Deadly Force by Lawrence O'Donnell Jr

Author:Lawrence O'Donnell, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2018-05-18T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter 13

I hate jury selection,” Michael whispered. “You work on a thing like this for three years. Then you come in here, pick names out of a hat, and leave it to them.” We were in Courtroom No. 6, Judge Skinner’s demesne, looking at a panel of sixty prospective jurors. They were scattered about the spectators’ benches wrapped in an assortment of winter coats, waiting, as we were, for the judge. It was 10:07 A.M. on Monday, January 30, 1978, and Michael was noticeably nervous. Since jury selection struck me as an awfully dangerous game, I, too, was full of apprehension. The old man, of course, was serenity itself.

The previous week, Skinner’s clerk had told both sides that the judge intended to impanel two juries this morning: one for a criminal case and one for us. Skinner would then hold the criminal trial, which he expected to run two or three days, and have us back on Thursday to get the Bowden trial under way. Neither the plaintiffs nor the defendants were present for jury selection. The lawyers on the criminal case occupied the counsel tables, since they were going to get first pick. We were in the first row of the spectators’ section. Across the aisle were John Keefe and none other than Tom McKenna. The defense had not filed a last-minute motion for a continuance.

Michael read the play this way: “McKenna wanted to go into private practice. So he resigned from the City on the eve of a big trial. He knew no one could learn the file in time to try the case. He probably hoped that the City would hire him as outside counsel and pay him a good hourly.” Which it did.

We had to wait well over an hour for the criminal jury to be selected. The freshly sworn jurors and everyone else involved in the criminal case then went off for a coffee break, and the old man, Michael, McKenna, and Keefe took over the counsel tables.

Needless to say, there is more to jury selection than picking names out of a hat, though that’s about how it began. The court clerk blindly picked eight names out of a small wooden barrel that sits on his desk. Federal civil trials use only six jurors. Two more are usually empaneled as alternates, ready to step in to replace a first-string juror who has to be excused for illness or the like. The clerk called the eight to the jury box: “number fifty-nine, Mr. Zoba; number thirty-one, Mr. Kroll; number forty-five, Mr. Lynch; number fifty-seven, Mr. York; number twenty-one, Mrs. Gallo; number four, Mr. Bentley; number twelve, Mr. Cohen; and number nine, Mr. Cederholm.”

Their numbers referred to their alphabetical position on the jury pool list. Once in the jury box they were referred to as jurors number one through six, the first alternate, and the second alternate. Number one sat in the front-row corner closest to the judge. Two through six filled out the front row, and the alternates sat behind them.

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