08-28-2015, 07:07 AM
Aww, Charon, thanks, encouragement is nice, the wait is definitely the worst part, also they don't have a firm date, only a "kind of" range. I think I just miss going to court for anything. Big firms are nice and cushiony - long hours but you know, clients, they send you out in the field, but I'd rather do trialwork because when I did that before it was pretty great, although family law seems pretty gnarly.
And yeah, haha, if you don't like the other side it gets real good when you bait them into something. One summer when I was actually getting paid, criminal trial, voir dire, half-Hispanic client with clearly Hispanic name. I had spreadsheeted the juror questionnaires the night before so it was in front of me, but other side didn't bring a laptop, so we figure we're ahead, and really if you have an extra person it helps a lot to just mark as many data points as possible anyway. But so we get to preempts and there was a juror who we knew, from the questionnaire, that she's from Spain, and had an accent, but since we had it down already we just asked where she's from and just went over some of the questionnaire, and moved on. Then we look at the spreadsheet and realized that 3/4 Hispanics in the pool have been stricken and she's the last one standing and the other side struck the other two. We both had 5 preempts so we got two left and we figured that he was gonna try to keep the lady who said she's married to a cop but can still be neutral, two seats down, so we struck the person between them, someone whom we could hve had on the jury and would've been good, but no big deal, and the DA jumped at it and struck the Spanish lady from the pool and took about a second for all 5 at the counsel tables and the judge to know and it was a matter of how quickly we can blurt out "Objection, Batson, systematic pattern of discrimination, counsel had struck the entire Hispanic venir and the counsel table here has more minorities than the jury pool period."
Oh boy, it felt like minutes and his rebuttal was "well I didn't think Spanish people, she's from Spain, yes? Yes, Spanish people, they're European, on the checklist she checked white under race, she speaks English quite well, I struck her because she didn't seem to quite... follow the questioning (all 2 questions) as well as I'd liked, but definitely I didn't think she's Hispanic, and even if she is, if you classify her as that, I'd say that to me she's a white European naturalized American member of our community." Like you  can just see him realizing that every word he thought of, which already took ages, was going in the wrong direction, and he had to stick to his guns.
You can't really just turn around and look at the judge at that moment and you can't laugh but I think everyone but the prosecutor including most of the pool was gonna crack up, and then the judge, I can almost hear his eyeroll, just went:
"Counsel, for the record Spanish people are Hispanic, but while ignorant your answer is believable in the context, and I hope I won't hear this answer again in my courtroom. The bar for a Batson challenge is not ignorance, but plausibility and believability, and unfortunately it hits that very low bar, it's does not take a stretch of the imagination to believe that some people, even you, counsel, who'd make the mistaken distinction. Overruled, you may go ma'am."
You can't laugh but then the jruy did it was pretty difficult. If we lost that would have been one helluva appellate decision addressing the prosecution's lack of recognition that Spanish people are Hispanic - ignorant or lying, essentially - but we got a mistrial so didn't have the chance, but man, when you got a jury pool with very few minorities with a minority client (happened too many times, law school was in a place where it is still possible to have all white juries, or close to it, but plenty of minroity defendants), the few trials I've done solo and the few I did with a supervisor, we definitely went for the Batson just to see what kind of crazy reason they'd come up with, but that one really beat all others.
There are those who work across the street I watch baseball and drink beers with after work even though they work for the other side, and then there are those who we warn our clients about actually taking the first plea because it's the only plea they're gonna get. Didn't think it'd actually work, but I guess if you lose your concentration at the end of a long day of jury selections you may just go for ignorant rather than lying.
Maybe I should just sit through a few dockets next week, get to know some people, whatever it is, even if I got guilty verdicts or pleas on most cases I helped to work on or worked on solo, you know you have a problem when you spent so much time in court during law school that not going to court messes with you (although the jail smelled weird and I don't miss that).
And yeah, haha, if you don't like the other side it gets real good when you bait them into something. One summer when I was actually getting paid, criminal trial, voir dire, half-Hispanic client with clearly Hispanic name. I had spreadsheeted the juror questionnaires the night before so it was in front of me, but other side didn't bring a laptop, so we figure we're ahead, and really if you have an extra person it helps a lot to just mark as many data points as possible anyway. But so we get to preempts and there was a juror who we knew, from the questionnaire, that she's from Spain, and had an accent, but since we had it down already we just asked where she's from and just went over some of the questionnaire, and moved on. Then we look at the spreadsheet and realized that 3/4 Hispanics in the pool have been stricken and she's the last one standing and the other side struck the other two. We both had 5 preempts so we got two left and we figured that he was gonna try to keep the lady who said she's married to a cop but can still be neutral, two seats down, so we struck the person between them, someone whom we could hve had on the jury and would've been good, but no big deal, and the DA jumped at it and struck the Spanish lady from the pool and took about a second for all 5 at the counsel tables and the judge to know and it was a matter of how quickly we can blurt out "Objection, Batson, systematic pattern of discrimination, counsel had struck the entire Hispanic venir and the counsel table here has more minorities than the jury pool period."
Oh boy, it felt like minutes and his rebuttal was "well I didn't think Spanish people, she's from Spain, yes? Yes, Spanish people, they're European, on the checklist she checked white under race, she speaks English quite well, I struck her because she didn't seem to quite... follow the questioning (all 2 questions) as well as I'd liked, but definitely I didn't think she's Hispanic, and even if she is, if you classify her as that, I'd say that to me she's a white European naturalized American member of our community." Like you  can just see him realizing that every word he thought of, which already took ages, was going in the wrong direction, and he had to stick to his guns.
You can't really just turn around and look at the judge at that moment and you can't laugh but I think everyone but the prosecutor including most of the pool was gonna crack up, and then the judge, I can almost hear his eyeroll, just went:
"Counsel, for the record Spanish people are Hispanic, but while ignorant your answer is believable in the context, and I hope I won't hear this answer again in my courtroom. The bar for a Batson challenge is not ignorance, but plausibility and believability, and unfortunately it hits that very low bar, it's does not take a stretch of the imagination to believe that some people, even you, counsel, who'd make the mistaken distinction. Overruled, you may go ma'am."
You can't laugh but then the jruy did it was pretty difficult. If we lost that would have been one helluva appellate decision addressing the prosecution's lack of recognition that Spanish people are Hispanic - ignorant or lying, essentially - but we got a mistrial so didn't have the chance, but man, when you got a jury pool with very few minorities with a minority client (happened too many times, law school was in a place where it is still possible to have all white juries, or close to it, but plenty of minroity defendants), the few trials I've done solo and the few I did with a supervisor, we definitely went for the Batson just to see what kind of crazy reason they'd come up with, but that one really beat all others.
There are those who work across the street I watch baseball and drink beers with after work even though they work for the other side, and then there are those who we warn our clients about actually taking the first plea because it's the only plea they're gonna get. Didn't think it'd actually work, but I guess if you lose your concentration at the end of a long day of jury selections you may just go for ignorant rather than lying.
Maybe I should just sit through a few dockets next week, get to know some people, whatever it is, even if I got guilty verdicts or pleas on most cases I helped to work on or worked on solo, you know you have a problem when you spent so much time in court during law school that not going to court messes with you (although the jail smelled weird and I don't miss that).