Managing Editor
One of my favorite movies is “To Kill A Mockingbird,” and in that film attorney Atticus Finch proclaims, “A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the people who make it up.” Judge for yourself, but throughout February, I have been summoned as a potential juror.
I previously served on two juries when I lived in Florida. The first time the parties went through the jury selection process, and I was seated in the group, but within minutes of starting the trial, the judge dismissed the jury as the parties had reached a settlement.
The second time was totally different. It took most of the morning to find jurors acceptable to both attorneys involved in the case. By noon a jury was seated, and I was among them. The judge had the courtroom break for lunch and the trial resumed with testimony for the remainder of the afternoon and into the following day.
The case was rather interesting to me. A Haitian immigrant who spoke very little English finished work as a stonemason for a contractor late in the afternoon of the Friday before Memorial Day. Before leaving, the contractor paid him a month’s salary of about $8,000 in cash in a brown paper bag he placed in the truck’s center console. He got in his pickup truck and started to drive home when another Haitian immigrant at the work site flagged the stonemason down and asked if he could give him a ride home.
During one of the hottest and most humid times of the year in Florida, the air conditioner in the pickup truck did not work and so the stonemason and his co-worker rolled the windows down to have some fresh air come into the truck. As they arrived at the co-worker’s home, he asked the stonemason to wait for a moment as he went inside for something. He reemerged with a four-pack of Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers, although it was missing two bottles. He said it was a gift for his kindness in giving him a ride home.
Taking off again, it was now dark outside, and the stonemason noticed flashing lights up ahead on the highway. It was a police DWI roadblock. He was pulled over and an officer noticed the unopened Bartles & Jaymes wine coolers on the passenger seat. He instructed the stonemason to step out of the truck and gave him a field sobriety test.
The Haitian immigrant passed all field sobriety testing, but as he didn’t reply to some of the questions the officer asked because he didn’t understand much English and the officer didn’t speak his language, Creole, the officer detained him and requested another police car and officers to take him to the police station for blood testing for intoxication.
Once at the police station, blood was drawn from the Haitian. Since results would not be available from the lab for several days, he was booked for DWI and transported to the county jail. His pickup truck was towed to the county impound yard. It was Memorial Day Weekend, and the Haitian waited in the jail the remainder of Friday evening, Saturday, Sunday and through Monday as it was Memorial Day, just to obtain an attorney.
When the results of the blood test confirmed no alcohol in his system, the attorney for the state dropped charges filed against him and he was freed from jail. At the impound yard, he reclaimed his truck only after his attorney paid the $750 towing and storage fees. And to his surprise, the brown paper bag of cash was missing.
He sued the city and the police department for $50,000 for false imprisonment, false arrest, his expense of having to hire an attorney, the loss of a month’s salary from the missing bag of cash, and the suffering and humiliation from spending four days in the slammer.
All of this had taken place three years before this trial that I was a juror for. We listened to all the testimony and adjourned to the jury room for our deliberation. To us, it was clear who had made a mistake. We reached a verdict for the plaintiff but before we could announce our decision, the judge dismissed the case.
It seems that the plaintiff’s attorney had made some sort of technical error when filling out the paperwork for the case and this was brought to the judge’s attention during the jury’s deliberations. The judge visited us in the jury room before we left and said he had no choice but to dismiss this case and that the plaintiff’s attorney said he was going to file the case for trial again, even if it took another three years to get on the court docket.
Now I am on the precipice again of doing my civic duty and serving as a potential juror. Paying homage to Atticus Finch, I’m hoping I can remain of sound mind until then. <
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