Quickly, then on to the interesting stuff: 16 jurors were chosen out of 37 who passed through the courtroom for further questioning today. Pay close attention now:

It seems like the court will take the next day or two to pick another 29 potential jurors, who will make a smaller pool of 45 prospects. Once that smaller pool is in place, 16 jurors — 12 main and 4 alternates — will be chosen, and they’ll be the impaneled jury who will hear the case against Fumo.

From the eight selections I was in the courtroom for, seven were middle-aged, five were male, and almost all were white. Here’s a quick table.

Now, an observation or two:

There’s an interesting trend — which I’m sure happens in almost every case — regarding jurors whose bosses refuse to pay (but not, of course, fire) them while they sit on a case.

There was one prospective juror today, who in the end wasn’t taken, who would have had what seemed to be a genuine hardship if he was chosen. He drives people with disabilities to their houses as a job, and simply wouldn’t get paid if he were ultimately chosen. regardless, he said he would still serve on the jury, even though it would make him poor for the next three months. “[Jury duty] is part of the deal, and I know that,” he said.

The $40-a day stipend would barely pay for gas to the courthouse (he lives deep in Chester County) and food, he said, and he wasn’t eligible for a hotel voucher because he lives 40 miles from the courthouse, instead of the required 50. He was eventually dismissed.

The risk every lawyer runs with possibly empaneling someone made temporarily poor by jury duty is a disgruntlement toward the court, some of the lawyers on both sides said. It makes sense. When you can barely eat because you’re suddenly commuting to Philadelphia every day, you’re bound to take it out on someone. Maybe that’ll be the prosecutors or defendant.

The court did decide to send a middle-aged white male to the second round, even though his job only agreed to pay him for the first 60 days of duty (the trail may go on for a month longer than that.) Should he be picked, will that affect his thinking come, say, deliberation time?

Then again, if you dismissed almost everyone in this kind of predicament, wouldn’t a jury be missing a particular type of worker, and very likely, a particular economic class? That’s not fair, either.

The answer isn’t paying jurors more. God knows the government can’t afford that. I’m wondering what kind of reaction a bill that required employers to pay a worker during jury duty might get from small business owners, etc? Likely not a good one. But surely, most of the business owners could afford it.

Just a thought.

(And remember, judges do all they can to pressure a person to re-arrange their schedule to fit on a jury. Judge Yohn pretty much mapped out a safe 1.2-mile walking route to school for the three high-school aged children of one woman who made it to the second round. The woman was concerned about being chosen because she drives her children to school everyday, because most of the roads don’t have sidewalks. “What about main street?” Yohn asked, and the woman conceded.)

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 9th, 2008 at 6:35 pm and is filed under Views from Court. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.