may continue, Mr. Trader.” John had one more potential juror to Voir Dire. The juror was in his mid-twenties, wore a blazer with a shirt and tie, and looked like he was climbing the business ladder to success.
“Juror number 12, do you believe you can be open minded, presume the defendant is innocent, and be fair in this trial?” asked Trader.
“I think I can,” said the juror, and then continued. “But the defendant is obviously here because he did something. I mean, the cops don't just willy-nilly arrest people off of the street. I don't think the D.A. would prosecute someone he thinks is innocent just because it presents a unique challenge. It stands to reason the defendant did something and the cops arrested him for doing it. Unless the guy was in Wisconsin at the time of the crime, he can be presumed innocent, but probably isn't.”
Trader was somewhat startled by the no nonsense answer, which reflected a real world observation rather than the Pavlovian response of the other jurors. They all had stated that they could be “fair and impartial” even though they carried all the prejudices, pre-conceived notions, and biases of their entire life into the jury box. In discussions with his classmates in his law school criminal law study group, he had heard others say that blacks always let blacks go free, Asians convicted blacks no matter if they were guilty or innocent, Hispanics had no clue about how the process worked and just went along with the flow of the other jurors, and whites leaned the way their political whims led them. But you could not ask a potential juror if he or she were a Libertarian, Conservative or Communist, or if they believed in God. The ideal would be to have jurors who were fair. In the final analysis, thought Trader, their role is to make a decision, and not necessarily to deliver justice. Still, Trader had no follow-up questions for Juror number 12, and looked at the Judge and said, “I have no further questions, Your Honor.”
The Judge looked at Casey. “Mr. Casey?”
Casey stood up and said, “I would like to excuse Juror number 12.” Trader mused that the system might not have room for a person like juror number 12 who was no nonsense and had a real world view of how the system operated. The jury would end up with persons who could not actually be, but who would pretend to be, “fair”.
John asked himself, “Were the juror’s lives so dull that they thought being selected for a jury would give them some excitement, or were they looking for a few days away from the job when their employer paid them jury duty pay, or were they retired, with nothing else to do?”
Jurors who were acceptable to the Prosecution and the defense were obviously not the best and the brightest. They were the grand compromise. They would make their decisions on the way the felt about the defendant, how much they liked the prosecutor, or how the defendant looked.
In law school, Trader had learned about the origin of the 12 member jury system. Jurors in tenth century England were selected from people in the village, who knew the defendant, so they probably had a good idea if the defendant was guilty or not before the trial started. If he were a previously convicted felon, the accused could not even testify in those days, because everyone in the village knew that felons lied and cheated. The village jurors were not impartial and definitely had a stake in the outcome. In the early development of juries in the American colonies, only men who owned land could be on a jury. They too, had a stake in the outcome. The jury pool Trader looked at did not have a stake in the outcome. None of them would ever be the next victim of the defendant they exonerated. Today jurors were called from people who paid property taxes, or had a driver’s license, or had registered to vote. Generally the pool was drawn from people who had established lives, who were responsible and generally played by the rules. There were no felons in the jury pool. The defendant lived in a different part of town than they did, and he was not part of their social or economic circle. They had no tangible stake in the outcome. But the jurors would make a decision and it would be regarded as justice.
A person from the jury pool was seated in seat number 12 to replace the excused juror and the process continued.
After a few more questions, Trader and the Public Defender agreed on a jury. Trader presented his opening statement, which was short and parroted the police report. Vanessa was walking home alone from school on a residential street. The defendant drove by slowly, and when he was a little bit ahead of her, he stopped the car, got out. She saw that he had no pants on, and was sporting a fully erect penis. She screamed. The defendant got back into the car and drove away. Vanessa was able to see the license plate and she gave that to the police along with a description of the car and of the defendant.
Then Casey gave a short opening statement. He said that Vanessa may have seen what she described to the police, but that his client was not the person who committed the crime. He said the identification was flawed and that at the end of the trial they will see there is not only reasonable doubt about his guilt, but a clear and unambiguous doubt. When he sat down the Judge looked at Trader and said, “Call your first witness.”
“The Prosecution calls Vanessa Kayla Carlson.” Trader walked to the courtroom door and called for Vanessa to come inside. He directed her to the witness chair where she was sworn in by the Clerk.
The Clerk asked, “Do you swear, under penalty of perjury, to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?”
Vanessa responded, “I do”.
Trader wondered what happened to the swearing in of witnesses like he had seen and heard in the movies and on television so many times. “Do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?” But God was no longer in the admonition, and apparently was no longer in the courtroom. Trader realized any moral consequence to lying on the stand was lost in political correctness. He knew that perjury was rarely charged, and very difficult to prove. Lying witnesses were home free.
As Vanessa finished her oath John felt a body sitting in the chair next to him. It was a young girl, blond, and dressed in a very distinct red dress. She leaned over and whispered to John, “Tom sent me over to help. Casey is a pig. Whenever I hit your leg with mine, say 'objection'.”
“Okay,” whispered John.
Judge Crawford looked at Vanessa and said, “Please tell us your name.”
“Vanessa Kayla Carlson.”
The Judge turned to John, “Your witness, Mr. Trader.”
John stood up, put his outline of questions on the podium next to his table, and asked, “How old are you, Vanessa?”
“Fifteen”.
“I would like to ask you about events that occurred last October 12. What did you do that day?”
“I went to school.”
“When school was over, what did you do?”
“I walked home.”
“When was that?”
“Right after school.”
“What day of the week was it?”
“Wednesday.”
“Are you sure of that?” asked John.
“Yes. I had piano lessons at four, so I had to get home.”
“How far away from the school do you live?”
“I don't know. It's not far. It takes about ten minutes.”
“When you walked home were you alone, or with someone?”
“I was alone.”
“What happened while you were walking home?”
“Objection,” blurted Casey. “Question calls for a narrative.”
“Sustained,” said the Judge. “Ask your next question, Mr. Trader.”
Trader thought to himself, that instead of allowing Vanessa to tell her story without interruption, he would have to go through the events inch by inch. “Immediately after you got out of your last class, and walked out of the classroom, where did you go?” He asked.
Misdemeanor Trials Page 5