After a week and a half boredom followed by anger followed by boredom followed by anger, I am finally done with jury duty (you can read about my jury duty first impressions here!). I know some people have a hard time making it through these longer blog posts, so I’m going to put my most important piece of advice up top: if you ever find yourself involved with a jury – whether it be jury duty or (heaven help you) trial by jury – save yourself by any means possible, up to and including sawing off a limb.

Last week, I learned that a jury of one’s peers is a fun idea until you see it in action. Then it is a terrifying idea.

In America, we’ve set an incredibly low bar for being a juror. Are you a person? Perfect, you’re almost there! Are you capable of signing a piece of paper that says, “Sure, I’d like the option of voting in an upcoming election”? Congratulations! You’re now obligated to decide incredibly complex matters of life and death. Your guide through this process will be two weasely lawyers who have mastered the art of tricking you.

Last week, I was introduced to this system through a medical malpractice case in which the family of a terminally ill grandmother was suing her nursing home caretaker for wrongful death. The lawyers started their weaseling before the trial even started.

The entire first day was taken up by questions designed to whittle our jury from 16 to 9. At least, that’s why they told us they were asking the questions. After the first hour, though, it became clear the questions were more about sneaking in points before the trial.

“Are you a smoker?” the defense attorney asked one unsuspecting juror.

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you aware that smoking can kill you?”

“Sure.”

“Are you aware that smoking kills more women than breast cancer?”

Squirm. “Okay.”

“Are you aware that smoking…”

The deceased, you may have guessed, was a heavy smoker.

After the lawyers ran out of points, they selected a jury seemingly at random and began opening arguments.

During opening arguments, the plaintiff’s attorney brought out a picture of the grandmother to remind us that we should feel sorry for her, while the defense introduced us to all of her ailments through an unflattering, obese diagram to remind us that she was obese.

After opening arguments, the plaintiff got to call witnesses. The plaintiff’s attorney was a younger guy who was a tiny bit doughy but had tremendous skin. He was also a former world-class figure skater, which is something I really wish I had known during the trial, because it would have made hating him even more fun. He had a number of habits that made him instantly unlikeable, including over-objecting, overacting and just being an all-around turd.

It’s important to note that I am not equating being a turd with being a bad lawyer. In fact, being a turd made him the BEST lawyer. If trials were decided by how many times a lawyer makes a witness look dumb, he would be undefeated.

This particular trial included a long parade of doctors brought by the defense. During cross examinations, the plaintiff’s attorney would rile up each doctor by asking every detail about how much he was being paid to be part of the trial. As you might imagine, this is not something that doctors who charge upward of $800 an hour appreciate. So as soon as the doctor would start getting red and loud, the attorney would swoop in for the kill.

He’d ask about an obscure thing from the medical records that would contradict the doctor’s testimony. After the doctor would deny the record’s existence, the attorney would bring out a poster-size replica of the document with a highlighter and say something like, “Really? Because for $800 an hour, I would expect that you surely would have seen THIS.”

One doctor was a former wrestler, and by the time he left the stand, he looked like he was ready to kick the figure skating attorney right in the sow cow.

He was ready to kick the figure skating attorney right in the sow cow.

After the plaintiff’s attorney called his last witness, the defense got to work. The defense lawyer was bald with glasses and looked like that guy who always plays politicians on TV shows. His strategy became apparent from the moment he started his opening arguments by plopping a brand new pack of cigarettes on the jury railing. “Cigarettes.” he said. “Cigarettes, cigarettes, cigarettes.” Over the remaining seven days of the trial, he said the word “cigarettes” 500 times, breaking only occasionally to show the obese diagram again.

It took a couple days to decipher what was really going on through all the shenanigans and medical terminology, but it slowly became apparent that the nurse didn’t do anything wrong, and the family was just sad that they had lost their mom.

Unfortunately, after those couple of days, there were still 15 more hours of cigarettes, diagrams and angry doctors. The lowest point was a two-and-a-half hour video testimony in a darkened courtroom after lunch. The only thing that kept me awake was snoring from Juror #6.

On Friday afternoon, the defense rested its case, and we broke for closing arguments on Monday. We hadn’t been allowed to talk about the case with each other all week, so I was looking forward to deliberations on Monday, when we could take five minutes to find the nurse innocent, five minutes to make fun of the lawyers, and then five minutes to take a group picture and hug.

During closing arguments Monday morning, the portrait and cigarettes made their glorious return, and then the judge gave us some instructions. First, we’d have no transcripts from the trial. We’d have to rely on our collective memory. Fine. They repeated everything ten times, which was plenty for our collective memory.

Second, we’d get none of the fancy timelines or diagrams or highlighted documents the attorneys showed us in the case. The only things we could take with us in deliberations were the raw medical records. THOUSANDS of pages of raw medical records. Good thing this was such an open and shut case, because if we were forced to page through those binders, I would be forced to jump off a bridge.

Twenty-four hours later, I was looking for a bridge.

Since this was a civil case and not a criminal one, we only needed six of the eight jurors to agree that the nurse was innocent. We had five.

We spent all Monday shouting over each other, misremembering facts and demonstrating how shockingly little we knew about both medicine and the U.S. legal system. We were all educated, intelligent people, but it occurred to me that maybe being qualified to vote is not the same thing as being qualified to decide how digoxin levels should affect decisions about diuretic prescriptions. We finally broke for the day at 4 p.m. and talked pleasantly about the weather on the way to the elevators while hating each other.

Maybe being qualified to vote is not the same thing as being qualified to decide how digoxin levels should affect decisions about diuretic prescriptions.

On Tuesday morning, we returned to the jury room, got locked in by the bailiff and picked up right where we left off by trying to convince people to change their minds by shouting uninformed opinions at them.

At some point, it became clear that we’d have to venture into binders of medical records if we were going to resolve things. We put it off as long as possible, but there was no other way. I finally sighed, cracked open “Exhibit F” and started trying to decipher doctor handwriting. It was worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It was like looking for a needle in a haystack without being entirely sure what a “needle” is.

Throughout the morning, we pulled out lots of “needles” that turned out to be sticks of hay. A few were actually mouse poos.*

*Literally. We spent 15 minutes talking about a bowel movement mentioned in a Sept. 24, 2011 nurse’s note.

By lunch, a few people were starting to lose it. One woman buried her head in her hands and appeared to start sobbing. The lovable “class clown” of the jury stood up, cursed, and shouted that if we weren’t done by noon he was leaving because “I HAVE A JOB! I HAVE A FAMILY!!”

Finally, FINALLY at 1:30, one of the jurors changed her mind and came to our side. She changed her mind because she’d found a needle that might have actually been a hay, but I was not about to argue with her. We signed the verdict and marched into the courtroom.

While the judge read the verdict, I watched the plaintiff’s attorney. I wanted him to react so badly. He did not. He was in his happy place, perfecting triple axels.

After the verdict, I walked out of the jury box for the last time and noticed the pack of cigarettes from closing arguments.

It had been opened.

LIFE LESSON #63

Leaving a person’s fate in the hands of the least qualified people in the room is enough to drive anyone to start smoking.