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| Life on jury duty |
I have served on Federal Court juries twice and on Superior Court juries three times. The federal court rules held me on call for six months. The two trials occupied me for a little more than one week each time.
The Superior Court service needed me for a) 2 weeks; b) 1 week and now, c) it is foreseen to last for about 3 weeks. This is quite a heavy duty demand placed upon 12 people who have been sworn to construct an "reasonable doubt-free" conviction about the matters that will be placed before them. I'm telling you that it takes a lot of mental and emotional discipline to walk that razor's edge. I liked it better when I was the key witness one time 40 years ago.
It was a civil case, Emcon vs Kyocera and I was the human resources director working for Kyocera. At the time when Kyocera acquired Emcon I advised the executive management of Kyocera to liquidate the Emcon workforce and start a new one from scratch. Kyocera did not agree with me and took the Emcon employees as their own. After about 6 months, Kyocera closed Emcon without warning and the employees of Emcon sued. I am on record as advising Kyocera to not offer employment to the Emcon people from the beginning and I I did it again after about 6 months.
On the practical side, that made me a rather interesting person of interest. In civil case there is a process called "discovery." It is a simple equivalent to "investigation" in a criminal case. I was therefore called to testify under oath regarding the facts behind the allegations made by the accusing party. In this case I was invited to "talk" to the lawyers who represented the accusers, under oath and in the presence of the attorney for the defendants. That took 16 hours of my precious time. My employer at the time agreed to pay me despite my absence. Not only that but I was able to negotiate an emolument of $150 per day from the attorney of the accusing side. As it turned out he was a second rate lawyer.
The accusing lawyer was rather surprised when I told him that I was not "represented." He knew that he was going to have a good time when I told him that I did not need representation. You know the type, C- GPA.
Anyway, my three weeks of duty are finished. It took us only 1.5 days of deliberation to put the guy in the tank. So now I am free to go on my way for the next two years. I wonder if I will get the opportunity to declare someone not guilty one of these days.
