Another voir dire at the courthouse

By Josh Salm/Staff Writer
BANGOR — You learn something new every day, I’m told. About a week ago I learned that the French term “voir dire” means painfully long day. At least that’s what I got from my day of jury selection on April 9 in the Superior Courtroom at the Penobscot County Courthouse.
Actually, voir dire is the term that was used for jury selection, the process in which a prosecution and defense goes about selecting a jury for the upcoming trial. That’s what the early 1990s gentlemen on the TV screen was telling the assembly of 200 people in the courtroom in his obnoxious tone of voice where you could tell he was hiding a Downeast accent and failing miserably. It was hard not to laugh when he tried too hard to sound all proper, then he blurts out “Jur-AH.” Ha! I love it.
Anyway, jury duty — it is the common person’s civic obligation to rule on a court case. Our forefathers decided that court cases in this nation would be ruled on by a group of people in the community who don’t have ties to the case. They are the nameless people who fill the juror’s box in the courtroom that are the target of the prosecution and defense. You know, like in Law and Order.
For a day, I was one of those nameless people. When I reached the third-floor courtroom that morning, I traded my name in for a number — 122, to be exact. As in high school, I headed for the back of the room in hopes to stay as far away from the lawyers as possible in the hopes that the farther I was away from them the less likely it was that I would get chosen by the teacher, or in this case the lawyers.
The Superior Courtroom was packed from end to end with other people that wanted to be there in varying degrees. Next to me sat a retired lawyer who found the whole process interesting, at least from that side of the chair. Not far from us sat Juror No. 204, our comic relief for the day.
For those of who haven’t served, jury selection consists of the jury pool being asked a whole slew of somewhat random questions that somehow pertain to the court case. If you feel that question pertains to you, you stand up, state your number when called upon and sit back down. That’s it.
So, the judge would ask, “Do you know John Doe, a witness to this alleged crime?” Let’s say I did, I’d stand up and state “122” when asked who I was. Then I would be asked if I knew Mr. Doe personally or professionally and if my knowing him would hurt the way I judge the case in some way. After that I sat down.
Given that I have only lived in the area for two years, I knew no one — for better or for worse.
However, the fun questions came later, such as “Are you of the group that believes marijuana should be legalized?” Of course, out of the 200 people in the courtroom, a few stood up. That included Juror 204, who also stood up for every question that could possibly get him from being selected for jury duty. He was the class clown of the jury pool.
So when he called out his number to the judge, everyone chuckled. The judge seemed to roll his eyes and kept moving to the next question. The minute the judge announced it, 199 heads turned straight to 204 to see exactly what he was going to do. We all kind of expected it, but still couldn’t avoid watching and waiting.
“Are you of the group that believes cocaine should be legalized?” the judge asked.
Up stood Juror 204, with a grin stretching from his face from one ear to the next.
“I half expected you to stand up for that,” the judge responded. Everyone else began to burst out in laughter. It was a welcome break from the doldrums of the long day.
Two juries were selected that day. To select a jury, the court clerks would “randomly” select us by putting our numbers in a roller and spinning it like a bingo ball.
Now, I’m not saying the state of Maine is not being random in their methods of choosing me for jury duty, then again to sit on the jury, mainly because I don’t want to go to jail. However, it does seem odd that I have been preliminarily selected to sit on two juries in two months.
The second I heard the clerk announce my number, my heart raced. Upon announcing my number, I was to stand up and be stared at by the lawyers to decide in those split seconds if I was worthy enough to make the final cut and serve.
Both times, I didn’t make the cut. I don’t know what the lawyers saw in me that they didn’t like, but it works for me. If I was chosen, I would serve because it is my civic duty and part of me has this patriotic sense of doing whatever my country asks of me.
That being said, if I could get out of another voir dire by not being chosen to serve, that’s fine by me.