NOTES ON JURIES

 

          In the 1980s, I would occasionally drop into Room 236 in City Hall, where my father plied his trade as a criminal court judge.  He was assigned all the “Career Criminal” cases in Philadelphia.  This was Pennsylvania’s variation on 3-strike laws, which require enhanced sentences for repeat violent offenders.

          There were not a lot of laughs in Room 236.  The victim and his family were often there, along with the defendant’s mother and any other relations.  The defendant himself was thinking about spending the rest of his life in prison.  Sherriff deputies stood at attention, watching everyone, waiting for a rumble to start.

          And sometimes it did.  Judge Kubacki had to seek cover more than once.  The one incident that stuck with him was a melee where a young woman with babe in arms waded into the fray and tried to use her infant as a bludgeon.  He told that story more than once.  I think he disapproved of her behavior.

          But this is about juries, and that is because most of the trials in Room 236 were jury trials.  Judge Kubacki, for about twenty years, presided over more jury trials than any other judge in the city.  Juries made up of random citizens from the voting rolls inject an element of chance into a contest, and the only hope for most defendants was to get lucky, so they all demanded juries.

          For the judge and his staff, jury trials are a LOT more work than non-jury trials.  Jurors must be separated from the participants at all times.  You don’t ever want a juror in the same elevator or restroom as the defendant’s sister, so you take steps to prevent that sort of random encounter.  It took work, constant attention to detail, and always knowing the location of everyone interested in the trial.

          Also, juries and jurors are mysterious and unpredictable.  The lawyers and the judge asked a few questions, and would typically find out what neighborhood the person lived in, what they did for a living and maybe where they went to school.  Then, just from looking at them, you get male/female, white/black, old/young---and that’s about it.  There are consultants who claim to be experts who will help lawyers pick jurors, but I always wondered whether they really know anything at all.

          Because of this, and because of all the jury trials in Room 236, my father and his staff developed a fascination with juries and jurors.  They all had theories on how to read jurors and the factors that might sway them.  They were convinced, for example, that a nasty-looking weapon in evidence (that the jury could look at and touch), would tend to lead to a conviction.  It doesn’t make any real sense, of course, since the only important question should be whether the defendant used the nasty looking weapon, but the court staff swore by it.  Prosecutors generally believe this as well.  Maybe it’s because a long sharp knife or a cold, gray semi-automatic are real.  Even the most uncynical jurors realize quickly that people lie at trial.  Witnesses lie, cops lie, the defendant lies---but a chain or a gun or an ax does not.

          Another topic they wondered about was the effect of a large contingent of supporters and family for the victim or the defendant.  I don’t remember what they concluded, but I know that a crowded courtroom full of on-edge, emotional people put everybody on a state of alert.

          All of them had their individual roles.  The Court Crier was Helen Wolf, a tiny, no-nonsense woman who worked in City Hall for forty years.  She was in charge of wrangling juries and moving them from place to place, but she never catered to them or let them dawdle.  They had a job to do.  She had several jury-deliberation rooms at her disposal, and if it were July and she felt a particular jury was taking too long to reach a verdict, she might move them to the room where the AC didn’t work so well.  There was also a drafty room where the radiator rattled constantly and didn’t kick out much heat in December, and Helen would move the jury in there in the colder months if she felt they needed a kick in the ass.

          Jack Woods, the Tipstaff (the judge’s general factotum and body-security man), had the job of taking lunch orders for the jury.  He saved them, correlated them against the verdict eventually rendered in the case, and theorized about them.  He was convinced that meat-eaters generally favored conviction, and that an order for twelve roast beef sandwiches basically guaranteed a guilty verdict.  Salads and tunafish were wild cards.  Three or four of them in a lunch order meant anything could happen---a hung jury, a wrongful acquittal, or screaming arguments in the jury room.

          Because of the expense, juries are rarely sequestered in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court, but it does happen.  My father told me he would do it occasionally once the testimony was over and the case had been given to the jury to decide.  If it had been a lengthy trial, or the case had gotten a lot of press attention, he might put them in a hotel to keep them under the court’s control and maybe protect them from any outside influences.

          In one case, he told me, the jury had started deliberating that morning but it was getting late in the afternoon, so he decided to sequester them, and he had the staff start calling their homes to tell the families not to expect the juror home that night.

          On one of these calls, Jack Woods reached the husband of a juror and said, “Hello, Mr. Smith.  I’m from Judge Kubacki’s courtroom where your wife is on the jury, and I’m calling to tell you the jury is deliberating now and the judge has decided to put them up in a hotel overnight.  So you shouldn’t expect Mrs. Smith home tonight.”

          There was a pause, then the response:  “Tonight?  TONIGHT?  And exactly where the hell has she been for the last two weeks?”

Copyright2023MichaelKubacki