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No One Asked Me But…

No One Asked Me But…

by Dr. Larry Moses
Published May 6, 2009

No one asked me but… No one asked me but…A couple of weeks ago I went to the post office and found a jury summons. This is the fourth time in my life I have been summoned to jury duty and each time I have found it an adventure.

Just getting to the court house from Moapa Valley is an event in itself. Everything is fine until you reach Cheyenne Avenue exit and at that point the I15 becomes a parking lot. My heart goes out to all of you who commute to Vegas each morning and have to navigate the I15. Once you get down town though it is like driving through a cemetery. The traffic disappears and no one other than those who are headed to court seems to be in the down town area.

I am not sure how the Fremont Street Experience is staying open. I ate lunch at what is probably the worst Italian restaurant in North America. How can an Italian restaurant mess up pasta? But I digress, this is about my experience at the court house and jury duty.

For those of you who will have this experience in the next few months, give up all hope of having anything make sense. Just get a good book and roll with the punches.

Parking is crazy. The only validated parking is on Fourth and Fremont, five city blocks from the court house. You will walk past a number of other downtown parking lots, one right across the street from the court house, but God forbid that the city might contract with that garage. It is probably reserved for the judges and lawyers, not us peasants who probably need the exercise anyway.

A block from the present day court house, you will pass a huge multistoried vacant building owned by the county, and it makes one wonder what happened that it is no longer in use.

Upon entering the courthouse, one must go into his best airport screening mode. Somewhere near ten police officers and marshals are at a metal detector station, and they have no sense of humor. One must nearly undress to get into the working area of the court. This will include removing your belt. Which, having not read the sign, I did not do. I was sent back through the device and had to be rescreened much to the disgust of the screeners.

At lunch time, I remembered my belt but forgot my wallet which contains a number of credit cards and a metal pass into all high school events. This also displeased the screeners. I will have to admit they refrained from water-boarding me, though I believe a couple of them would have relished the idea.

My name now probably appears on the terrorist no fly list. That is okay. I don’t fly anyway.

Having passed this test, I was allowed to ride the escalator to the third floor where the staging area for prospective jurors is located. I will have to admit, I was a little early and not getting to ride escalators very often, I rode it back down and then up again.

By 8:00 am about three hundred people had gathered. If this was a cross section of the people of Clark County, I must say we are a strange looking bunch, myself include. The people around me seemed friendly enough. In fact, the young couple in front of me either struck up a very rapid friendship or knew each other before. They were certainly much friendlier with each other than the rest of us. Jealousy, makes old people say mean things, but someone should have been sitting between those two. But I guess one must pass the time away as best one can. I did, however, enjoy the book I brought.

Soon a nice young lady appeared from somewhere and explained to us she was sorry to have inconvenienced us, but we should be prepared to remain until 5:00 pm. She then showed a movie where a couple of local newscasters, a husband and wife team from Channel 3, explained how it was our civic duty to fill the roll of jurors and what we could expect in court.

We sat until 11:00 am when she called a large number of us to the front of the room and lined us up by our court appointed number. The last time I was lined up by a pre-assigned number, I ended up on a ship headed for Vietnam. However, this time I was sent to lunch with an admonition to be back by 12:30…not 12:31.

I left the court house and discovered there were a number of restaurants close by and soon discovered I picked the wrong one. If you are going in and want to know which one to avoid, contact me and I will be glad to steer you away.

When I returned to the courthouse at 12:10 (no chance was I going to miss that deadline) I passed through the metal detector forgetting to remove my wallet. I have to quit carrying my metal lifetime NIAA pass. The guards were not happy. I really believe the big one would have liked to have tazered me but he resisted.

It was nearly 2:00 pm before once again we were lined up by number and set out for the court room. The elevators were all loaded and we could not get on them to go to the sixteenth floor. Many volunteered to walk the thirteen flights of stairs. But the marshal in charge of us realized of the sixty five only about two would survive the climb. So we took the escalator to the first floor and rode the freight elevator to the sixteenth floor. You would think that as often as they must do this, it would be better organized.

After waiting in the hall for over a half an hour, we were finally allowed to enter the courtroom. The wheels of justice truly turn slowly.

After we were seated, the judge began questioning us. His questions were fairly general – just some personal background as to occupation, how long we had lived in Clark County, etc.

He then turned us over to the District Attorney. She was a little more specific as to how we felt about the legal process. She asked questions that required a little more than a yes or no reply.

When it was the defense attorney’s turn, he was more in to open-ended questions. The judge, district attorney and defense attorney all seemed really interested in the prospective juror’s ability to render a fair and impartial verdict. All three placed a great deal of emphasis on the theory that the defendant was innocent until proven guilty and returned to that line of questioning quite often. It did give me thought for a whole column on that subject, but that is for another day.

The judge and I did get into a conversation about jury nullification. He wondered if I would follow his instructions as to the law. My reply was as long as it did not conflict with my moral or religious convictions. He rather empathically explained morality has no place in Nevada Courts. Fortunately, I never had to find out how committed I was to my convictions.

Part two to my adventures in Court Land will be in my column for next week. Find out if I am selected for jury duty. That is, if you really care.

Thought of the week… “The jury has the right to judge both the law as well as the fact in controversy.”
-John Jay
First Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.

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