Conquering Vertigo

Jury Duty, part two

Boom BOOM,
da da da daa daaa...

The old-school Law and Order Theme, in case my musical phonetics need translation.

Despite the whole:
"we're going to call you sometime this week, so don't make any firm plans"
way SF asks you to be available to come for possible juror selection on any unknown day of a specific week, I approve of the way they handle jurors once you're there. I'm proud to be a citizen of this city-state. I don't even mind paying state taxes, but that's another blog.

So we're sitting in a courtroom, hearing the details for the case: two black men suing a well-known white bread corporation and one of its managers (a man of Jewish antecedents) for racial discrimination and harrassment. The lead attorney for the plaintiffs is a well-known SF lawyer, a woman from a prominent Italian family, the daughter of a former Mayor. The attorneys sitting at the defense table are: one white woman, one black woman, one black man.

The majority of juror surnames are Asian, and it looks as if the jury is going to be a marvelous slice of San Francisco: every possible combination of demographic is percolating into the jury box, with a pretty even distribution from the population.

I'm going into the racial and ethnic demographics of the people in the case because it seems like an episode from a televised courtroom drama to me. Two people from Ethnic Group A accuse Ethnic Groups B-C of harrassment and discrimination. B-C hire A lawyers to defend them, and the A plaintiffs hire a well-known D attorney to prosecute the case. Meanwhile, the jury is A-F, with male, female, transgendered, whatever.

Here's my personal opinion: I think the B-C defendants deliberately choose A lawyers to offset the A plaintiffs charging racial discrimination. But I don't think the A defendants distinctly choose an Italian female attorney -- I think they went for the sharpest counsel they could find. And knowing a little about Ms. D, I think she saw a meaty case.

Interesting stuff, folks. Stay tuned...

posted by Woman In Love @ 11:50 AM