I'll be lucky if I'm not in jail for contempt of court by this evening. The case involves two gang members killing another gang member one in a premeditated murder with a handgun(s).
I experienced an incident in 2001 where two rival gangs started spraying bullets at each other in Culver City where I lived. One day one of the gangs caught a rival gang member getting out of his truck to visit his girlfriend in the building behind mine. There were four gang members shooting at this one guy with a Mac 10, Tech 9, multiple handguns, and they all missed him. They did manage to spray my apartment building pretty good, with bullets zinging by my 2nd story front door.
Freaked out my client (Wheel of Fortune editor) on the phone I was walking through a problem, and my pit bull had a fit as well. Went downstairs after I hung up, and there were at least 50 shell casings on the street. These four gang members missed the rival gang member from a distance of 30 feet completely. They did put a bunch of holes in the apartment building and in other people's cars, though.
After relating this to the judge he asked me if I could fairly judge this case. I told him no, I would be hard pressed to objectively listen to an argument from the defense counsel about his client.
The judge wasn't happy with me at all, and he tried to convince me otherwise.
"Juror 13, don't you think you're being unfair to the defendant with this line of thinking?"
I just answered "Life isn't fair, your honor."
That shut him up. Even then the defense attorney didn't excuse me. So I have to go back today and listen to 40 other prospective jurors get asked the same questions I was.
I'm not sure if I'll get excused from this or not, but when they ask me my experiences with the police, they're not going to be happy about that, either. Both of the cops that tried to frame me for drug trafficking in the early 80's wound up eating their guns after they were indicted for criminal investigation. And I know both of their names and when they took themselves out.
Bet you didn't know I had such an interesting life, huh?
I have to be there at 9 am. Gotta go.
