Law & Order: MO Wo Style

About a month ago, The Wo mentions that he’s finally gotten a notice for jury duty. He’s interested and intrigued, and has never even been called before. So he fills out the paperwork, I drop it in the mail, and think nothing more of it. Until I walk by his computer and see the rest of the summons, and in big red block letters, it says, “GRAND JURY”. Wha-WHA!?!? That’s quite the detail oversight! Then, like so many other things in my life, I promptly forgot about it, until he was on the phone with Momma Linda and mentioned that he would have jury duty in September.
GRAND jury duty, I interrupted.
Yeah. He had no idea.

I’ve been watching Law & Order for all the years it’s been on tv. All the variations, all the spin-offs, I am right. fucking. there. Love me some legal justice. (Yes, I am also fully aware the shows are nothing like real life.) I even have had the juror experience, as the foreperson on a malpractice lawsuit when I lived in St. Louis. Let me tell you what, I have no desire to be judged by a jury of my “peers” because half the people I sat with on that panel were competing with mushrooms for Most Active Life Form. Dude next to me kept falling asleep, in fact. Nice. I was freaking out. I took the responsibility so seriously, and was so riveted to every single detail, because I felt it was So Important. The case lasted 5 days, and by the 3rd day, the judge pointed at me before giving the rote instructions to the jury, instructions that were given to us every. single. time. there was a recess, a break, lunch, or leaving for the day. Basically instructing us we were not to discuss this case with anyone else, with anyone from the defense or the plaintiff, or among ourselves. It was about four lines long, and I had memorized it at that point. So when the judge pointed at me and saw my focused eyeballs, he pointed his gavel at me and said, “GO.” I began to say, “We are not to discuss this case with anyone else. We are not to discuss it with…” and he chuckled, told me he needed to say it, for it to count. Yes. I was focused.

The case we heard was about the head of OBGYN at SLU, and he was accused of not having magical fortune-telling powers. Basically, the woman had a baby, and then got pregnant again. The second child ended up being macrosomic (huge), and got stuck in the birth canal during delivery. She also delivered really, really, really fast. Was on a petosin drip for 10 hours, and then suddenly went from a 4 to a 10, in 7 minutes. (I learned more about childbirth than I ever needed to know, folks.) So the baby got stuck, and there was brachial nerve damage, resulting in a permanent injury to the boy. He had about 30% capacity of his arm. It was really awful, because they brought the kid in (he was 10 at this point) and threw balls at him, instructing him to catch them with his “good” side and then his “bad” one. But the whole argument rested on the first supposition, that the doctor “should have known” she would have this oversized baby, and should have in fact performed a c-section. The issue we (I) had, was that all her vitals and measurements were identical to her first child, a girl, who had been delivered with no issues whatsoever. Weight, fundal height, all that stuff was precisely the same. So there was no way he could have predicted it would go wrong. Anyway, it was rough. The doctor’s lawyers were quite skilled; the mom’s lawyer was more along the lines of shyster. And when we first convened in the jury room, I was selected as the foreman, and two seconds later, the DumbShit who’d been falling asleep had a crazy outburst, “I think because he offered her an abortion at the beginning of her pregnancy, we should find him guilty RIGHT NOW!”

Oh lord. Yes, the doc made her aware of all of her options, because she was over the age of 40, and the odds of having a special needs child went up, and as her doctor, he wanted her to know every LEGAL medical option she had. I told him to essentially STFU, as the abortion issue had nothing to do with this case.

It took several hours. Juries in St. Louis were notorious for large cash awards. But we finally found for the doctor. The three men on the jury held steadfast in favor of the plaintiff, maybe seeing themselves in the little boy, awkwardly catching a nerf ball in front of the jury box. And six months later, I was in a mall, shopping, and saw a woman who looked familiar. Turns out, she had been on the jury with me, and she had visited the judge after our decision was rendered, to ask what he thought of our verdict. He told her we’d made the right choice (though I wonder if he ever tells a juror that he thinks they fucked up). I still look back on it as a significant moment in civic duty, it’s right up there with the very first time I voted. But because of the DumbShit, I fear ever having my fate in front of 12 people, because there’s no guarantee my counterpart will be in the room, memorizing the juror instructions and paying attention to the rules and keeping emotion out of it.

With all that, I would say the Wo would make an excellent juror. We’ll see if he gets selected! We do know he is not allowed to bring knitting needles, that was emphasized twice on the phone tonight. It’s a shame, really, that knitting isn’t allowed. He can bring a craft, though. He suggested duck calls. That might be a really good way to NOT get chosen….