Long day; longer description
Hey you know what is sort of not fun?
JURY DUTY
Actually, I'm sort of embellishing here. I didn't actually serve on a jury today, but I did spend many hours in a jury pool. Many people haven't done this, so I will write about it at considerable length.
How it works is: after being randomly selected from the electoral roll, you are asked to fill in a questionnaire to determine whether or not you are eligible/available for a jury selection in a couple of months. Some weeks later you are given some dates on which you may have to spend in a jury pool (mine were yesterday (27/8/07) and today), and a panel number (mine was 275). Then you call the juryline to see if you have to show up for wither of those days; I forgot do to this until Sunday night, and was pleasantly surprised not to have to have come in yesterday (which was awesome, because I got to get a haircut, wash my towels, drink a beer at lunchtime and spend the rest of the day playing Doom 2).
I digress. Anyway, I DID have to show up at the Melbourne County Court jury pool room today, and was a few minutes late. I got a little card bearing the information "275" and "CAFE ATTENDANT", which kinda made me wish I had listed my occupation as something more fraudulent and awesome - perhaps "JAZZ SAXOPHONIST". I sat down in an airport lounge-styled big room with about 120 other people and listened to a lady who turned out to be nice, rotund and kinda funny, who patiently explained the whole process in simple terms. Then we watched a little informational DVD, which repeated the same information in similarly simple terms, only with court employees and some actors. I suppose it pays not to overestimate the intelligence of the dumbest person of a randomly selected group of people.
The process is this: you sit around in an airport lounge, while a nice, rotund, kinda funny woman pulls names out of a box. If your name (or in some instances, number) is called out, you say 'present' and go stand at the front. (My name got called in the first batch - shit!). Then about 30 people get led by a fifty-something man in an odd green uniform (his position is called a "tipstaff", for reasons unclear to me) up to a courtroom.
In the courtroom, you sit down again. Both the ones I visited today contained two bewigged and berobed barristers on a bench in front, each sitting across from several people I understand to be solicitors. At the back are a policeman, and 'the accused'. To the right are either empty chairs (first courtroom I saw) or chairs seating people I assume to be high school students (the second). In the middle are potential jurors like me. The rooms themselves were nice-ish, new-ish, modern-ish and wood-panelled.
Damn, I'm going into way too much detail.
Anyway, after a while a judge comes in. In my experience this is either a man or a woman. You stand. You sit. The judge's assistant, who in my experience is always (ie, two of two times) a woman appearing to be between twenty-nine and thirty-seven, reads a list of charges.
I have to say that last night I spent some time thinking about the sort of case I would want to be a juror on. I decided it would be best to have an armed robbery with good security camera footage and lots of witnesses, so as to make for an easy decision I wouldn't have to agonise over. The worst, I figured, would be something awful like a rape or molestation charge; for the rather selfish reasons that a) I like to think that people are generally ok and don't usually do such monstrous things to other people for their own gratification, b) as I understand it, these things are frequently one person's word against another's, and trying to establish the truth in such a case is hard. Also C) that stuff is really emotive, which makes it hard to be fair and open minded.
So I was selfishly disappointed, as well as unselfishly horrified to hear the charges in the first case: several instances of (I'm not sure of the exact wording) 'indecent assault of somebody under 16 years', and several of 'sexual penetration of someone above the age of ten whom [the accused] knew to be [the accused's] daughter'. The charges were alleged to have occurred between 1975 and 1977. Hmm.
The sad-looking old man in the back answered 'not guilty' to all of them.
But I shouldn't be talking to much about that. It kind of queers the flow of my little story here, describing such dramatic events, then following them with more tedium. I need to break it up a little.
Lines!:
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One interesting thing I didn't know about was the way in which defendants challenge the selection of jurors. After the reading of charges, potential jurors' names are once again drawn from a box. If your name is drawn (mine was not - hooray!) you have walk past the accused and his or her legal counsel. Based on the information they have on the potential juror - only name, profession and whatever they can infer from your appearance - they can elect to challenge the selection of up to six jurors without giving any reasons. If this happens, the potential juror sits back down, maybe emits a sigh of relief, and does not have to be an actual juror.
This was a little strange. In the selection for the case I just described, the counsel seemed pretty keen on removing women from the jury (although they did challenge one man as well) - I suppose I can see the logic on this, but it's highly disturbing. The implication that, as a guy, I'm not so bothered by a spot of child molestation, is a little insulting as well.
In the other case (alleged assault) there was no pattern to the challenges that I could discern. I suppose there are probably statistics about jurors somewhere that lawyers can call upon. Statistics implying ideas like "retired bank tellers are more likely to find a defendant in a fraud case guilty". I bet there are heaps of generalisations about cultural background and gender as well. I can't say I really want to know.
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Is that the time? I'll try and continue this later.
JURY DUTY
Actually, I'm sort of embellishing here. I didn't actually serve on a jury today, but I did spend many hours in a jury pool. Many people haven't done this, so I will write about it at considerable length.
How it works is: after being randomly selected from the electoral roll, you are asked to fill in a questionnaire to determine whether or not you are eligible/available for a jury selection in a couple of months. Some weeks later you are given some dates on which you may have to spend in a jury pool (mine were yesterday (27/8/07) and today), and a panel number (mine was 275). Then you call the juryline to see if you have to show up for wither of those days; I forgot do to this until Sunday night, and was pleasantly surprised not to have to have come in yesterday (which was awesome, because I got to get a haircut, wash my towels, drink a beer at lunchtime and spend the rest of the day playing Doom 2).
I digress. Anyway, I DID have to show up at the Melbourne County Court jury pool room today, and was a few minutes late. I got a little card bearing the information "275" and "CAFE ATTENDANT", which kinda made me wish I had listed my occupation as something more fraudulent and awesome - perhaps "JAZZ SAXOPHONIST". I sat down in an airport lounge-styled big room with about 120 other people and listened to a lady who turned out to be nice, rotund and kinda funny, who patiently explained the whole process in simple terms. Then we watched a little informational DVD, which repeated the same information in similarly simple terms, only with court employees and some actors. I suppose it pays not to overestimate the intelligence of the dumbest person of a randomly selected group of people.
The process is this: you sit around in an airport lounge, while a nice, rotund, kinda funny woman pulls names out of a box. If your name (or in some instances, number) is called out, you say 'present' and go stand at the front. (My name got called in the first batch - shit!). Then about 30 people get led by a fifty-something man in an odd green uniform (his position is called a "tipstaff", for reasons unclear to me) up to a courtroom.
In the courtroom, you sit down again. Both the ones I visited today contained two bewigged and berobed barristers on a bench in front, each sitting across from several people I understand to be solicitors. At the back are a policeman, and 'the accused'. To the right are either empty chairs (first courtroom I saw) or chairs seating people I assume to be high school students (the second). In the middle are potential jurors like me. The rooms themselves were nice-ish, new-ish, modern-ish and wood-panelled.
Damn, I'm going into way too much detail.
Anyway, after a while a judge comes in. In my experience this is either a man or a woman. You stand. You sit. The judge's assistant, who in my experience is always (ie, two of two times) a woman appearing to be between twenty-nine and thirty-seven, reads a list of charges.
I have to say that last night I spent some time thinking about the sort of case I would want to be a juror on. I decided it would be best to have an armed robbery with good security camera footage and lots of witnesses, so as to make for an easy decision I wouldn't have to agonise over. The worst, I figured, would be something awful like a rape or molestation charge; for the rather selfish reasons that a) I like to think that people are generally ok and don't usually do such monstrous things to other people for their own gratification, b) as I understand it, these things are frequently one person's word against another's, and trying to establish the truth in such a case is hard. Also C) that stuff is really emotive, which makes it hard to be fair and open minded.
So I was selfishly disappointed, as well as unselfishly horrified to hear the charges in the first case: several instances of (I'm not sure of the exact wording) 'indecent assault of somebody under 16 years', and several of 'sexual penetration of someone above the age of ten whom [the accused] knew to be [the accused's] daughter'. The charges were alleged to have occurred between 1975 and 1977. Hmm.
The sad-looking old man in the back answered 'not guilty' to all of them.
But I shouldn't be talking to much about that. It kind of queers the flow of my little story here, describing such dramatic events, then following them with more tedium. I need to break it up a little.
Lines!:
----------------------
One interesting thing I didn't know about was the way in which defendants challenge the selection of jurors. After the reading of charges, potential jurors' names are once again drawn from a box. If your name is drawn (mine was not - hooray!) you have walk past the accused and his or her legal counsel. Based on the information they have on the potential juror - only name, profession and whatever they can infer from your appearance - they can elect to challenge the selection of up to six jurors without giving any reasons. If this happens, the potential juror sits back down, maybe emits a sigh of relief, and does not have to be an actual juror.
This was a little strange. In the selection for the case I just described, the counsel seemed pretty keen on removing women from the jury (although they did challenge one man as well) - I suppose I can see the logic on this, but it's highly disturbing. The implication that, as a guy, I'm not so bothered by a spot of child molestation, is a little insulting as well.
In the other case (alleged assault) there was no pattern to the challenges that I could discern. I suppose there are probably statistics about jurors somewhere that lawyers can call upon. Statistics implying ideas like "retired bank tellers are more likely to find a defendant in a fraud case guilty". I bet there are heaps of generalisations about cultural background and gender as well. I can't say I really want to know.
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Is that the time? I'll try and continue this later.