I beg to urge you, everyone:
life-and-death is a grave matter,
all things pass quickly away;
each of us must be completely alert:
never neglectful, never indulgent.
—The evening message of sesshin at the Diamond Sangha, from “Taking the Path of Zen,” by Roshi Robert Aitken

Well, they finally caught me.

Not the cops. The court.

Specifically, the Second Judicial District Court, which needed a few good people — more than a few, actually — to help them resolve a number of pressing legal matters on what one court staffer last week called “a typical busy Monday.”

I thought voir dire would put me back on the streets with all possible speed, for reasons obvious to readers of this blog. When the lawyers started asking if anyone present had ever been in a car crash I opened with getting hit by a train when I was 20. I have other, lesser tales, and usually save getting creamed by an 81-car, 7,000-ton Burlington Northern for the closer, which, frankly, I thought it would be.

“All right, I’m out of time — thanks for coming out, everybody, you’ve been a wonderful audience!”

But the number of pressing legal matters was high and the bar for jury service low and I got yanked over it and into a jury box.

• • •

I won’t tell you I was eager to serve, but I was curious, because the case was auto vs. two-wheeler. Reckless driving resulting in death. If the defendant were found not guilty of the top charge, the jury would consider a descending series of lesser charges.

Our jury seemed a well-chosen crew. Two of us had owned Vespas, a third rode some lesser scooter, and at least one was a motorcyclist. Three or four of us also bicycled, on asphalt, dirt, and gravel. I assume we were all motorists. One was a freshly minted driver who’d only been prowling the mean streets of The Duck! City for a few months. We were old, young, and in between; white collar, blue collar, retired; brown, white, black; men and women.

As the lawyers did their thrust-and-parry thing, questioning eyewitnesses, police officers, crash reconstructionists, and a medical examiner, it seemed clear why the state felt comfortable going to trial. Even the defense conceded that their client was speeding in the center lane, ran a red light, struck the two-wheeler, and its rider died. The state’s case made a bathysphere look like a $2 Walmart tea ball.

I’ll spare you the gory deets. And while I doubt The Algorithm will splash this bush-league blog post far and wide across the Innertubes, for reasons that will be made clear I’m not going to give chapter and verse of the facts in the case. Speeding, ran the red, someone died. Pretty basic stuff.

• • •

Anyone who’s spent any time in court knows it lacks the polish of the TV shows. Attorneys fumble for words and thumb through reams of paper. The technology is temperamental. Witnesses can be confused or combative. Questions you might have raised as lawman or lawyer go unasked.

The burden of establishing proof of guilt beyond a reasonable doubt lay with the state, the judge reminded us, and toward that end the prosecutors supplied the bulk of the witnesses, along with surveillance video from two businesses near the scene of the crash; police lapel-cam footage with audio; audio from a 911 call; information downloaded from the auto’s airbag-control module (event data recorder); and stills of the scene, crash debris, both vehicles, and “the decedent,” as the defense insisted the crash victim be called.

The defense insisted upon a number of things, among them their client’s actions after the crash. The defendant did not flee the scene; wasn’t argumentative when interviewed by police; and did not try to foist responsibility for the crash onto “the decedent.”

The defendant’s attorneys, focused on reasonable doubt, were less generous in that regard. The strategy seemed to be, “If it were not for this rando rocking the two-wheeler we wouldn’t even be here, wasting everyone’s valuable time.”

• • •

The usual hokum ensued. Did the two-wheeler make an improper right turn while exiting a gas station, entering the center lane rather than the curb lane? Possibly, but there was no concrete evidence of this; the rider may have entered the curb lane and then moved left to the center.

Was the rider’s helmet properly secured? This hoary old trope, decades past its sell-by date, is lifted straight from the F1 key on any lazy cop-shop reporter’s computer keyboard: (tap) “The victim was not wearing a helmet.”

That helmet? It was a full-face model. Could it have prevented the rider from hearing the defendant’s vehicle as it accelerated through the red light? If you are sensing a theme here, it is that when it comes to helmets, you are damned if you wear one and damned if you don’t.

Footage from the gas station’s surveillance camera showed rider and two-wheeler as they actually were at the time: bright colors, tail light and headlight, helmet. And when leaving the pump for the pavement, it appeared that the rider glanced left, possibly to check for oncoming vehicles.

• • •

That was just the sound check. Next, the rock ’n’ roll.

The defense argued that it made sense in terms of safety for their client to run the light. The defendant, already a few minutes late for work, was speeding, after all; it would’ve been impossible to stop before entering the intersection. Traffic at that hour was light, no other vehicles had begun crossing under the green, and the center lane ahead seemed free of any and all obstructions.

Further, once it became evident that such was not the case, it appeared that their client tried to avoid the collision, coming off the gas, braking, and steering slightly to the left. But it was too late. The impact destroyed the two-wheeler and hurled its rider up the road, with helmet ripped off. The rider sustained a number of severe injuries and died at the scene.

That’s pretty much it. The disputants rested their respective cases, then delivered closing statements. And the judge sent us off to the jury room.

• • •

It seemed clear to me that the defendant’s decision to put foot through firewall and run the red was the first and most important link in the grim chain of events that followed. It was reckless. The judge’s instructions regarding the law and how we must proceed were complex, but we muddled through, and after we picked a foreperson and discussed areas of concern a few jurors who had been on the fence picked a side. Guilty as charged. The vote needed to be unanimous.

It was not.

The defense had found the one weak link in our chain. The magic words that broke it were “reasonable doubt.”

Several of us tried to bring our lone holdout around but it was fruitless. Our foreperson reported the deadlock to the judge, who gave us more time to deliberate. Heels remained dug in. Not even a solid alternate-universe hypothetical from a juror with a strong schoolteacherish vibe could prevail. It went something like this:

What if the defendant had not been speeding? Then it would’ve been possible to stop for the red light. The rider of the two-wheeler would have turned from the gas station into the road without incident and shortly thereafter would have been sitting in a café somewhere, eating a breakfast burrito. The motorist would have been a few more minutes late for work.

No sale. We remained at 11-1.

Once again the judge asked us, one by one, whether more time for deliberation might help us reach a unanimous verdict.

No, your honor.

And that was that. Dismissed.

• • •

As a junior-varsity cartoonist and columnist I grew accustomed to seeing my arguments dismissed. Not everyone was buying what I was selling.

I try to be a tough customer myself, but I’ve been played often enough to know that refreshing breeze cooling my nether regions means my pants are puddled around my ankles again. About three times out of five, if I’m on form and the wind is right, I can I.D. bullshit if I catch a good, strong whiff of it. And in that courtroom I smelled it coming from the defense. Eleven people agreed; one did not. That’s all it took.

Could/should our holdout have avoided jury service through a more vigorous winnowing process or by pleading extenuating circumstances and requesting a rescheduling or excusal? Maybe. The doubt seemed unreasonable, more emotional than intellectual. But what it seemed like to me was irrelevant. Move to strike, your honor. …

• • •

As a young reporter I was dragooned into covering a water-board meeting. The information was made available and I couldn’t for the life of me make any sense of it. The editor was not amused. Was I a poor choice for the task? Could I have declined the assignment, or tried harder? Yes, yes, and yes. In any event, somebody had to do it and it was my turn in the barrel.

As it happened, another reporter was able to cobble together the story I could not write. Journalism is a team sport.

And, as it turns out, so is the law. It’s my understanding that a new trial has already been scheduled and a new jury will be selected. Maybe I’ll go back as a spectator, if there’s nothing good on TV.