September 26, 2003 (Tuesday) – First Day of Trial

This is the fifth entry in a series of entries on my role in the jury in a double murder case in the county of Contra Costa, California. You can see a more detailed view of the case including links to these posts and other items at this page.

This starts the trial itself. I think it will be interesting for folks that have never gone through a long trial to hear the insights and see what it’s like to endure a trial this long and this serious. I’m also doing this for my own sanity because of the rules of the court which I’ll cover next. I’m not going to use the names of jurors or if I do I will use first names only. As for witnesses I will occasionally use their names if they are materially involved and not just witnesses that establish specific facts such as criminalists and people that came across the scene innocently.

Case Overview – The People vs. Dominique Alexander Wright

We have been told at this point that the charges against Mr. Wright are two counts of felony murder with both firearm and robbery enhancements. Apparently there is also another count of robbery. They’ve spoken of narcotics being involved as well but I was surprised that there were no narcotic enhancements. My guess is that it is not considered an enhancement as part of the felony murder rule but I’m sure I will learn more as the case goes on. We’ve also been told that the murder occurred in Concord California and the bodies were disposed of in unincorporated Contra Costa County on Morgan Territory Road.

Court Rules

I’m sure I’m going to miss a few of these so I will probably come back and edit this later but here goes.

1. Don’t discuss this case with anyone, especially and specifically other jurors, either of the lawyers, the defendent, other people in the courtroom, anyone outside the courtroom including friends and family. Pretty much, just don’t talk about this case at all during the course of the trial.
2. Don’t go and visit any of the crime scenes.
3. Don’t research anything offline or online.

8:30 am – The court rules for jurors are read and the judge goes over terminology that will be used such as an objection, or the parties involved or other terms that we will hear in the course of this case. The official charges against Mr. Wright are also read at this time.

9:00 am – The Deputy District Attorny Mr. Cope makes his opening statement. The statement is pretty detailed in his case. He goes through the entire crime as the prosecution wishes to present it to us later through witnesses and evidence. This is where we really start to get an idea of what we are going to hear in this case. The items above were just what we had been told during the jury selection process. Now we’re getting to the details.

During the opening statement the DA detailed the timeline that the prosecution believes it. Some of this statements about what happened during the commission of the crime start to raise questions in my head about just how they know it. Then he tells us that it came from the defendent himself. So of course that grabs my interest a bit although I assume that the defense will have a different take on this statement.

10:00 am – The public defender Daniel Cook starts his opening statement. He pretty much says that most of the facts in the case are not in dispute but that what crimes that were actually committed is the real question. To me this means this will come down to what rules we are given at the end and then what we are able to draw from all of the testimony and evidence presented to us.

10:20 am – The prosecution’s first witness is someone that lives on Morgan Territory rd. She sets the timeline of when the car was on fire and where it was found. The witness describes the scene and tells us that it was about 3:45-4:00pm when her and her family came across the car. She tells us that the fire response came within 5 minutes of them calling 911. The police came much later she said.

For a first witness this was pretty uninteresting. All she did was establish the timeline of when and where the car was discovered and the condition it was in at the time. I assume most witnesses will be like this but there was that part of me that kind of expected a more dramatic witness since I’ve never been in a trial and have only seen them on television.

10:35 am – The prosecution presents their next witness. He is an engineer for the forestry service, which in this case means he is a fireman. He testifies about the events that led to him arriving at a burning car and putting the fire out. He also established the time of 4:00pm. He then talks about checking the engine and realizing the fire didn’t start in the engine. Next, he tells us that he looked in the trunk using the keys no less and found the two bodies. The keys had been left in the ignition and apparently hadn’t melted. After he discovered the bodies he notified police. He also tried to insure that the scene was preserved as much as possible since he knew it was now a crime scene. There was no cross-examination from the defense.

This was the last witness before lunch.

1:20 pm – After lunch our next prosecution witness is the pathologist that performed the autopsy on the two bodies. I figured this is where we would see the photos that we were warned about during jury selection.

The pathologist discussed his background and qualifications first. For expert witnesses they have to officially establish their expertise and then ask the court to qualify the person as an expert in a particular area(s) for the case. The pathologist is a medical doctor and then has more extensive training in pathology, specifically of a forensic nature. The prosecutor had this guy explain how the coroner based system works here in California and how it differs from most other states in the country. Of course, we have to be different than most other states. Anyways, the long and short of it is that he works for a private entity that contracts with the county to perform autopsies.

The pathologist was here to testify as to the cause of death. In both cases it was gunshot wounds to the head and/or neck. The female victim was shot twice in the neck in close proximity and at nearly identical trajectories. He estimated that it took her 1-2 minutes to die due to blood loss. I seriously hope she was fully unconscious for that period of time. The male victim was shot twice in the head and once in the neck. The shots to the head would have killed him immediately. The pathologist could not say in what order they were shot.

In all 5 cases the victims were shot at relatively close proximity because of the presence of stipling and tattooing from gunpowder and metal fragments from the barrell of a gun. There was tight contact on the shot to the male victim’s head and neck while there was most likely near contact on the female’s body. This showed that the shooter was standing very close when they shot them. Based on the trajectories it was also likely that the killer was standing over the victim (like from standing outside the trunk looking down).

In addition, he testified that the victims were not killed by the fire or the smoke in the vehicle since neither’s blood showed any trace of carbon monoxide.

The pathologist also testified that the victims both had bruising on the face indicating that they had been hit with blunt objects. He felt that the male victim had been hit more than the female victim.

The photos were of the bodies, how they were bound and the positions they were placed in when they were in the trunk of the car. It was hard to see the photos since they were broadcast on the wall of the courtroom.

The defense attorney asked his first questions today. They were more about the definition of death. I’m not sure where he was going but it didn’t seem to really challenge anything the pathologist had testified too. He also had a report from a different pathologist that disagreed with how many times the victim (I forget which one) had been hit (blunt force trauma). The pathologist said that he was aware of the report and that it agreed with everything except for how many times the victim was hit but that because it wasn’t the cause of death it really wasn’t relevant. I agreed with this statement. I was thinking the same thing as the defense tried to ask the question because I couldn’t fathom how many times someone was hit would mean anything because the gunshots were the cause of death.

This witness was the first key witness of the trial. He specifically established cause of death in the victims and how many times they were shot. On a side note, I didn’t find the photos as gruesome as we were told to expect. I think I’ve seen more graphic photos on CSI before but that’s neither here nor there. The photos were all just of entry and exit points to illustrate the findings of the pathologist.

3:30 pm -That was the end of the first day of trial. We got out a little early since the prosecution had exhausted his list of witnesses for the first day. Obviously we haven’t heard enough evidence yet to get a feeling for anything but you can see the foundation that the prosecutor has to lay before he gets to the evidence that could establish guilt. It’s hard to say what the strategy of the defense is at this point although based on his questions during jury selection and his opening statement it seems as though it’s going to rest more on whether or not his client committed the specific crimes he is accused of vs. any crime.

On a work note, I’m getting good WiFi signal from the McDonald’s across the street so that’s good news. I can answer e-mails at lunch and during break.

I’m also starting to get to know some of the folks on the jury. It turns out that there are two jurors whose daughters are roommates and they didn’t even know it. Basically, they had each met their daughter’s roommate but not the roommate’s father yet. I also found out that one of the jurors is the girlfriend of the son of my wife’s department secretary. If you followed that, you get a special reward. It’s really a small world.

September 25, 2006 (Monday) – Jury Selection Day 4

This is the fourth entry in a series of entries on my role in the jury in a double murder case in the county of Contra Costa, California. You can see a more detailed view of the case including links to these posts and other items at this page.

8:30 am – It’s Monday morning. We’re back here in section 28 again. Joy. They start up with more excusals from last week. I have a feeling those people just love the fact that they came in for 15 minutes to be told to go home but are probably also glad that they aren’t going to have to sit on the case.

They quickly finish with a few more questions on the new people that replaced those that were excused and we have 25. Some of us wonder if they’re done. My thoughts were that maybe they’ll just pick 16 from these 25 randomly and we’ll be done or they have some other means of picking the 16 from these 25. But I turned out to be wrong. Now, the preemptories start. I was expecting the lawyers to excuse us openly but they do everything in sidebar so you don’t know which lawyer didn’t like you.

People start getting dropped a lot from this group. They run through the folks in 17-25 pretty quickly so they start to refill the spots from 17-21.

10:00 am – My name is called. Damn. I know I’m in trouble because they’re almost out of preemptory challenges from our estimate. The bailiff told someone each lawyer had 10 preemptories and we’ve been counting the total that we think were pre-empts and it’s getting tight. They ask me about my hardship request and I tell them although I don’t qualify under the hardship guidelines I wanted to let them know that I still had to work and I can’t just stop working. The judge seemed a little annoyed but they go on. The prosecutor asks me if I understand that the jury is my first priority and I tell him yes but that it doesn’t change the fact that I will have to work nights and weekends (sounds like a cell phone commerical) to keep up with work. He asked me if I would tell them if it got to be too much while I was on the jury. I said yes. The defense attorney doesn’t ask me anything. I’m quite shocked (more on that later).

I could probably have pushed the whole thing a bit more, been more obnoxious to the judge but that really wouldn’t be right in my opinion. I know I can look at the evidence fairly and intelligently. Especially more than some of the people I’d seen in the room. And the fact that someone’s life (well, there’s no death penalty but I’m guessing it will be a long time if he’s found guilty) is essentially on the line it’s important that the jury actually cares about the process. If I feel the evidence is enough to convince me without a reasonable doubt then I will also have no trouble voting to convict him. I am still somewhat surprised that I wasn’t excused because the other folks that had similar work issues as me got excused. I think I was caught somewhat in a numbers and timing game. If I had been in the hot box earlier in the day I probably would have gotten much more scrutiny but we’re a week from initial jury selection and they wanted to get this trial going. They’ll never tell you that, of course, but that’s just my opinion. It’s no big deal, though. Most folks at work were surprised that my opinionated self didn’t get ejected but I am less openly opinionated with people I don’t know so that probably didn’t help me there. There is a part of me that thinks this will be a very interesting process so I am pretty intrigued. I’ll see how I feel after doing double duty for 4 weeks, though. 🙂

I think everyone was still a little surprised, even though a lot of folks probably knew by the time we got to the oath, that it was going to happen but I had been up there maybe two or three minutes when the judge said to administer the oath. I think I was in a little bit of “oh my god, this is really happening”.

Oh yeah, how do you swear to the tell the truth if you’re an aethiest? Being one it’s always a touchy subject to bring up in such a religious society that I can’t in good conscience swear anything to god. Of course, I’m not going to lie or what not but still, I never will be comfortable with the fact that almost all oaths end in sentences such as “so help me god”. It’s completely unnecessary.

We’re told to report on Tuesday morning at 8:30 am for the reading of the charges and the opening statements by the prosecution and defense attorney. I was a little surprised here again that we were going to start tomorrow. With such a long trial I would have expected them to give us at least a day to get everything in order. They were pretty casual in getting this trial going and to not give us a day is really kind of crappy in my opinion.

Final thoughts

This process was very slow. You can tell that lawyers are paid by the hour. Okay, these two aren’t but you can tell the process is driven by people who don’t care about efficiency. This really frustrated me. I understand that the process needs to be extremely detailed and thorough because people’s lives are affected by this but I think they could find ways to make it smoother.

No ID cards for long trials? I’m going to have to come to this courthouse for 4 straight weeks and they’re still going to make me go through the metal detector line? They should give me an ID and let me come through either an expedited line or something. I know they can’t do background checks on all of us but it’s the least they could do for those of us on long trials. Which brings me to my next comment…

They’ve NEVER checked our ID. Seriously. No one has ever asked me for identification since I got here. I could be paying someone to sit in my place and they’d never know. Can you say jury compromise?

Why doesn’t the courthouse have a separate entry and assembly area for jurors that is separate from the areas that witnesses, lawyers, observers, etc. use? If there was say a private entrance, hallway and gathering rooms per courtroom you could be much more confident that the jurors wouldn’t be influenced either on purporse or by accident.

Tomorrow – The fifth day of jury duty and the first day of the trial

September 21, 2006 (Thursday) – Jury Selection Day 3

This is the third entry in a series of entries on my role in the jury in a double murder case in the county of Contra Costa, California. You can see a more detailed view of the case including links to these posts and other items at this page.

I’ve taken yet another day off of work and still don’t know one way or the other whether or not I’m going to have to serve on this jury. It’s really frustrating. I’ve started rearranging my schedule with the anticipation that I might have to serve although at this moment I don’t think I’ll end up on the jury. Most of the folks that are going to have to continue working in the evenings like myself are getting excused for cause.

Here’s the other frustrating part about all of this: They haven’t told us why they are doing the things they do. They haven’t said how many alternates they’re going to pick or how many preemptory challenges each lawyer gets. The judge is more than happy to tell us stories, especially when you get a lawyer, a Mr. Rubenstein I believe, trying to drop names of superior court judges to get out of serving. By the way, if that lawyer ever reads this, you have a horrible choice in your shirts and ties color wise. I just wanted to let you know that. Okay, back to where I was talking about the selection process. Anyways, it’s difficult to understand what’s going on because they really haven’t given us any details other than the only people that matter are one through 25. They also haven’t said why they have 25 people being interviewed when they only seat a jury with 12 people plus alternates. Based on the number of chairs in the box they seat 12 and then have 4 alternates but that’s just a guess at this stage on my part.

8:30 am – Everyone is back today. We get started pretty quickly. They excuse a small batch of people that they must have decided on after the session ended on Wednesday. It’s still going slow with the questions and excusals. Most of the people I’m sitting with are getting frustrated by just how much the lawyers talk (specifically the defense lawyer) in trying to get their point across. The defense attorney seems sincere in his communication but it does get a little repetitive at times. Maybe people just don’t trust lawyers in general so they just assume to be skeptical. Isn’t it great living in a cynical world?

They’re pushing through with interviews. More questions to folks. Some of the questions seem to go on forever. I can completely figure out why they are targeting some people and not others. For a few it seems pretty apparent why they’re drilling them with questions, though. I’ve sat with the same people each of the last few days and I found out today that the woman next to me has a PhD in organizational psychology. I’m not really sure what that means compared to normal psychology but we’ve been spending out time comparing notes on what each question from the attornies is meant to tell them about the prospective juror. One of the other guys in our group, if you will, is a car salesman (he actually seems like a pretty nice guy) and to help aid him in his quest to get out of jury duty wore a bright sky blue shirt with the words “It ain’t easy being easy” on the front. Classy. But if you’re reading this, can I still get a deal on that car?

4:15

They’re only removing a few jurors at a time now. Most people that are up there are staying up there and when they remove someone from the top 16 they are sliding them over from the 17-25 slots rather than replenishing from the remaining jury pool (which is still huge). I think they’re only about about number 54 or 55 of us. They originally pulled close to 140 I believe so there is still a huge pool left.

The judge decided to send us home for the weekend. He says they’re not going to finish swearing in the jury today so we’re going to start again on Monday morning. He doesn’t hold court on Fridays. There is a definite groan from most of us because it means yet another day of jury selection and we still don’t have any idea what is still left. We don’t know if they have started using their preemptories or not or if everyone is just being excused for cause up to this point. My suspicion is that all the excusals are for cause up to now.

Back to work tomorrow…

Monday – The fourth day (and hopefully last) of jury selection

September 20, 2006 (Wednesday) – Selection Day 2

This is the second in a series of entries on my role in the jury in a double murder case in the county of Contra Costa, California. You can see a more detailed view of the case including links to these posts and other items at this page.

8:30 am – We file into the court, section 28, at the courthouse. People start getting to know each other in the jury pool at this point. I had found out the night before that our judge was the one that presided over the Laci Peterson case. The judge is also technically retired but under some kind of special appointment.

8:45 am – The clerk starts to take roll. We’re missing about 5 people out of roughly 105 people. I found out this morning that they pulled another 50 jurors in the afternoon after I left the first day. The courtroom is packed pretty tight at this stage.

9:40 am – The judge dismisses us until about 10:20 or so because the jurors still missing are en route to the courthouse. Apparently one thought it was the next Wednesday. So, one out of 103 got it wrong. Yep, this is starting out well. Another guy that came in late at 9:30 had stated he heard 9:30 and not 8:30 am. Again, one out of 103 got it wrong. I just decided to sit around and watch an episode of Stargate Atlantis that I had missed the week before and had made a copy of so I could watch later.

On a side note, it turns out the head bailiff is a retired Marine Corps soldier and likes to sing so while the judge is chambers she starts to sing to us. At least we have some entertainment. She’s not bad, actually.

Note: It turns out that for $2 a month AT&T DSL customers can get access to their WiFi hotspots at most McDonalds, Barnes and Noble, and UPS store locations. I signed up for that because on day I noticed I could see the WiFi hotspot at the McDonalds across the street from the courthouse. It will make it easier to stay in touch with work at least.

10:30 am – We get started again. Everyone is present. The judge admonishes some of us because people have moved from the numbered seats. We hadn’t been told yet but the first 25 seats are very important. I’ll give more details about that later. They start to discuss the process for jury duty selection. This is when we find out that the folks sitting in seats 1-25 are the only ones that really matter in the process. Everyone else doesn’t matter until you get into the those first seats.

There was an obnoxious juror, who I will call Jim Bob, today that was making comments after the judge excused someone such as, “So you’re the one that decides if we get out of jurty duty” Later on today the judge excused him. I really didn’t agree with that. Obviously, you can’t have that guy on a jury because you know he’ll disrupt it but he should have held him in the jury pool until it was completely seated so as to punish him for his behavior. It sends the wrong message.

There are two other obnoxious potential jurors. One runs a PR firm and he’s trying everything to get out of jury duty. He’s kind of whiney for a public relations guy. First it’s a press conference with the governor (nice name dropping there buddy). The judge handles him pretty well. He tells him that he doesn’t think the governor would mind if he was doing his civic duty for a jury rather than being at the press conference. The second one is some sort of civil lawyer. He really has bad taste in his suits. Whoever picks out his shirt and ties really needs to be smacked around a bit. He’s name dropping and trying everything to get out of jury duty. The judge is also pretty much blowing him off at the moment. I have a feeling that both will get dropped, though, for one reason or another.

They’ve asked a few questions but it’s really slow going so far. They say it will speed up a bit more as it gets going. At this point I’m skeptical but hopefully they will prove me wrong.

11:30 am – A few other jurors and I head off to lunch. We have about 90 minutes before we have to be back so we took our time getting back.

1:15 pm – We get back to court and they excuse a few more people and question a few more and then at about 2pm or so they excuse us for the afternoon because there is some court business that has to be attended to. I’m writing this a few days later so I’ve forgotten exactly the reason but I figure at least I can head home and get a couple of hours of work in.

Let’s do a little summary here. I’ve taken off two days of work for a grand total of about 4 hours of jury selection, if that. This is getting off to an amazing start. At least I still have Internet access at the courthouse.

I’ve started to prepare my co-workers that I might have to serve on a long jury. I don’t think I’m going to get picked based on the people that have been excused so far but it’s really hard to say. We haven’t really gotten into the process it seems so there are still a lot of questions from the other potential jurors and myself about how all of this really works. I wish there was more information given so at least we knew what was going on.

Tomorrow: Day 3 – Jury selection continues.

September 18, 2006

Jury Duty Day 1 – First Selection Day

This is the first in a series of entries on my role in the jury in a double murder case in the county of Contra Costa, California. You can see a more detailed view of the case including links to these posts and other items at this page.

Setup – I had previously postponed my jury duty due to a family vacation. I picked September 18th as my continuation date and so on the morning of the 18th I went to the courthouse in Martinez, CA.

8:15 am – I show up at the jury duty assembly room with jurty duty summons card in hand. I get in the first line to turn in my card and get my survey.

8:30 am – I receive the survey and start to fill it out. It asks me questions like, “Do I have any family or close friends that are in the law enforcement field?” and “Is there anything that would preclude me from making a decision in a civil or criminal case?” and so on. I don’t remember the exact wording but your basic survey to give the lawyers some information about you when you are selected for a jury. I go and turn it in after about 10 minutes.

9:00 am – The first jury is called. The woman says there will be 90 people called. I know this is going to be a big case because you don’t call 90 people for a jury for a snatch and grab or an assault case. As the names roll off the list I think I’m going to be safe. Then they get to about 82 or so and my name is called. “Crap” is all I can think at that time. Well, I was thinking of stronger words actually but I’ll leave it with that for a public blog.

9:15 am – We’re called into the courtroom and sat down. The first 25 people that had been called or put into the jury “hot box”. The judge, Richard Arnason, starts by welcoming us and so forth and then tells us about the case. It’s a double murder with robbery and firearm enhancements. He has the defendent and the two lawyers stand up and introduce themselves. I’ll add more detail about these three in later postings. He also tells us that the trial is expected to take about 3-4 weeks. You can hear the groan from the jury candidates. Three or four weeks! He tells us that the hours of his court are generally 8:30 – 4:30 or so with mid-morning and mid-afternoon breaks along with lunch. The judge likes to joke about the A’s and Raiders a lot.

The judge then tells us that all they’re going to do today is hear hardship cases. Everyone is told to fill out a hardship application if they want to apply for hardship otherwise they are free to go until Wednesday morning at 8:30am when we are scheduled to begin jury selection. I filled out a hardship form even though I don’t really qualify for a hardship. It can’t hurt and the upside is I get out of having to sit on a 4 week jury. First off, I should say (and will talk about it more later) that I think jury duty is a necessary part of citizenship. And a case like this is extremely serious. While this isn’t a case that involves the death penalty, if convicted the guy will probably get life in prison based on the details we’ve been privy to up to this point. But the timing of this case is terrible for me. I’ve got deadlines coming in November and December that I can’t miss and the reality is that I will have to work evenings and weekends to stay caught up. If I were single it’s not that big of a deal but I still have to take care of my daughter so it becomes a much bigger burden.

My hardship is rejected and we’re told to come back on Wednesday at 8:30am.

11:00 am – I board BART and head for the office.

Tomorrow: Day 2 – Jury Selection Continues