This incident reminded me of a similar incident many years ago. My wife Lane got a summons for jury duty. She told me about it as I walked in the door after a long day in court.
“I don’t want to serve on a jury,” she said.
“No problem,” I replied, “just call the judge’s office and
explain your situation and they’ll let you off.”
Lane didn’t like that idea. “I don’t want to be given any
special favors.”
“You won’t be. You’re pregnant, and pregnant women can be
excused from jury duty if they ask”
“I’m not going to call the judge’s office.”
“Okay,” I said, “When you show up for jury duty they’ll ask
you a bunch of questions, and the last one will be whether you have any reason
to be excused from jury duty. Just go up to the judge’s bench and tell him you’re
pregnant.”
“I don’t want to call attention to myself,” she said.
“You’re eight months pregnant. People are going to notice whether you call attention to yourself or not.”
She was adamant that she wasn’t going to call attention to herself by asking to be excused. “Okay,” I said, “You
probably won’t be called into the box,
and if you are the prosecutor will certainly challenge you.”
On the morning of Lane’s jury duty I was sitting as second
chair counsel for the case that was set for trial. We had a newly hired
assistant public defender, and I was showing him the ropes. You might ask how
I, with less than a year’s experience, was showing anybody the ropes, but at that time I was
the most experienced assistant public defender in my home town.
The judge asked the preliminary qualifying questions and
then asked the style of the case set for trial. The prosecutor announced my client’s
name, and we proceeded to jury selection. You’ll never guess whose name was the
first one pulled out of the hat.
As Lane was walking to the jury box, my
co-counsel asked me “What should I do about your wife?” I assured him that
there was no need worrying about that issue, the prosecutor would never let her
sit on the case. When the prosecutor finished his voir dire examination, he
accepted the jury without exercising a challenge. My co-counsel asked me what
he should do. I told him that I couldn’t advise him on that issue, he’d have to
ask another public defender who was in court that day.
He walked over, conferred with the other public defender,
and then announced that he was going to accept the jury without exercising any
challenges. We were through with the trial by mid-afternoon, and our client was
on his way to jail, having been convicted as charged of battery. I asked the prosecutor why in heaven’s name
did he allow my wife to sit on the jury. “I knew she’d never have another
chance to sit as a juror, so I kept her.” I then asked the same question of the
public defender who had given my co-counsel such bad advice. He said: “I knew
she’d never have another chance to sit as a juror, so I told him to keep her.”
When I got home that afternoon, I sat Lane down and said “Tell
me everything that went on in the jury deliberations.”
It seems that the first thing they did was try to elect her
foreman because she was married to a lawyer, but she declined the honor. After
electing another person foreman, they spent the next 10-15 minutes trying to
figure out which lawyer was the prosecutor and which was the defense attorney.
After she helped them sort out that thorny question, they were ready to
deliberate. One juror announced, “When y’all get it figured out, let me know
and I'll vote whichever way you want me to.” The five remaining jurors then began
to discuss the case. They were just before acquitting my client because his
victim hadn’t been invited to the party when Lane spoke up. “Whether he was
invited to the party or not, that doesn’t give the defendant a right to beat him
up.” She single-handedly talked the other four jurors into voting guilty. The
non-participant said he’d vote guilty, too, and the case was over.
I’m not certain of this, but I’d be willing to bet that I have the distinction of being the only lawyer in America today who had his wife on the jury of a case he
defended AND whose wife talked the jury into convicting his client.
