A Fool with Judges; Amongst Fools a Judge
For the last two weeks I've been on grand jury duty, and it
has been an education.
The grand jury system is a uniquely American institution.
Although its origins are to be found in ancient British common law, the UK doesn't have
anything like it. In the state of New York -- at least in King's County (Brooklyn), where
I live and served -- a large group of potential jurors is called in at the beginning of
each week.
There, with the best humor possible, court wardens inform
them that they will serve on a grand jury -- while you can put it off a time or
two, you will eventually have to spend two weeks empanelled, hearing cases. Why put it
off?
The grand jury hears evidence presented by assistant
district attorneys (ADAs) and determines whether or not there's enough evidence to indict
(bring the case to trial). A grand jury consists of 23 citizens, and a quorum of 16 has to
hear each case in its entirety. Of those 16, 12 must vote for a true bill (to indict), no
true bill (to dismiss), or, depending upon the charges presented, vote to indict on some
charges while dismissing others.
The system has changed over the years -- the current Chief
Judge of the State of New York has been active in improving the system and has eliminated
almost all exemptions from service on the grand jury, a move that has resulted in greater
jury diversity.
Judge Sol Wachtler, the former Chief Judge of the State,
once opined that a grand jury "would indict a ham sandwich," meaning that they
are passive groups who can be pushed around by the ADAs. There's some danger of that,
actually -- the ADAs control the evidence, entering it over the course of days or weeks
and in the order they wish. Defendants have to foreswear their immunity to
self-incrimination to appear, and many do not choose to testify on their own behalf.
But I was impressed by how seriously my fellow citizens
took their responsibilities. We all showed up ready to work and we put in full days.
Several people kept careful notes throughout the proceedings, and everyone asked sharp,
pertinent questions (and occasionally even stupid ones). If any ham sandwiches were
indicted, it happened early on. By the second day of service, we were making the ADAs
sweat for their indictments.
And when we threw out our first "no true bill,"
we learned that the ADAs took defeat gracefully -- after all, if they couldn't convince 12
of us to indict, what chance did they have to convince 12 trial jurors to convict?
That's the fine line we had to walk, of course -- unlike a
trial jury, we did not have to be convinced beyond a shadow of a doubt, all we had to have
was enough evidence to think there was a reason to believe the ADA's charge could be
true.
I think we did darn well. One case was tricky enough that
we were relieved when the defendant finally pled out rather than be indicted and tried. We
indicted a few upper-level professional criminals and I'm positive we kept one innocent
victim out of the system.
We also tossed out charges on one guy I'm positive was a
serious drug dealer. He testified on his own behalf, convinced he could sweet-talk a jury,
and I wouldn't have believed him if he said the sun was shining and I were sitting by an
open window. Unfortunately, the buy-and-bust that snared him was botched, and he was
caught with neither marked money nor any drugs. I sincerely hope the next time he sees a
grand jury, they can indict him in good conscience -- we couldn't.
As we served together, we jurors came to know one another's
pet peeves. One member didn't trust the cops at all and she insisted that there be a
convincing amount of hard evidence to back up any single officer's testimony. Another
juror hated circumstantial evidence and asked probing questions aimed at clarifying
possession and access in any case where there was no eye-witness to the crime itself. At
first I rolled my eyes when she rode her hobby-horse on this point, but it occurred to me
that it’s the folks with the pet peeves who do the most to keep the ham sandwiches
from getting indicted, not the rest of us. If I ever go before a grand jury, I pray
there's a nut or two on the panel protecting my freedom.
What I love about the grand jury system is that it inserts
a buffer of regular folks between the prosecutors and the accused. Not more lawyers or
even professional jurors, but clerks, housewives, students, bus drivers, and even hi-fi
reviewers -- it's a celebration of the good sense of the ordinary citizen.
In a sense, that's what I try to do here at onhifi.com.
I've been involved in hi-fi professionally and as a hobbyist for longer than I can
remember, but I don't claim any special access to the "truth" about a given
component, whatever that would be.
There seem to be folks out there who hear better than I do
-- they certainly claim to hear things I've never heard, at any rate. And there are
certainly people who know more than I do about any given technology -- I'm not an EE and
that's a fact.
I'm just a reasonably intelligent (or at least I'd like to
think so) guy who loves music and the gadgets that bring it to him. My assumption is that
there are lots of people just like me and that my experiences with the gear I write about
will be similar to those of most people who use it. If I find a feature hard to use, I
assume other folks will too -- and if a component makes me forget about my cares and be
transported by the music, well, there's nothing special about me, so it'll probably do it
for you, too.
In the end, onhifi.com all boils down to just one guy's
opinion, based on his experiences. I'm no expert -- experts not only have to be right,
they have to be right for the right reasons. All I have to do is tell you what I
know.
I'm an ordinary guy -- albeit one who happens to be very
interested in hi-fi -- and I assume my readers are just ordinary folks, too. After two
weeks spent marveling at the wisdom, serious intent, and innate decency of the
"ordinary" American citizen, ordinary seems like the highest praise possible.
...Wes Phillips
wes@onhifi.com
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