Jury Duty in Miami

As a lawyer since 1989, I’ve seen many juries come and go, especially at the beginning of my general practice before I specialized. I’m not too fond of juries. While I understand that having a “jury of your peers” is a bedrock of our judicial system, I still think that too many errors have been committed by people in a hurry to get out of that deliberation room and away from the others they detest. I cannot imagine being on a jury now, given our extreme political divide.

Early in my career as a lawyer, I was selected several times to be in the jury pool in South Carolina. Once both trial attorneys determined I was in their professional cohort, I was quickly bounced as unacceptable to hear their case. Nothing is like the freedom you experience when the bailiff says you are “free to go.” After the first two or three years, I stopped receiving jury duty notices. I never asked for an exemption. The notices simply stopped coming.

So, imagine my surprise when I received a notice from the Miami-Dade Clerk of Court for jury duty right before I left the country last spring. The world has changed since I received that letter in the mail. At least in Miami, it is a postcard with your notice, parking tag, and juror card. And a blessed online link to change the date for me to appear. You get one delay date, and I scheduled mine after I was to return from Türkiye.

Of course, I picked a date when I thought I would be home. Not paying close attention, I inadvertently scheduled myself for the following morning after I returned. Jet-lagged, extremely tired, and irritated, I could barely function. Tough. I’d used my only delay date.

I slammed two coffees down and headed downtown for my 8:00 a.m. required appearance time. As usual (in my experience), the clerk was pleasant, and things went smoothly. Many folks denigrate civil servants, but having worked with them for over thirty years, unless you are exceptionally rude or demanding (as many new attorneys are before they get their butts handed to them), the clerks in the courthouse are very polite and helpful. (Yes, I know the post office might be different; don’t @ me.)

In downtown Miami, you enter the courthouse and are directed by officers to a coordinator. Some folks have already been selected for a trial waiting room and are told which courtroom. The rest of us are directed to the jury pool room that holds 250. The chairs are unexpectedly comfortable. There are reasonable bathrooms and snacks. You can take a break to go to a restaurant for food, take a walk, or have a smoke break as long as you tell the clerk you’ll be back in fifteen minutes. Honestly, I’m not used to this level of civility. After fifteen minutes, a request was made for those who spoke no English to move to a different room.

Wait, what? Yep. They are selected for jury duty, but they don’t speak English.

It is a fact of life in Miami. With the population at 74% Hispanic, English is not necessarily the primary language. There were twenty-five people in the Spanish-speaking group. They moved to another room, and we continued to wait. I watched as the stragglers began filing in, fifteen minutes, thirty minutes, and even an hour late, until the room filled. I wondered how many of them spoke no English.

Our clerk informed us that forty judges were in the building, but only six had confirmed that scheduled trials were going forward. It seemed a low number until I realized we were the week before Thanksgiving, and no judge wanted to sequester a jury over a holiday weekend. From my experience, the legal business is slow in many places, beginning in mid-November and continuing until February.

Of course, I had no time for a break or a walk in the park. I was called first. We were taken up the elevator to another floor. This was more familiar: a small, cramped room that was one hundred years old, with poor ventilation and insufficient seating for the prospective jurors. We lounged on tables and bookcases, some people standing and other lucky ones with those uncomfortable, hard wooden chairs. With the musty ancient carpet smell, I felt right at home. The bailiff gave his instructions in English and Spanish, just like at the airport.

We were given numbers to clip on and asked to line up in the hallway in numerical order. After ten minutes of disorganized chaos, we filed into the courtroom. Again, it was a familiar room decorated in dark oak or walnut, with low ceilings and a large support column blocking the judge's view of half the prospective jurors. Pointing out the window to a new courthouse being built, we were informed that it was the last year for the old building. Most definitely a good thing.

The judge introduced the plaintiff and defendant, then the attorneys for each. The case was summarized along with how the judge planned to proceed. It was a slip-and-fall case, the type I hated most when I worked as a paralegal before law school. Then, to my surprise, the attorneys told us that this simple case would take four days.

FOUR DAYS?

I would be trapped here, jet-lagged, for the next four days. And why? I understood after the judge read the list of witnesses. The plaintiff alone had four expert witnesses. I was appalled, as she only needed one, and I also could not imagine the expense incurred. The plaintiff’s attorneys would take that expense (and it’s significant) out of her settlement if she won, or if they lost, possibly make her pay it. Think about it. Each of these four doctors had to be paid hourly up front for them to review her medical records and prepare for a deposition, then more time when deposed before trial, hours to be prepared for trial, and then again for their time when providing their testimony at trial.

Will she have to pay for all this if she loses? It depends on the contract terms between her and her attorneys. Would a small-time plaintiff’s lawyer have enough funds to pay for four doctors? This is just one case. Depending on the firm's size, they could have dozens to hundreds of cases in process. In my experience, the plaintiff’s attorney usually covers the costs and expenses of their law firm but not those of experts. I was curious if this woman had been told what she was in for before she signed the contract, but these things are private between attorney and client.

The list of witnesses was several pages long, and the jurors seemed bored by it all. They did not have their internal alarms triggered like me, which raised a thousand questions. Then, the judge asked the jury pool questions. I’m used to the attorneys asking the questions once the judge gets the general ones out of the way, but not here. The judge is in control.

I waited another hour until the judge finally hit my jackpot question: “Have any of you been involved in a lawsuit of any type?” Wow, what a generic question. Of course, I have. I raised my hand. This was my ticket out.

“I’ve been a lawyer for over thirty years, judge,” I said. I saw both attorneys scribble on their pads. They would have known I was a lawyer if they had done their jobs. Google is easy.

“But were you involved personally in any cases?” he asked. That was another silly question. Lawyers who have practiced as long as I have most definitely have been involved with partner disputes, bogus ethics complaints, and other matters where someone says you’ve done something wrong. It’s just part of the business, unfortunately.

He answered for me. “Of course you have. That’s a given. I’ll move on, then.”

He continued to question the other jurors. I felt pretty confident that I was already on the strike list. Given my irritability and jet lag, they had double the reasons to get rid of me. The questions ranged from “Have you ever experienced a fall in a grocery store?” or “Do you know any of these people at the two counsel tables?” to detailed discussions of how jurors felt about various things and whether or not they could be impartial.

After the second hour of questions, one of the attorneys asked for a sidebar. This is an off-the-record discussion between the judge and the attorneys that the jurors cannot hear. After the third sidebar, the exasperated judge waived the attorneys back to their seats.

“Ladies and gentlemen, we are at the point where I have questioned enough of you to know that we cannot seat a jury from this group. When I called the clerk to replenish this pool and let many of you return to wait downstairs for another trial, I learned that because no other trials are going forward, the clerk has dismissed the entire pool. There is no one to replace you.”

He seemed perplexed at why she would do this. (But judge, if you don’t communicate a possible problem along the way to your clerk, she won’t keep them there all day.) Then came the surprise.

“I am declaring a mistrial for this matter, and you all are dismissed. We have so many objections from counsel we cannot seat a jury from the thirty-five of you. We appreciate your service. You do not need to return tomorrow or the rest of the week."

I looked at the plaintiff and realized she was lost. Her attorney had placed her in the back corner, away from the counsel table. (Why? She is the plaintiff, for God’s sake. She should be sitting at the table.) No one had communicated to her what was happening. And why did he declare a mistrial? Why not a continuance? Somewhere in the previous few hours, I had daydreamed and missed something.

But hey, I was free.

The plaintiff's confused face and the defense counsel's smug countenance reminded me exactly why I don’t like jury trials. I have four more years of this before I can be exempt for age. This is the only time I look forward to getting older.