Opening statements - first witness

Disclaimer: This case has been completed and the jury released from the judge's admonition not to discuss the case.  

Overnight the courtroom had been rearranged.  The 6 chairs for the alternate  jurors had been removed and two set up on a platform by the side of the jury box.  A 4 foot ramp had been placed next to the jury box so that though I still wouldn't be in the jury box, I could be raised up a step and feel more like part of the jury.

To begin the trial, the Judge read us a Statement of Information.  This is pretty much what it says it is, a statement about the time, date, and overall circumstances of the case before us.  We learned that the case revolved around an alleged automobile chase of the defendant by a CHP officer.  Because of the number of traffic infractions, the People (prosecution) were asking for a felony conviction of "willful and wanton disregard for the safety of people and property".  There was also a lesser, misdemeanor charge of evading a police officer which we could find the defendant guilty if the prosecution hadn't proven the greater charge.

Next the prosecution again summarized the facts of the case and an outline of how she expectedto present it.  Her statement is not to be considered evidence and my in fact be untrue.  The defense then has the same privilege.  I found it difficult not to hear the statements as truth although somehow it was easier to discount the defense than the prosecution.

Then the fun began.  I was very impressed with the people's case.  The Assistant DA presented the evidence logically, in order, and comprehensively.  At that point there was no doubt in my mind.  She had laid out what evidence was needed to establish the facts which would meet the definition of the felony reckless driving charge.  Then by interviewing the CHP officer who had made the arrest, she established all the necessary facts.

As the defense began, I tried not to hold it against him that he appeared less prepared, poorly organized, and seemingly random.  It wasn't really a surprise since he had warned us in voir dire that his presentation might not be as organized as the prosecution.  He even warned us that his cross examination of witnesses could be pretty harsh.  What he didn't warn us was that they might be nonsense or irrelevant.  As the case progressed, I began to wonder if the defense attorney was really inept or simply wanted to give us that impression.  Sort of "dumb like a fox".  Later I was to find out that I wasn't the only one with such questions.  The defense attorney also conceded that the defendant was guilty of the misdemeanor charge.  It felt like he had tried to plea bargain and was still trying after the prosecutor had refused to go along.

The defense attorney attempted to raise questions in our minds about the officer's ability to judge the speed or another vehicle or even tell the truth on a report.  For me it had the opposite effect because most of the criticisms, if met,  would have made the case even stronger.  But it was clearly a case of "he said - she said"  The cross examination of the people's main witness, the arresting CHP officer, took longer than his original interrogation but finally it was over.  I felt great sympathy for the harrassed officer.

The people called one additional witness, the defendant's brother who was in the pickup truck as they were being chased by the cop.  This brother is considered a hostile witness.  The  prosecutor established that even a hostile witness would present damaging testimony for the defendant.  She also got him to explain how many felony and just how much trouble the defendant was in.  The she rested her case.  The defense, claiming no case had been made, did not present  a case.  It was late in the day so the judge called a recess.

Selecting a jury

Disclaimer: This case has been completed and the jury released from the judge's admonition not to discuss the case.  

My previous post described part of the process called "voir dire" where the attorneys for each side as well as the judge get a chance to individually question each juror for the purpose of determining their fitness to sit on the jury for this trial.

As we had registered for our jury duty we had filled in a short questionnaire which asked for example about employment, education, and prior jury experience.  This questionnaire helped the attorneys and the judge focus their questions.  Knowing a peace officer or belonging to the ACLU doesn't disqualify you but it does flag you for additional questions about whether you might be prejudiced for or against the defendant.  The judge started out asking specific jurors specific questions but quickly moving to more general questions of the whole jury.  For example, "Does anyone know an attorney or have been involved with legal issues?"The prosecutor likewise asked questions more generally. The defense attorney was specific all the way which had the effect of not asking some jurors anything.  The most frequent question centered around the "innocent until proven guilty" concept.  The first person the judge dismissed and a couple dismissed by the defense had trouble with that concept.

The prosecutor and defense lawyers traded turns inviting people off the jury until all six alternates had replaced six original jurors.  Then six more alternates were selected, sworn in, and subjected to voir dire.  Two additional jury panels had to be called before the attorneys stopped challenging the jurors.  I was still in my original chair as Juror #12.

Out of the pool - Voir dire

Unlike a couple of jury summons' I have served where it seemed like I wasn't even going to be called on a panel for questioning, I was called on the first panel called the morning I registered.  I can't give a lot of detail at this point as the trial is still underway and the judge was quite specific about things we could and couldn't talk about.  Even numbers might tell more than we should.

My panel, the one called to Department 12 that morning, was called out of the pool in alphabetic order.  But by the time we reached the Department 12 courtroom, the list had been once again randomized so that it wasn't just the A's and B's that got to sit in the jury box.

I was interested in whether my handicap would make a difference in the courtroom.  It did.  Although my selection number was such that I was part of the jury, I had to sit in my power chair some distance from the jury, closer to the attorneys than to the jury box.  That made me a sort of "invisible man" in the court.  Both attorneys tended to focus just on the jury box.  Even the presence there of an obviously empty chair did not seem to remind them I was there.  During the jury challenges when each side can dismiss jurors for cause or otherwise.  I noticed one of the attorney's clients pointing out that the attorney had not asked me a single question.The attorney jumped  up and asked the judge if he could reopen the questioning because he had missed me.  He then apologized to me and expressed hope that I wasn't offended.  Hoping I wouldn't get in trouble, I replied in my best stage voice, "Yes.  As a matter of fact I feel very offended -- NOT"  There were chuckles all around the room so I guess I'm not in troublel

Recession - not for Seniors

Every once in while Carolyn hands me something she thinks would go well on this blog.  Mind you, she isn't interested in writing it up for the blog, just getting it on.  This time the article she gave me was about income changes and statistics.

First, income changes.  According to the article in USA Today showing that income between 2007 and now has dropped for all age groups except seniors.  While other age groups have dropped between 4.0 and 6.5%, senior incomes have increased 7.1 %.  But before we get too excited remember there are three types of lies -- lies, damned lies, and statistics.

In a second column we find that after this tremendous growth for seniors their average household income is $31,354.  Boomers, on the other hand suffered a loss 4.0% leaving them an average household income at $56,973, nearly twice as much as the seniors.  One does indeed need to read statistical reports and charts carefully.

We need more court Jesters

I haven't always been able to laugh at myself or find humor in what critics have had to say about my beliefs and ideas.  But the older I get the more I appreciate humor as an important measure of a movement's maturity.  A person or organization who can't take the heat of humor is insecure.  I believe he or they secretly or no so secretly are worried that once one or two people start laughing, more will join, then more and more until the whole world is laughing.  And rather than fight humor with humor or with boring facts, such insecure people and organizations fight the messenger.  Even worse, they don't listen to the message with or without humor.

One sees this a lot at demonstrations where many of the signs are spot on ... and funny.  But the target finds that offensive and reacts by attacking the sign holder.

The most recent example was comedian Stephen Colbert's testimony  before congress in defense  of migrant farm workers and in criticism of our contry's treatment of such workers.  Because he used humor in his testimony he (and the congresional committee chair) have been criticized as "mocking congress" and "wasting taxpayers' time".  Funny, but when buffoons masquarading as congressmen or -women give testimony they're just doing their job.  Why didn't a single Republican on the committee ask Mr. Colbert what was so funny about migrant labor?  Or if he really thought that a day in the fields made him as much an expert as sitting in the committee room for days on end did for them?

The first day - into the pool

One of the reasons I was interested in being a juror this year is that 4 or 5 years ago I had also received a summons but was in one of the groups whose service wasn't needed.  I never even made it down to the courthouse or the jury parking lot.  

Of course I never really enjoy driving downtown so I was pleased to see that the prime parking lot is on the northwest corner of the city.  It's really convenient to Carmichael.  The drawback is that the lot usually fills up by 8:00 each morning.  Thus if you're in a court which starts at 9:00 you have a choice of getting there an hour early or traveling to one of the alternate sites.

I worried about being on time my first day.  I needn't have.  Although they started registering potential jurors 30 minutes before we needed to be there, there was still a line 45 minutes later.  Registering consisted of having your summons or your badge scanned so they would know that somewhere in the process you had actually been on site.  Believe it or not, only a hour after I registered there were 3 people missing.  

When you checked in you were also asked to complete a one-page, 4 copy questionnaire with basic questions about your connection to law, legal systems, police, crime, and your career choices.  I'll explain later how these answers were  used to select a jury.

I would guess there were probably about 100 of us potential jurors concentrated in the two jury assembly rooms but also scattered through various hallways and waiting rooms on the second floor.  We were informed that we now constituted the "jury pool" and may be in and out of that pool several times in the day.  However, if we were in the pool at the end of the day, our jury service would be over for another 18 months.  

We then watched a 9 minute film about the importance of juries in our system of democracy.  In case you'd like to watch the clip without getting called to jury duty here is the link.  Judge Van Camp (star of the film) even favored us with a personal visit and further explanation of how important jurors are.

Waiting for the assignment

What did we ever do without computers?  The chart above is a good example of using computers to randomly assign jurors to various days so that the time for a potential juror to sit around with nothing to do is minimized while the courts all have sufficient jurors for their cases.   You may want to click on the chart to get it big enough to see.

I was assigned group #318 which the chart told me would report Tuesday morning.  Sometimes groups are told to check Monday evening, then Tuesday noon, then Tuesday evening, etc.  This could go on all week but in normal runs it doesn't happen that way.  Usually after two changes in check-in times, they're  usually given a free pass like groups #324 & #325.   

Summoned for Jury Duty

I got this in the mail the other day.  I think it would be safe to say that almost everyone dreads getting one of these in their mailbox so you might be a little surprised that I was delighted, well maybe not delighted but at least happily looking forward to the experience.

You see, this is the first time when serving on a jury would not be a royal pain - virtually all my service is voluntary and can be easily covered by someone else.  And conversely, this may be the last time when my health will allow me to serve on a jury without really special accommodations such as a bed.  

The unknown, of course, is that nowadays when you get your summons (at least in Sacramento) you are told that you will serve for one day or one trial but you don't know right away which day  you start and if you'll be on a trial or not.

The Pantry Bug strikes again

The house had gotten unexpectedly quiet.  Edward had brought his boys over to let Tiffany have some rest and respite from their noise.  The two older boys were watching a movie which explained their quietness.   But what about little Camdan.  He was nowhere to be seen.

.

.

.

.

Then we heard a rustling in the pantry.  Sure enough, a little 2 foot high Pantry Bug was carefully opening the socks, boxes, and tins where candy was stored and filling his little fist and cheeks as full as he could.  What a hoot!

Pear season

What's that saying?  "You can take the girl out of the country but you can't take the country out of the girl!"  I suspect that Carolyn is an example of some of that. You see, she heard about some fresh pears that someone was selling and decided she just had to have some old fashioned, honest-to-goodness, bottled pears for our pantry.

This box was completely full of pears.  As you can see, even the pears at the bottom are in great shape.  There were almost no defects or bruises.

Edward and his boys were over this morning to give Tiffany a chance to rest and hopefully knock out the cold that is trying to lay her up.  We stuck the boys in the back yard and pressed Edward into service.

We couldn't find our recipe for the lye bath we've always used to peel the pears with.  Finally after Carolyn had made half a dozen calls to friends and relatives  (including our family's graduate chemist) who might have some secrets, I found some recipes on the Internet.   In the above picture Edward is bathing the pears in the hot lye solution then moving them to the sink for a cold water rinse and slipping off the peel by hand.

Here Carolyn is taking the freshly peeled pears, cutting them in half, and coring them.  Then, either she or Edward would slide the pear halves into the bottle, fill the bottle with light syrup, then steam bath the bottles in groups of 7 for half an hour.  

Carolyn really likes dried fruit so she diverted the final four quarts worth of pears.  Instead of the bottles, these pears were soaked in a acid preservitive solution then spread onto the trays of our dehydrator.  

Out of that bushel box we got 14 quarts of bottled pears and 4 quarts equivalent dehydrated pears.  

Hard to Swallow

Among the things that my "Parkinson's Disease for Dummies" book says I should tell my doctor is any change in my ability to swallow.  Well, there have been a couple of times when I've had difficulty getting my large multi-vitamin pill down and one or two times when turning my head just right makes me feel like someone has their hands around my neck and could choke me.  So I told my doctor and he ordered a "swallowing evaluation".  He said that if nothing else it would at least provide a baseline.

So today I met with a licensed speech pathologist at Kaiser for my evaluation.  I wasn't impressed although the woman was as nice and professional as you could ask for. I guess I just expected more.  She observed tongue motion and movement in my throat when I sipped and swallowed water then the same thing with vanilla pudding.  She suggested three exercises for my neck and throat and then set up a follow-up appointment for 2 weeks from today.

That was it.  We now have a baseline.  And apparently I don't have a swallowing problem.  Yet.

6,000 mile checkup

Saw my neurologist this week for my 6,000 mile/6 month checkup.  This is the man who will oversee and monitor my progress down the path of Parkinson's disease, presumably until I die or lose Kaiser coverage, whichever occurs first.  He's a good doctor to have - knowledgeable, sympathetic, and most of all young.  He should be able to survive me.

After discussing a long list of things that "Parkinson's Disease for Dummies" says I should discuss with my doctor, he asks me to walk 15 or 20 feet down the hallway.  Miraculously, I walk almost perfectly.  I said almost. The good doctor announces that I am at virtually the same clinical stage that I was at 6 months ago but that my brain and nerve cells are undoubtedly still progressing down the path of self-destruction.  I shouldn't get my hopes up.

He is a good doctor.  He is kind.  It is kind to quash unrealistic hopes, isn't it?

Squeeze Inn

Once upon a time a restaurant in Sacramento was featured on "Diners, Drive-Ins and Dives".  I haven't see the review but according to those who have, it's worth a sizable wait to try out.  It was over a year ago when we tried to eat at the Squeeze Inn at its old location.  The wait was over 45 minutes then and we just couldn't spare the time.  When their old location was deemed inaccessible by licensing because it was always so crowded you couldn't get a wheelchair down an aisle, they closed up shop and we thought that was the end.  Turns out they were just regrouping and making plans to open a restaurant in South Sacramento, not far from the Friends of the Library Book Den (for gently used books).

Saturday we were at the Book Den for the Warehouse Sale.  Afterwards we wanted to lunch somewhere new when we drove past Squeeze Inn.  There were only a dozen people in line (at least only that many visible from the road).  

We pulled into the parking lot and got in line.  Within 15 minutes we were inside.  The place was packed... 

We barely had time to have someone take our picture...

and study the menu which was larger than we expected...

before one of the enthusiastic wait staff took our order.

We watched the kitchen crew working their way through the orders until our "Squeezeburgers" arrived in front of us.

It was a delicious hamburger.  One of its "gimmicks" is an 8 x 8 x 1/8 sheet of cheese which is melted/fried  over the hamburger.  It kind of looks like a slice of cheese made up of shredded cheese.

All in all a delicious experience.  I recommend it highly.

Digital photography

I'm sure no one will be surprised that digital photography has changed the way we take and keep pictures.  Our numbers certainly don't represent a "typical" family or average or anything other than our family.  And there are still pictures from whole sections of our lives which aren't digitized, inventoried, or backed up in any way.  So those numbers aren't included here.  But let's see what we do have:

Until 1963 there is a smattering of prints we've gotten mostly from our mothers but occasionally from other relatives.  These have been lovingly collected and for the most part carefully stored in scrapbooks.  By sharing many of the pictures with our kids, we've created a sort of backup system as well.  As I indicated before, I have no numbers from this period.

From 1963 to approximately 1980 we took slides, lots of slides with an increasing number of prints until we were almost exclusively getting prints from 1980 on.  Again, I don't have a number of prints but we have approximately 2,700 slides during this period, 540 from my mission alone.  Unless some are hiding, we have completed the scanning phase of digitizing all our slides.  They occupy 3.5 GB of storage.

From 1980 to 1996 we took almost exclusively prints.  Carolyn has scrap-booked at least 80% of the prints so they are available for family to look at. And maybe I'll get around to scanning them.

From 1996 on we used digital cameras when we could borrow one for special occasions like our trip to Japan in 2000.  And as soon as Carolyn and I got our own digital cameras we have exclusively taken digital pictures.  During this time we have taken and stored some 19,600 photos which reside in 21.0 GB of storage!

Of course we have noted a couple of major changes due to digital photos:
1.  We take dozens of pictures where before we might take 2 or 3.  After all, bits are almost free and they can be easily recycled.
2.  We never delete a picture unless it is so dark or out of focus that we can't recognize it a week later.

But the one thing that scares me is
3.  We can duplicate thousands of pictures in a fraction of a second and delete them just as fast.

Just before I wrote this blog entry I was cleaning up some of our files and inadvertently deleted 882 pictures.  Something "looked funny" so I stopped immediately and reviewed the recycle bin contents and was able to retrieve all the files.  All I have to say is BACKUP, BACKUP, BACKUP.

Forty-three years

Forty-three.  Such a funny number.  It's not a nice round number like 50 or 40 or even 25.  Nobody talks about celebrating the 43rd anniversary of this or the 43rd annual that.  In fact, until today if anyone mentioned the number 43 to me the only connection I would probably have made is to Bush 43 as in Bush, our 43rd president.

But today 43 means so much more.  Forty-three years ago I was accepted by a young, beautiful woman to be her lawfully wedded husband.  And I, in turn, accepted her to be my lawfully wedded wife.  And that, as Robert Frost would have said, has made all the difference in the world.

Carolyn suggested this morning that we try for another 43 and I couldn't help chuckling.  Ten years ago 43 might have seemed possible.  Unlikely, but possible.  Even with high blood pressure and 40 extra pounds, I could still enjoy a good hike or a good swim.  I preferred watching my children and their spouses pack the trailers and trucks bringing us to Sacramento but I could share a good portion of the work.  Now, I have to wonder what Carolyn would want from me for another 43 years.

The last 10 years have taken more out of us than we had ever expected.  But they've also given us wonderful in-laws and grandchildren that we've had some time to enjoy.  Another 10 years would certainly be welcomed, maybe even 20 more.  But I can't imagine 43.

And as much as we love our friends in Long Beach (and those in Utah from Long Beach) we've been blessed with many new friends in Sacramento.  We'd like a few more years to add to those.

So I don't plan to stop at 43 and I don't plan to spend another 43.  I guess we'll keep on doing what people have always done, negotiate life one day at a time hoping to have many more but knowing that there is indeed a limit.

Faux News

As anyone who has ever watched Jon Stewart's "The Daily Show" knows, Jon takes great pride in skewering the "talent" on Fox News and he usually does it so well.  That's why I have to express my great surprise at a recent turn of events on the Daily Show.  First of all, I had to agree that it would take a real ignoramus in this day and age NOT to know what an ignoramus is.  So when one of the female newscasters on Fox admitted sheh didn't now and had thus "Googled" the term "Ignoramus."  But the kicker was that she then got it wrong, reading off the answer: "an ignorant attorney".

Well, the joke's on us.  Google's sixth entry is, in fact:

ignoramus - Definition of ignoramus at YourDictionary.com

ig·no·ra·mus noun pl. ignoramuses -·muses. an ignorant and stupid person. Origin: < the name of a lawyer in Geo. Ruggle's play Ignoramus (1615); L, lit., ...
www.yourdictionary.com/ignoramus - Cached - Similar

The poor girl was just a little confused about the  "meaning" of a word, compared to it's origin.

I had assumed it had Latin roots but I'll admit I didn't know the roots are from a play whose character just happened to have such a eponymous name.

Sick Bed

What you are seeing in this picture above is one of the rare shots of me suffering in my sick bed.  I have been extremely fortunate to have lead a mostly healthy life free from the suffering that affects many people. I therefore feel it even worse when it does strike me.  Or at least I act more like a baby.  At this point I had been sick and bedridden approximately 36 hours.

This shot was staged.  I'm supposed to be emptying my stomach in that trash can but in reality I have already done that several times.  There's nothing left to throw up.  Twelve hours after this  picture was taken I think I'm beginning to feel like eating something.  I'm also beginning to think I may live through this experience.

A Thief in the Night

A couple of years ago our house was burgled and the burglar made off with ordinary things that amounted to little more than our insurance deductible.  Now Carolyn and I are wondering if we've been hit by a thief again or whether we're slowly losing our memory and mislaying one or two items at a time so we don't notice. The first thing we noticed was our cordless drill in it's carrying case. We don't recall lending it but it's gone.  Today we discovered that our combination external car battery and tire pump appears to be gone.  I wanted to top off the tires on the van but couldn't do it with our electric pump.  We certainly don't want to accuse friends, neighbors, or family since we have no evidence to back such an accusation.

'The ironic thing is that both usits require periodic recharging and we still have the charging units or cords.  So whoever "borrowed" them will be left with a plastic and metal piece  of art.

Camdan's cookies??

This was probably more of an experiment  on my part than anything else.  When Perry's family left him at our house while they went to the Sacramento Zoo, he and I whipped up a batch of banana oatmeal chocolate-chip cookies. They disappeared pretty fast as Carolyn sent the majority of them to Long Beach.  So when Ed and Tiffany asked us to watch over the boys during Tiffany's school open house, I decided to ask Camdan if he wanted to make cookies with me.  His response was "Cookies?"

He was well behaved but didn't really know what he was doing.  About half-way through he dropped the measuring cup into the mixing bowl while the beaters were goingl  That scare us all as flour and oatmeal scattered everywhere and my look must have scared the little boy.  He quickly reached his arms toward me and cried, "Hold you?  Hold you?" his version of "Will you hold me?"

Although a piece of the mixer blade broke off, nothing else appeared damaged.  Camdan quickly lost interest after that.  Carolyn and I finished baking the cookies.

Still juicing tomatoes

There are some things we do that we can't imagine NOT doing them.  Juicing tomatoes is one of those things.  It doesn't even matter if we haven't used up our store of home canned juice.

This year, having taught all our daughters and sons how to use a canner to make delicious, sweet, and fresher tomato juice, Carolyn turned her attention to those in our ward who have been co-workers in the ward garden and now have more tomatoes than they know what to do with. Francine was over a couple of days  ago.  It was almost like a day at the Deseret Industries canning complex.

I don't know if Carolyn will eventually reach 70 quarts like we have some years but my guess is we'll have a couple dozen and enjoy them.

Picnic in the park

It was a beautiful day in August.  The sun was bright but not too hot.  There was a soft breeze blowing.  It was just a great day for a picnic at McKinley Park in mid-own Sacramento.  And Carolyn's staff had fortunately planned their staff picnic on that day.  And even more fortunately, she invited me to join them so I didn't have to fix my own lunch.  The only drawback is that I recognized only three or four faces and only one or two names.