So I covered in Part 1 who the players were as far as the crime. As far as the trial, we had:

The judge. He was from Central Casting, older, silver hair, and we found out when we ran into him in the hallway, quite tall. He was avuncular and funny. But he also took very little shit.

The prosecution: two assistant district attorneys, both quite young. The lead ADA, an otherwise-unremarkable masculine man, was named Courtney Charles, and of course my brain went “drag name!”. The second was a young woman named Ms. Betzios. She was no-nonsense. They were both really on top of things. Also, they often ended up color-coordinating their suits with each other, which I wondered was deliberate? Their table was quite close to the jury box, and I was in the front row, so got to see very clearly what they got up to.

The defense, on the other side of the court: three attorneys. A tall man named Mr. Torres (who we nicknamed “Lurch”, because he was tall and bald and a little hulking). A cutesy young blond lady named Ms. Bacon. And an older African-American gentleman (the other lawyers were Caucasian), Mr. Latimer, who was very impressive. Plus the defendant, who sat there quietly through everything, not reacting – and he always had two court officers or policemen with him, although they always seemed very relaxed.

Court officers: Chris, tall, stoic but nice, eventually replaced by Toby, short king, even friendlier. These are the guys who shepherded the jury around and were our direct contacts. Both very handsome. (in general, the court officers were great eye candy)

The jury: there were five of us picked in the first batch: Kevin – a youngish guy from Astoria (queer, it turned out) who was a little frenetic. Adam, who worked retail, but who was (coincidentally enough) applying to be a court officer. Adam might have been queer as well, he and Kevin got in some discussions about Drag Race. Jackie, a young and totally-together young woman who was a physician’s assistant. Michele, who was an older African-American lady and loved to talk and grab and steer the conversation. This was mostly just funny until deliberations. And me. We’d gotten picked halfway through Wednesday (first week of the year) and told to come back on Monday.

On Monday, when Chris rounded us up from the Hot Lobby, there were ten of us. New folks were “Foreign Guy”, who was an older gentleman with an accent who honestly could have either been South Asian or Eastern European, I couldn’t tell. I think his name was more South Asian. Tall Dominican dude who was pretty funny, and short Haitian lady, and they had some interesting conversations. Short Haitian Lady was Marie, and she was ditsy as hell, would always ask the oddest questions that were baffling in their irrelevance or simplicity. Short Asian dude, I never got his name. And I don’t remember which one was the tenth. They were still doing voir dire, but after a day where the 10 of us sat around in the conference room chatting (Michele leading this, mostly) or reading or on the phone or whatever, at the end of they day they ushered 7 more people in.

So now we had a full complement of 12, plus 5 alternates. Some standouts of the last bunch: Zion, a tall bearded black guy who wore nothing but sweats and mostly hid in his hood and looked at his phone, but turned out to be outstanding during deliberation. He was also eye candy, tried not to creep on him. Asian lady (Trina) from Forest Hills, an Indian lady whose name I never got. A short black guy in a do-rag whose name I never got, and didn’t last long before disappearing. A youngish thin white guy who was (I think) the last alternate and was pretty much checked out through most of the process. Young guy named Ahmed or such. Older central-casting outer-boroughs white dude who used to work at Silvercup Studios (Richie, I think).

We had quite a few days where we didn’t get started right away because people were late, or just didn’t show up. Over the course of the trial, we lost five people (!) so ended up with just 12 and no wiggle room by the time we were wrapping up. We never found out why people dropped out – although we lost Richie and he had said something about a cataract operation. I assume people got sick, too. I was masking, and so was Foreign Guy, although he hadn’t figured out you have to cover up your nose, too.

BTW, that’s how I was dressing. Mostly this was during the really cold spell, so corduroys, turtleneck with a sweater over it. Others ranged from office casual to jeans to sweats. No one cared.

Anyway, it was certainly a diverse bunch of people of all ages and colors and economic backgrounds, and we actually got along just fine. No bitch-battles that I could see. We were so many that there wasn’t room for everyone around the jury table, so my ‘spot’ in the room ended up being back in the corner, right by a shelf where I could dump my coat and backpack. It wasn’t uncomfortable, the chairs were nice. We had two bathrooms (from which you could hear everything). Kevin and I at some point discussed our mutual fear of being caught having to do anything more than #1 – I took active steps to avoid that – for instance, I’d discovered some out of the way men’s rooms available in the courthouse, so often make sure I used them prophylactically when first coming in from outside. Probably TMI, but this whole experience was a lot of worrying about “when and where will I get to go to the bathroom? Where will I have lunch? Do I really have to go though security twice a day?” (answer to the last: yes, but the jurors got to go through a special entrance on the side to avoid the lines.)

Jurors didn’t get free lunch until deliberations. We ended up getting two.

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OK, I’m practicing character description and I guess that’s what that was. But next up will be trial nitty-gritty, I promise!