Monday, June 14, 2004
Jury duty, a sacrifice and a privilege
LOOKING AHEAD by Wally Dobelis
There is a trip each registered voter of T&V Country must face every four years, that of taking the express Lexington Ave train from Union Square for one stop, to Brooklyn Bridge, where the juror rooms at the NYS Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street or 111 Centre Street and the US Court at 40 Centre Street are waiting, for a one-week (actually as little as three days) citizenly service of judging your fellow New Yorkers, accused of various transgressions. You must assume them to be innocent, and the accusers must present evidence to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Just like on Law & Order.
When summonsed, you can get the first deferment of up to six months by phone, and two more by appearing in person, with documentation. The law is reasonable, but a forever excuse is hard to come by, none of the great men or women of our times are exempt. On the last previous occasion, five years ago, while serving at the Civil Court, 60 Centre, I saw the jury-room judge excuse William Bratton, the former Commissioner of Police, who had received an emergency call. This upset the juror sitting in the box next to me no end. He turned out to be Joseph Lelyweld, then the executive editor of the New York Times, who diligently served through several jury calls and "voir dires," the screening processes. We were both challenged (eliminated) once, but at the next call I left him patiently sitting in the jury box, while I was excused, because of potential of prejudice against the medication on trial. Eventually I was mustered out, on the fourth day.
This time, at the Criminal Court, 111 Centre, my jury room mates included a Vassar junior, who played computer poker while waiting (Internet connections cost $9 a day), and turned out to be a professional weekend dealer in a downtown club. His favorite game was Omaha hold-'em, a variant of Texas hold-'em, the world championship game. Hi-lo advantages and the techniques of card counter teams were dissected at our table at length. The other participants were a nutritionist and two advertising people, a woman who builds individualized restaurant lists for major downtown hotels, and a man who spoke authoritatively on billboards as the most effective medium (you get captive audiences who cannot tune you out, don't you know) and the relative dangers of flashing advertising sign boards at street crossings (we have some, on 14th Street). Jury duty can be quite instructive.
Lunch hors for jurors in waiting are generous, leaving room for explorations in Chinatown. From 111, crossing Centre Street and walking east on the Bernard Kerik passage (between two jails, honoring the Commissioner of Correction), you get to Baxter Street. There's Jaya Malaysian, at #80, has lemon grass satay, beef or chicken, curry, noodle, , clam and tilapa dishes, and frogs with pepper as a house specialty. Or you can duck into Forloni's, at #93, the esteemed Italian restaurant, where suit-clad lawyers and judges eat. Thai Son, authentic Vietnamese cuisine at #89, offers green mussels , fried frogs' legs in special French butter or lemon grass sauce, chicken with curry, and caramel fish or pork with coconut milk.
The latter can be also bought from street stands, the hard skin peeled, the meat shaped and wrapped in plastic, fresh from Thailand, $1.50. On Canal Street, a block North, lichee nuts are $10 for 4 lbs. There, at Sun Say Kai restaurant (220 Canal, no English menu) barbequed pork is $5 /lb, and ducks weigh in at $13 each. Next door, pungent odors of fish of unknown varieties assail your senses, giving rise to doubts about the sanitary aspects of the laid-out wares, although the stone crabs crawling around on their platters, $2 apiece, seem to attest to their freshness. At Kam Man Products (200 Canal) are aisles of packaged foods, nuts, noodles and more. The artfulness of the Chinese craftsmen extends to all sphered - downstairs they have beautiful Japanese lantern night-lights, square black frames with mullions, Bamboo leaves and script painted on the parchment-covered sides - duplicated in China!
For those jurors who opt for some more Occidental fare, Little Italy is only two blocks away. One crosses Canal and walks on Mott Street to Grand, where pasta abounds, or continues to Broome and Mulberry, the home of Umberto's Clam House, of linguini and clam sauce fame ($17) and some interesting history from the Gallo family wars. Or continues back on Mulberry, where our Sal Anthony's other venue, S.P.Q.R., will greet you with a prix fixed lunch at $13.50 and Dean Martin singing That's Amore. You don't even have to offer your Irving Place credentials.
Now you want to know about the cases. I had one jury call, and was excused , after three days. Discussing the wasteful methodology with the jury clerk, one finds out that the call-in systems used in some boroughs and on Long Island were tried in Manhattan, and turned out to be counterproductive - Manhattanites just use the calls to generate excuses, making the filling of the jury box impossible. As is, allegedly 1000 summonses are needed to bring in 200 jurors. A helpful method is to bring in five-day jurors on Mondays and Wednesdays. The new arrivals will be called first on Wednesday, to fill courtroom requests. If that group is large enough to fill the expected demand, Monday people will be discharged then and there, after three days. The courtroom administration knows that if a Monday juror is not on a jury by Wednesday, he/she will use excuses to avoid being chosen even for an average case of five days that will drag into next week. Screening them out is costs al lot of courtroom time. A fair court system is an expensive privilege, and we will not have it any other way.
There is a trip each registered voter of T&V Country must face every four years, that of taking the express Lexington Ave train from Union Square for one stop, to Brooklyn Bridge, where the juror rooms at the NYS Supreme Court at 60 Centre Street or 111 Centre Street and the US Court at 40 Centre Street are waiting, for a one-week (actually as little as three days) citizenly service of judging your fellow New Yorkers, accused of various transgressions. You must assume them to be innocent, and the accusers must present evidence to prove their guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Just like on Law & Order.
When summonsed, you can get the first deferment of up to six months by phone, and two more by appearing in person, with documentation. The law is reasonable, but a forever excuse is hard to come by, none of the great men or women of our times are exempt. On the last previous occasion, five years ago, while serving at the Civil Court, 60 Centre, I saw the jury-room judge excuse William Bratton, the former Commissioner of Police, who had received an emergency call. This upset the juror sitting in the box next to me no end. He turned out to be Joseph Lelyweld, then the executive editor of the New York Times, who diligently served through several jury calls and "voir dires," the screening processes. We were both challenged (eliminated) once, but at the next call I left him patiently sitting in the jury box, while I was excused, because of potential of prejudice against the medication on trial. Eventually I was mustered out, on the fourth day.
This time, at the Criminal Court, 111 Centre, my jury room mates included a Vassar junior, who played computer poker while waiting (Internet connections cost $9 a day), and turned out to be a professional weekend dealer in a downtown club. His favorite game was Omaha hold-'em, a variant of Texas hold-'em, the world championship game. Hi-lo advantages and the techniques of card counter teams were dissected at our table at length. The other participants were a nutritionist and two advertising people, a woman who builds individualized restaurant lists for major downtown hotels, and a man who spoke authoritatively on billboards as the most effective medium (you get captive audiences who cannot tune you out, don't you know) and the relative dangers of flashing advertising sign boards at street crossings (we have some, on 14th Street). Jury duty can be quite instructive.
Lunch hors for jurors in waiting are generous, leaving room for explorations in Chinatown. From 111, crossing Centre Street and walking east on the Bernard Kerik passage (between two jails, honoring the Commissioner of Correction), you get to Baxter Street. There's Jaya Malaysian, at #80, has lemon grass satay, beef or chicken, curry, noodle, , clam and tilapa dishes, and frogs with pepper as a house specialty. Or you can duck into Forloni's, at #93, the esteemed Italian restaurant, where suit-clad lawyers and judges eat. Thai Son, authentic Vietnamese cuisine at #89, offers green mussels , fried frogs' legs in special French butter or lemon grass sauce, chicken with curry, and caramel fish or pork with coconut milk.
The latter can be also bought from street stands, the hard skin peeled, the meat shaped and wrapped in plastic, fresh from Thailand, $1.50. On Canal Street, a block North, lichee nuts are $10 for 4 lbs. There, at Sun Say Kai restaurant (220 Canal, no English menu) barbequed pork is $5 /lb, and ducks weigh in at $13 each. Next door, pungent odors of fish of unknown varieties assail your senses, giving rise to doubts about the sanitary aspects of the laid-out wares, although the stone crabs crawling around on their platters, $2 apiece, seem to attest to their freshness. At Kam Man Products (200 Canal) are aisles of packaged foods, nuts, noodles and more. The artfulness of the Chinese craftsmen extends to all sphered - downstairs they have beautiful Japanese lantern night-lights, square black frames with mullions, Bamboo leaves and script painted on the parchment-covered sides - duplicated in China!
For those jurors who opt for some more Occidental fare, Little Italy is only two blocks away. One crosses Canal and walks on Mott Street to Grand, where pasta abounds, or continues to Broome and Mulberry, the home of Umberto's Clam House, of linguini and clam sauce fame ($17) and some interesting history from the Gallo family wars. Or continues back on Mulberry, where our Sal Anthony's other venue, S.P.Q.R., will greet you with a prix fixed lunch at $13.50 and Dean Martin singing That's Amore. You don't even have to offer your Irving Place credentials.
Now you want to know about the cases. I had one jury call, and was excused , after three days. Discussing the wasteful methodology with the jury clerk, one finds out that the call-in systems used in some boroughs and on Long Island were tried in Manhattan, and turned out to be counterproductive - Manhattanites just use the calls to generate excuses, making the filling of the jury box impossible. As is, allegedly 1000 summonses are needed to bring in 200 jurors. A helpful method is to bring in five-day jurors on Mondays and Wednesdays. The new arrivals will be called first on Wednesday, to fill courtroom requests. If that group is large enough to fill the expected demand, Monday people will be discharged then and there, after three days. The courtroom administration knows that if a Monday juror is not on a jury by Wednesday, he/she will use excuses to avoid being chosen even for an average case of five days that will drag into next week. Screening them out is costs al lot of courtroom time. A fair court system is an expensive privilege, and we will not have it any other way.
# posted by Wally Dobelis @ 1:00 PM 
