Everybody who has ever put a flag sticker on their car or worn a flag pin had better show up CHEERFULLY when summoned for jury duty

I have completed my first real week of real jury duty.

Back in 1992, I got summoned in Massachusetts while attending college. I told the judge I was carrying 20 credits that semester, which I was, and that got me excused with some kudos from the judge for being so impressively studious.

A couple of years ago, I got summoned for service in Seattle on December 26. Seriously. I decided to serve it, rather than postpone it, at least in part because it pissed off my then-boss so much. :) Turns out when we all arrived for service, the clerk couldn't imagine why anyone summoned any jurors for the morning after Christmas... all the judges and lawyers were on vacation and no trials were scheduled for the entire week. She spent an hour confirming this fact, then dismissed us all outright. Sweet way to satisfy a jury summons!

This week, I served at Burien District Court. I participated in two selection panels, both for DUIs. I found it interesting how the jury-screening questions by the prosecutor and the defense attorney telegraphed their approaches to the trial itself. Granted, two is not much of a sample size, but in both cases the prosecutors asked a lot of questions about "reasonable doubt" and whether we jurors would be willing to convict in the absence of Breathalyzer test results or other scientific evidence. Would the "credibility" of the arresting officer be sufficient to convince us that the defendant was intoxicated beyond the legal limit? Most jurors said no, the officer's word, judgment, observation, whatever, alone would not be enough. Most jurors said no, it is not possible to know for sure whether someone is drunk just by looking at them, unless you know them well.

All this really got me wondering. If it's legal for accused drivers to refuse breath and/or blood tests, and I think it might be, and if modern CSI-watching juries will only accept the results of scientific tests as sufficient evidence, wouldn't that make DUI cases inherently unwinnable for the state?

A lot of people complain about DUI laws not being strict enough, and re-offenders seeming to get away with it time and time again, unless/until they kill someone, and sometimes even after that. Is that true? Is this why?

I totally, completely appreciate that the burden of proof is, and always should be, on the state to prove its case. I'm also pretty OK with protections against self-incrimination, and the idea of forcible breath or blood tests makes me uneasy. But DUIs suck. So what do we do?

The defense attorney in our second trial said something about how the burden on an arresting officer is "probable cause", while the burden in a criminal trial is "reasonable doubt" which is a much higher standard. Both sides asked lots of questions about what a drunk driver drives like... in other words, the probable cause-type stuff. It seems to me like it would be fairly easy to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that a defendant was driving really dangerously, and I'd be a lot more comfortable relying on an officer's credibility to judge that question. The way DUI laws are set up, though, in a DUI trial it's the influence of the drugs or alcohol that becomes the key question for the jury, and it seems to me like that is the more difficult question to answer. It also lets a lot of other dangerous drivers off the hook.

The problem seems to be that our penalties are linked to the reason for the dangerous driving, which is difficult to prove beyond a reasonable doubt, instead of linking penalties to the dangerousness of the driving itself. Sure, there may be laws against inattentive driving, driving while applying mascara, driving while juggling a cell phone, etc., but I don't think a DUI jury is allowed to return a verdict based on the quality of the driving. I think they have to decide on whether the defendant met the legal standard for intoxication. Without any scientific evidence. I don't know how that would work.

I didn't get seated on the first jury.

Interestingly, in the second trial, one of the other jurors on the panel spoke at length about being a 26-year member of AA, with numerous friends & family having a history of DUI, and he was furious about what he saw as a completely broken and worthless system that allows alcoholics to get away with DUI over and over again. He asserted that anyone who's pulled over for DUI is almost certainly guilty, and allowing them a jury trial is just a waste of everyone's time and an opportunity for them to game the system. A few others on the panel expressed agreement. After all the questioning was finished, the judge asked us if anything we had heard during the selection process might affect our ability to be fair and impartial in this case. Everyone said "no" (other than those who had already said they couldn't be impartial for other reasons).

The 18 of us were sent to the jury room, where we waited to find out which six of us would be selected for the actual jury. We waited a really long time. Like an hour and a half. When the court clerk finally returned, she dismissed all of us! I figure several things could have happened: last-minute plea bargain, last-minute dropping of charges, some kind of continuance or reschedule, last-minute waiver of jury trial in favor of judge trial... it just makes me wonder if either side blinked, and if so, which one? Was the possible "tainting" of our jury panel an issue?

Pretty awesome to see our justice system at work, even clunkily.

And that is patriotism, bitches.