Second of Three Jury Trials

Wednesday I presided over the second of three jury trials in the final six weeks before leaving for Ukraine. The charges included one count of driving under the influence of alcohol We had an unusual jury panel of nineteen, including a scientist, a widow, an aerial cartographer, several office workers, two students, two current or former jailers and three firefighters. Voir dire took about an hour and a half. I struck five of the panel for cause or bias, including the two jailers. We started hearing evidence about 10:30 a.m., after my preliminary instructions. The prosecutor, Mr. M, put on two witnesses, both police officers. The strategy for the defense attorney, Mr. B, appeared to be to highlight several minor errors the arresting officer made in filling out the reports, and to argue that the chemical test was faulty. The disparity between the time occupied by the prosecutor, Mr. M, and the defense attorney, Mr. B, was remarkable--Mr. M occupied the podium for approximately 50 minutes during the trial, while Mr. B took up more than four hours, mostly on cross examination. In my view, the case was decided during closing argument: Mr. M laid out a very simple case, highlighting the "elements" of the offense very clearly and showing how the evidence had satisfied each individual element. Mr. B's closing strategy seemed to be to cast a vast cloud of doubt over the entire proceedings, but I believe that the result was a sense of annoyance and impatience in the jury--you could literally see it in their eyes. The jury went out for deliberation just after 6:00 p.m., and returned a guilty verdict on all charges in about 45 minutes.