No knitting content here. I have some great knittage and yarnage to talk about, but today is the Dulaan mailing deadline, and I have some serious finishing, blocking, and packing to do. So you get this post that I drafted about a month ago and was keeping in reserve.
No, I haven't been called for jury duty, but I was last year. One of the Rainey sisters mentioned awhile back about being on jury duty and it reminded me of my experience last year. It was kind of interesting so I thought I'd share it.
In this rural county people are on call for jury duty for a month at a time. I had gotten some kind of notification early in the year so I was expecting to be called, and May turned out to be my month. I was excited about the whole thing. A jury trial is something I had only seen on TV, albeit probably hundreds of times, and I was eager to see the real thing. I have never understood people who try to get out of jury duty; I think I am just naturally snoopy.
The second and third trials for which I was empaneled never made it to the jury. In one, the prosecution's main witness, who had to make the four-plus hour drive from Madison, didn't show up. In the other, the district attorney's office had screwed up the charge. The accused was completely guilty of what he had been arrested for -- illegally hunting deer -- but not of what he was eventually charged with -- something similar but not exactly the same. District attorney = not the brightest bulb on the tree, apparently. She is also no longer holds that office.
The first trial, however, was a good one. It lasted only one day: wham, bam, thankyouma'm. First of all, though, let me explain what was really, really different about being on an actual jury vs. seeing one on TV.
On TV you have a pretty good overall idea about what has happened and why this particular person is on trial for these particular charges. In a real jury, you know nothing when it starts and have to piece it all together from the testimony. In addition, the judge told us we could not take notes; he said that in his experience, note-takers got too involved in the note-taking and tended to miss things that were happening in real time. So we were all concentrating as hard as we could and trying to understand and remember everything, since we didn't yet know what was important and what wasn't.
The first witness was a man who had been at a certain bar when a [something] happened, we didn't yet know what. Next up was a sheriff's deputy who filled in many of the blanks. Then another bar patron testified about what he had seen and done and not done ("Did you ever hit or touch [him] in any way?" "No, sir, I never touched him." Yeah, right.) A nurse from the local emergency room testified about a person who had been brought in for treatment. The defendant's mother and girlfriend also testified, giving us some background on him.
It seems that a certain 30-something pony-tailed white guy (we will call him Boyfriend) had attended a wake for his stepfather that Saturday afternoon. iirc, the wake had taken place at the same bar at which the [whatever] happened. In the late afternoon as he was sitting at the bar his girlfriend tried to persuade him to leave. He didn't want to go, and she left to walk around outside. At some point she had a bloody nose, which apparently led certain patrons, who had previously noticed them arguing and who may have had some history with Boyfriend, to infer that Boyfriend had hit her. When she came back inside a couple women took her into the bathroom to help her clean up, and [probably; no one actually testified to this] ask if she needed a ride, did she feel safe leaving with clearly-intoxicated Boyfriend, etc.
Boyfriend had had a few hostile exchanges with various other patrons over the course of the afternoon; apparently he was known there and not well-liked. He got pissed off when Girlfriend didn't come back from the bathroom quickly -- she had been trying to get him to leave, right? -- so he went out to his truck in the parking lot to sulk. He testified that he knew he was too drunk to drive, so he didn't leave; he called his mother to come get him. While he waited for her he burned off his anger by driving back and forth and round and round in the parking lot. In the course of this little tantrum he ran into at least one other pickup truck.
Bar patrons saw the truck zooming around, noted the damage it had done, and got mad. The owner of the damaged truck and his buddies pulled Boyfriend from his truck, beat him up, and even rammed his head into the side of the truck. (Yikes.) Other patrons came out to the parking lot, separated the combatants, and called the sheriff's office. Boyfriend sat in his truck until Deputy arrived. Truck Owner stomped around a bit and went back into the bar.
Now, given these facts, who do YOU think was charged and with what?
Assault? Nope.
Some kind of automobile collision charge? Nope.
Terminal stupidity? Well, yes, but that's not a crime in Wisconsin.
Boyfriend was charged with DWI. There was no charge of assault, apparently, because Boyfriend was so drunk he couldn't identify those who had beat him up. And even though he didn't attempt to drive on a public road, a parking lot is considered to be a public place and therefore subject to the same drunk driving law as a highway. Really, the whole thing was just a bar fight gone bad.
Let this be a lesson to you:
- Don't drink and drive. Anywhere.
- And don't get mad at your girlfriend in public if she is prone to nosebleeds.
TTFN. and have a great weekend!
P.S. All of the above, except my parenthetical comments, is a matter of public record.
