So I got called for jury duty again. This time it was magistrate's court.
When I got there, I was just one of eight jurors. There was a Highway Patrolman, and the magistrate arrived a little bit later. No lawyer or defendant.
I thought that was interesting. The judge said that they would try the accused in absentia, but he showed up, by himself, a few minutes after the judge started court.
No lawyer, I thought. No family, I thought. This is going to be interesting.
The judge had spent a lot of time explaining the process, but I was a bit bored, having covered it for years and being a confirmed know-it-all. But when the guy showed up late and alone, I knew it was going to be interesting.
A lawyer who represents himself, the saying goes, has a fool for a client. The average Joe who decides to represent himself has an absolute freaking moron for a client.
It took a while for it to become clear what the charge was. Had to be vehicular, because it was a Highway Patrol case. Wasn't even going to be a first offense DUI, because the judge mentioned there was no alcohol involved.
When we got right down to it, the guy was charged with ... (drum roll please) failure to have his trailer chained to his vehicle.
The trooper, a nice corporal, testified. Played a tape of the "incident."
I wasn't on the jury, but I stayed anyway. Didn't have a note pad, so I'm getting details from memory. But in December, he was driving on Cherry Road, turned onto Celanese and pulled in to or near the Home Depot. The trooper had stopped the guy for failure to wear a seat belt, but the guy had said he had a note to excuse him from wearing the seat belt. The trooper said he accepted that, and did not charge the man for that crime, but noticed walking up to the vehicle that there was no chains. So he gave him a ticket for that.
You couldn't hear the man clearly on the tape, but you could tell he was mouthing off, from the get-go.
When he came in, he didn't really apologize for being late, and when the judge asked him if he "had anything before we proceed," a standard thing judges ask, he did not respond.
The man had been given a January appearance date on the ticket, and in January had requested a jury trial, which was set for Feb. 26.
According to this guy, who was popping off more than a few times during the brief trial, when he met with the judge, the judge told him he WAS going to throw him in jail for 30 days, so he requested the trial at that time.
"That's why we're here," he said.
The judge said when they met, he asked the man if he had, since he had gotten the ticket, gone ahead and gotten chains for his trailer. The judge said the man asserted his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination. Sounds like the guy thought the judge was trying to trip him up into admitting something.
The judge said he was wanting to work with the guy. The trooper was willing to work with the guy. If he had gotten chains for the trailer, they would have dismissed the case. But he refused to answer the question and the judge told him the potential sentences.
Magistrate's court can be a bit more informal than "big" court. In all the big courts I have been to, the charge is clearly stated, and almost always, the potential sentences are laid out as well. They weren't at this trial, so when the jury went in to deliberate, the trooper, being kind to what he thought was the average citizen with better things to do, told me I was free to go.
But I am curious by nature and was free to stay, and asked him some questions.
The potential sentences are a $115 fine (which gets about doubled with court costs) or up to 30 days in jail.
Before I talked to the judge after the case, I was thinking this guy could have paid $115 and put this behind him. Yet he requested a jury trial.
He didn't really defend himself, but he doesn't have to. When he was "questioning" the trooper, he made some statements, which the judge said was testimony. But he flatly called the trooper a liar, twice. He said the trooper testified that he had a tan, four-door Jeep.
Which were TWO big lies, to this guy. I couldn't make out the color of the vehicle on the tape. Might have been white, might have been tan. But the trooper might have said four-door but meant four-wheel drive. I don't really recall what he said there.
A lawyer, had the man hired one, would have honed in on such a "discrepancy" and quizzed the trooper extensively about the difference in what he testified from memory and what was on the tape. He would have shown the jury there was a discrepancy, if there was one, and planted the idea in the jury's mind that there was a lie or two being told But calling a career highway patrolman who had served on the governor's protection detail a liar just didn't work.
He just came across as surly.
The trooper spoke in a calm voice through his testimony, but had a bit more emotion in his voice in summing up. He saw what he saw. He's been doing this a long time, he said. The patrol works to save lives.
In summation, the accused called the trooper a liar again, said the jurors didn't want their daughters getting stopped by a cop like him.
"He's one of the bad ones," he said.
It was absolutely over the top.
Over a violation that could have been dismissed without even a fine, had he bought chains for his trailer. Over a violation he might have paid a $230 fine and court costs penalty.
The jury spent more time going to the bathroom before deliberating than it did deliberating. It wasn't 10 minutes.
While the jury was out, the man started asking what the judge would do about sentencing him. He seemed like he had chosen that time to try to be reasonable. He wanted 30 days to get his affairs in order. I wasn't sure the guy would necessarily get prison time. So it struck me as both defeatist, after having requested the trial to begin with, to start asking about an accommodation in sentencing.
Sentencing in big court is a bit more formal than this was handled Wednesday.
But at a certain point, after the jury had left and some paper work had been filled out, they slapped the cuffs on him.
So began another back and forth about how he viewed he had been bullied by the cop and the judge.
But what was also hysterical was the guy working security for the judge, while they were waiting, goes up to the now-guilty fellow, and says, "We went to high school together, didn't we?"
It took a second for the guy to recognize the constable, but they had. So they spent a few minutes visiting while awaiting the sentence.
I have always wanted to serve on a jury and I have never had the chance to be one of the 12 Angry Men (and women). Not in the box. The closest I came, dear old Walter Bedingfield, a late, great defense attorney in Barnwell County who was so good because he knew all the cops when they were in high school and he had their high school hijinks in his back pocket for leverage, struck me because I worked at the paper.
I got called in York County, but after the first day, zip. No juries needed.
I love the criminal justice system and I think it is morbidly slow, but generally it works.
But this experience in the end just struck me as a colossal waste of time. I blame only the guilty dude for it. He had a chip on his shoulder, instead of a seat belt. He never elaborated and no one asked what medical issue he has that gets him an excuse to not wear it. I myself wonder if the excuse is signed, "Epstein's mother." (Dated reference, I know.)
But what was patently obvious to a first-time observer like me was confirmed by the constable.
"He was just like that in high school," he said. "Always had problems with authority figures."
Mostly, that is police. He gets pulled over a lot — he says it's because of the seat belt issue. But he has always paid those tickets.
The constable said the guy was a decent wrestler in high school, but had trouble with the coaches.
"Authority figures."
I talked to the judge afterward, actually getting a couple of interesting tidbits of information that might make some decent stories. He was interested in me and my job as well. And he has a keen interest in demographics, with some population figures and changes over the past decade on tap in his mind. Seemed like a smart guy.
His time was wasted. The trooper said he and all his fellow troopers have about 10 percent of their job time allocated for court time.
But he spent the morning, from about 9 to 10 a.m., handling 100 to 150 tickets in that same courtroom.
He then spent about an hour at a trial that was totally unnecessary.
The trooper tried to say it wasn't. But it was a waste of his time.
They say a little knowledge can be a dangerous thing. This case proved it. This was a waste of the guilty guy's time, too. His little knowledge of his "rights," had it been balanced with just a little knowledge of his responsibilities, might have spared him 30 days.
Summary courts, as municipal and magistrates courts are known in South Carolina, rarely end up with someone going to jail, the judge said. Not on a traffic case that doesn't involve alcohol, for sure.
Maybe he'll learn something in there. I doubt it
The only person's time that wasn't wasted was mine, I think. The jurors who served got the hell out of there as soon as they could. But I stuck around.
It was great entertainment. A laugh riot. Like watching "Cops," but in the courtroom.
