From the Eyes of a Juror

by Frank Terranova

  Chapter 16 – Show Time

  Thursday morning June 5, 2008 – 9:05 AM

  Newlan was nearly overcome by a sudden marijuana rush as he stepped out of his car, and he realized right then and there that he was going to have to fine-tune his morning routine just a tad.

  “Whoa…I’m gonna have to cut back a little on the morning weed…can’t be wasted while I’m trying to concentrate on witness testimony,” acknowledged Newlan to himself as he peeked over the ledge of the rooftop wall of the garage, where from this safe, yet dizzying, vantage point, he had a perfect view of the media circus down below, and he curiously took in the scene.

  The fourth and highest level of the parking garage, which housed the juror parking section of the courthouse lot, was uncovered, so Newlan had an unobstructed view of the cloudless blue sky above him on what by all accounts, unlike yesterday, looked to be the beginnings of a gorgeous day in the greater Boston area. Although, much to his chagrin, he and his newly appointed colleagues were destined to be stuck indoors all day.

  “At least when I’m at work I can get up and take a stroll around the block during lunch hour,” dreamily whined Newlan as he admired the greenery surrounding the courthouse grounds.

  It was such a beautiful morning that Newlan decided to loiter outside for a moment, just to enjoy a few whiffs of fresh air before embarking indoors for the day, when who should approach but the same motorcycle cop who had almost collided with his car a couple of minutes ago.

  “What the hell are you doing out here? This is a secured area,” growled the cop.

  “I’m a juror,” replied an offended Newlan.

  “Let me see your juror identification,” demanded the cop, but before Newlan even had a chance to produce the document, the security guard who had let him past the wooden barriers yelled out from where he was standing near the gated enclosure, “he’s OK…I already checked his ID.”

  “Well then get the hell inside,” ordered the biker cop, to which Newlan grumpily replied, “Fine…no need to get testy.”

  Newlan assumed that the cop was upset at him for almost knocking him off his chopper, but the way the stubborn Newlan saw the situation, it was the police officer who wasn’t paying attention, not him.

  “Geez, I’m off to another great start. An argument with a cop…what else can go wrong? I’ll probably end up getting busted before this case is finally put to bed? What would Judge Gershwin think of me then?” wondered Newlan with a laugh as he made his way towards the guard and nodded an unspoken thank you.

  This same security guard was also in charge of leading the jurors past the enclosed fenced-in area of the parking lot and through the card-coded entrance door into the courthouse. But in sharp contrast to the motorcycle cop, he courteously directed Newlan to his destination, and he even offered up a smile for the overwhelmed juror.

  “What courtroom are you in?” asked the guard once they were securely inside the protected confines of the fortified building.

  “630,” shakily replied Newlan as he gazed around at the intimidating sterile offices of all things legalese.

  “Ah, the Breslin trial…you’re waiting room is the first one on the left. Once all of the other jurors arrive, one of the court officers assigned to the case will bring you up to the sixth floor,” cheerfully explained the guard, but the inattentive Newlan didn’t hear word; his unfocused mind was already preoccupied with scoping out the daunting premises for any signs of comfort he could find.

  After his regularly scheduled morning smoking session, Newlan figured that he might be thirsty, so he brought an empty water bottle with him (along with his trusty Rolling Stone magazines) in hopes that there might be a water cooler somewhere in the facility which he could use to procure a free refill.

  “The MWRA charges us a fortune for water so I might as well let the State pay for my drinking water while I’m here,” rationalized Newlan in reference to the scandalous price-gouging of the Massachusetts Water Resource Authority.

  Despite the budgetary cutbacks of recent years, Newlan assumed that the courthouse personnel wouldn’t be forced to drink tap water, and sure enough, he spotted a Poland Springs water cooler in the hallway and he took the opportunity to fill up his plastic bottle to the brim.

  With his liquid sustenance in hand, Newlan apprehensively made his way into the waiting room, and even though the guard had already informed him that he was one of the first to arrive, he was still somewhat surprised to find that only one other juror had shown up so far.

  “Hi I’m Frank,” announced Newlan as he extended a hand to the elderly woman sitting across from him (he purposely left out his last name for fear that it might somehow get into the wrong hands).

  “The less these people know about me the better,” was the paranoid Newlan’s latest motto regarding his dubious fellow jurors, no matter how old and wise they appeared to be.

  “Hello I’m Patty…seat number 5,” replied Newlan’s preordained colleague with a smile as she warmly shook his hand.

  “Oh, I’m in seat number 16…check that…seat number 8,” echoed Newlan as he recalled the last minute seating change with the handicapped juror.

  “I guess it makes sense to identify ourselves by our seat numbers as well as our names,” added Newlan, even though in the back of his mind he was grumbling to himself that this court-inspired numeric form of identification was a stupid idea.

  Newlan was never one to make small-talk with strangers, especially when he was high, and so he squirmed uncomfortably as each awkward second of silence ticked away. He felt obligated to talk to Patty, given that no one else was around, but his heart just wasn’t in it at the moment. However, regardless of his reluctance, she was the friendly type, so she took the initiative and struck up a conversion with him anyway, oblivious to his altered state-of-mind.

  “I’m still in a state of shock that I was chosen for this trial. I’m sixty eight years old and I really don’t need this stress in my life,” grumbled Patty. She was a relatively tall, husky woman with short, curly, gray hair, and she had a grace and warmth about her that couldn’t help but shine through even the walled-up barriers of the reclusive Newlan’s mistrusting heart.

  “Tell me about it. No offense, but this is the last place in the world I wanna be right now,” replied the stoned Newlan with a dry smile as all the while the second hand in his head clicked away at an excruciatingly sluggish pace. But much to his surprise, as their discussion took root and began to cover more and more personal ground, he found himself taking an instant liking to Patty and her nurturing ways.

  Newlan’s softhearted perception of time may or may not have been distorted by his marijuana-induced haze, but nonetheless within minutes the rest of the jurors commenced arriving in dribs and drabs, and just about every one of them came equipped with an animated complaint and a nightmarish tale regarding snarled lines of traffic stretching a mile long, which in turn made him feel a whole lot better about his own stressful commute.

  Shortly thereafter Billy conveniently popped his head in the door (unbeknownst to the jurors, the security guard at the gate radioed up to him after they had all arrived) and exuberantly asked, “Everyone ready to go upstairs?”

  Billy’s question was met with a less than enthusiastic response, but he ignored their reaction, and in an upbeat voice he shouted, “All right then…let’s go.”

  And as they made the first of what would be many daily marches through the halls of justice, Billy’s thick Boston accent echoed around the ingress while at the same time he led the jurors past a maze of corridors and onto a waiting elevator which took them up to the 6th floor of the courthouse.

  In a scene that was reminiscent of the intro to the old 1960’s TV series Get Smart, from there Billy led the jurors through another series of locked doors until finally they somehow ended up landing on a spot that was just outside of their juror deliberation room.

  “Take a seat and re
lax for a while. We won’t be starting until around 10 o’clock today,” declared Billy as many of the jurors immediately queued up to use the bathroom.

  “Great…I busted my butt to get here by 8:45 and now we’re not even gonna be starting for almost another hour,” muttered the ever sarcastic Newlan under his breath.

  Newlan’s gripe was repeated, almost word for word, by more than a few jurors, but Billy deafly tuned out each and every one of them.

  “Shit, by the time we start this damned trial I’ll be stone cold sober,” silently calculated Newlan as he took a seat in the corner, away from the main table, but still close enough to be able to converse with his fellow jurors; he didn’t want anyone thinking that he was antisocial, even though, for obvious reasons, he really wasn’t in the mood to chat.

  “You’ll each be given a pad of paper so that you can take notes during witness testimony,” explained Billy, and then he hastily left the room before anyone had a chance to ask any questions.

  When Billy returned, he was carrying with him 16 small, steno book notepads and 16 yellow pencils. The notepads were your standard variety 6” X 9” stationary brand which held 80 sheets of paper, and they were marked in bold black ink with the numbers 1 through 16 for identification.

  As Billy passed around the notepads, Newlan had a strange feeling that he had morphed back to junior high school and he shook his head at the ludicrousness of it all.

  “You can write as much or as little as you want…or if you prefer, you don’t have to write anything at all, but you do have to return the notebooks at the end of each day,” expounded Billy in an authoritative tone.

  “And before anyone asks, I’ll tell you right off the bat that no one, not the judge, not the attorneys, not the court officers, I repeat NO ONE, has access to your notebooks…as a matter of fact, they’re impounded and locked up every night,” insisted Billy just as Newlan was about to ask that very question.

  “There are lunch menus from LaCasa’s on the table. Circle what you want and write down your seat number in the top left hand corner of the menu. Make sure you have your menu filled out before we start up for the day, or you don’t get a lunch,” ordered Billy, and based on their rapt attentiveness, he was confident that he had expertly taken over the reins of control from another set of wavering jurors.

  “I’m putting you in charge of collecting the menus in the morning and the notebooks at the end of the day,” decreed Billy as he pointed in the direction of the handicapped juror.

  Billy was about ready to exit the room again when, all of a sudden, he was hit with a barrage of questions just as he had been yesterday afternoon.

  “What time do we go home?” “What time do we take break?” “Can we go outside for lunch?”

  Clearly Billy had overestimated his influential status as it related to this particular pool of jurors, and he had an incredulous look etched across his brow as he tossed out an angry counter-offensive.

  “You weren’t paying attention…I thought we went over all this the other day.”

  “Yes, but some of us didn’t start until yesterday,” replied a voice from the far corner of the room which paralleled Newlan’s thoughts as well.

  “We get dismissed between 4:00 and 4:45 every day, except on Monday’s and Friday’s when we typically, but not always, adjourn at 1 o’clock. Break is usually around 11:30 for a half hour and lunch is from 1 to 2. And NO you can’t leave for lunch. Why do you think we’re ordering lunches off the menu for you?” curtly explained Billy.

  After pondering Billy’s schedule for no more than two seconds, the petite elderly female juror who rode down on the elevator with Newlan when they were leaving the courthouse yesterday afternoon became extremely upset over the details of his announcement, and she let him know about it in no uncertain terms.

  “This is gonna be a major problem if I can’t go out for a cigarette at least once a day.”

  It seemed that fewer and fewer people were smokers these days, and unless someone, such as this spunky senior citizen juror, specifically brought their concerns to his attention, Billy tended to overlook the fact that he needed to make concessions for this new minority. And so with a look of contrition written all over his face, he lamented, “I apologize…we’ll see if we can’t get someone to take you out for a walk down to the outdoor garage rooftop during lunch break.”

  Billy may have come across as brusque character at times, but from Newlan’s vantage point, he didn’t see a malicious person staring back at him at all; no, he simply saw someone who had a tough job to do, which occasionally forced his hand into taking an iron-fisted approach when it came to juror management.

  “And one more thing, make sure to turn off your cell phones while you’re in the courtroom. Judge Gershwin gets very upset if a phone starts ringing during testimony, and she takes it out on me…and I’ll in turn take it out on you. I’m tellin’ you right now, so you can’t say that I didn’t warn you…if a cell phone goes off, I’ll be collecting all of your cell phones every morning and you won’t be able to use them for the rest of the day…not even on break, not even during lunch. No second chances. Understood?” stipulated Billy, but apparently it wasn’t understood because his warning was followed by another round of indignant questions and complaints.

  “Look, if you can’t remember to turn off your phones then just leave them here in the juror room. No one’s gonna take them. The door is locked at all times while you’re in the courtroom,” suggested Billy, but this time he abruptly withdrew from the room before anyone could even begin to think about asking another stupid question.

  Newlan, who didn’t own a cell phone, was getting a quite kick out the commotion that was being triggered by the possibility of his colleagues’ phones being taken away. Even though he worked in the high-tech field, he wasn’t big on gadgets such as iPhones, Blackberries, cell phones, and the like. For one thing he could do without the extra bill. But more importantly, he concluded that since he didn’t have a steady girlfriend to pester him, why should anyone else need to get in touch with him so urgently? He figured if someone needed to contact him about something important, they could just about always get a hold of him, either at work or at home. Of course, if a neutral party where to inject the frugal Newlan with truth serum, they’d find that the overriding reasoning behind his voluntary omission from the cell phone generation was due to his desire to avoid paying an expensive monthly charge for a service that he considered to be non-essential.

  But regardless of the thought process behind Newlan’s preference to stay conveniently out of touch with the rest of the world, in a strange way, he was proud of the fact that he was so far behind the technology curve, and on top of that, a spontaneous inclination to let his colleagues in on his eccentric source of his pride came over him as well.

  “It doesn’t matter to me…I don’t even have a cell phone,” happily broadcast Newlan to no one in particular.

  “You’ve got to be kidding me. You might be the only person left in the entire country who doesn’t own some sort of mobile device,” replied the same heavyset women who had given Newlan the dirty look yesterday.

  Newlan ignored her remark, but meanwhile he was decisively thinking to himself; “I have a feeling I’m not gonna get along with that one.”

  But alas, much like choosing family members, Newlan had no say when it came to the business of picking his juror colleagues. For that matter, he had little to no control over anything as it related to his current environment, and so with that in mind, he was less than pleased when shortly after Billy left the deliberation room, his chiseled partner entered, uninvited, and announced, “Hi I’m Brandon…is anyone using the bathroom?”

  Fortunately for Brandon, the facilities were unoccupied, and he made a beeline for the door, but the implications of his grand entrance left Newlan less than thrilled.

  “This is just great…now we have to share the bathroom with the court officers
too,” groused Newlan out loud, once again to no one in particular, and then he muttered to himself, “Man, you can’t make this shit up…no pun intended.”

  But Newlan’s protest aside, Brandon seemed like a nice-enough bloke, and after he came out of the bathroom he asked for everyone’s attention.

  “Listen up…a few minutes before we’re about to get started, I’m gonna radio in to Billy and he’s gonna have you all line up against the wall in the order of your seat number. And when you enter the courtroom, I want you to walk directly to your seats, but remain standing. Then I’ll say a little introduction and the judge will let you know when to be seated. Now, when you come back into the courtroom after breaks or after lunch you can sit down right away, but we want things to look nice and professional for the cameras when we start off the session in the morning. And remember seats 1 through 8 are in the back row and seats 9 through 16 are in the front row. OK, we’ll be ready to go in about a half hour.”

  Brandon’s information was all well and good, but in Newlan’s mind, the idea of lining up against the wall by seat number conjured up another image of being locked up in prison; it was a theme that would reinsert itself into the realm of his vivid imagination throughout the trial, but nevertheless he persevered.

  By now, all of the jurors had filled out their lunch forms (Newlan went with a steak and cheese sandwich), and used the rest room, so there was nothing much left for them to do but to sit back and patiently wait for their first day of testimony to begin.

  Based on their fidgety mannerisms, it was obvious that most of the jurors were on edge, but, one way or another, they all managed to bring their stress levels under control; some of them appeared to be quietly contemplating what was about to occur in the courtroom, while others resorted to small talk, mostly about the weather or the state of the local sports teams.

  Boston area weather is notoriously unpredictable, so that alone could keep a conversation going for a while (and as the locals always say, “If you don’t like the weather in Boston just wait five minutes and it will change”).

  On top of that, the Red Sox were coming off a World Series winning season, and the Celtics were in the NBA finals which were set to begin that evening, so there were plenty of sports topics for the guys to discuss.

  The Patriots collapse in the Super Bowl against the New York Giants back in February was also broached, and the shear mention of it caused Newlan to wince; he was a diehard Pats fan, and as such he still hadn’t fully recovered from their loss in Super Bowl XLII.

  “Nothing like talking sports to get a good debate going,” interjected Newlan as he thought back to the countless times some stranger at a bar struck up a conversation with a “how about them Sox?” declaration

  Newlan had invited his best friends Pat Horn and Bruce Reardon, along with their kids, as well as his on-again, off-again girlfriend, Janis Barry, over to his condo for Super Bowl XLII, and in the heat of the moment during the nail-biting fourth quarter, he announced that if the Patriots lost, he would never watch sports again for the rest of his life. Naturally, he didn’t mean it in the least, but truth be told, it did take a few months before he could rouse up even the slightest bit of interest in the local teams again. The fact of the matter couldn’t be understated; the Patriots were so close to a perfect season that it truly did break Newlan’s heart when they lost in the last seconds of the game and it left him depressed for weeks.

  “If they hadn’t been undefeated, it wouldn’t have hurt so badly,” moaned Newlan for months afterwards, and he testified as much again today before his fellow jurors, like an addict baring his soul at some sort of imaginary sports-withdrawal counseling session.

  Newlan often wondered how it was that a professional sports team could leave an entire six State region decimated in the throes of a major funk after a crushing loss, or conversely, giddy in a state of euphoria after an improbable championship victory (and the Boston area had seen its share of both emotional extremes over the years).

  The fanatical Newlan even resorted to polling his colleagues on the topic, and of course, in true sports-radio talk show fashion, they each had their own interesting theory.

  Newlan went on to recall a bit by his favorite comedian George Carlin, where he questioned just why it was that a nation of rabid sports fans placed their contentment in the hands of these rich, overpaid, pampered athletes.

  “’If the win, great, but if they don’t win, fuck ‘em!’ is how Carlin put it,” paraphrased Newlan to his now captivated audience, except that he used the words “F ‘em” instead of the full expletive. He figured he didn’t know these people that well yet.

  And even though Newlan wasn’t much in the mood for conversation when he arrived at the courthouse, he had to admit that he was actually enjoying their male-bonding sports discussion which he now found himself in the middle of. On the other hand however, he wasn’t all that appreciative of the repartee he overheard the female jurors engaging in; an exchange that included something about formal introductions.

  “Seriously guys, when we have our next break we should go around the room and introduce ourselves,” declared the heavyset juror as she purposely stared in Newlan’s direction.

  “I see this one’s gonna be the take-charge type,” thought Newlan who begrudgingly had to concede that it was probably a good idea.

  “Yeah, whatever,” replied one of the male jurors as they went right back into discussing the unfortunate Patriots Super Bowl loss without missing a beat.

  For his part, Newlan was becoming so engrossed in the sports talk that he almost lost sight of the real reason they were there in the first place. However, he was brought back to reality in a big way when Billy barged into the room and excitedly howled; “Everybody line up. It’s show time!”