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Brooks Peterson
Brooks Peterson's column is published Mondays. Brooks also sits on the Caller-Times editorial board and can be contacted at petersonb@caller.com
Monday, February 5, 2001
The court and the Coach: no contest
Those of you who are acquainted with the column know that I occasionally use this space to share with you one of those flashes of insight I experience from time to time.
Yes, kids, I've had another one: What it was, was jury duty.
Now, my record of jury service has been an undistinguished one.Until the week before last, the closest I'd ever come to serving on a real, live jury was assignment to a six-member panel in the Flour Bluff J.P. court. But one of the parties didn't show: Spurned again.
This time, however, it was different: I found myself in a pool of 40 good citizens, looking (we were told) at the prospect of spending two weeks on what promised to be a grueling personal-injury case.
After the attorneys - one for the plaintiffs, two for the defense - offered a few opening remarks, we plunged into voir dire, the phase in which the lawyers get a feel for the prospective jurors.
Gently but firmly, they quizzed us about our jobs, personal backgrounds, prejudices and predispositions.
And so it went: poking, probing, prodding - until we got almost to the middle of our 40-person cohort. And then . . . whammo! The shock of recognition (thank you, Edmund Wilson).
The plaintiffs' attorney came to one of our number: The Coach.
All of us were of course aware of his presence. It wasn't that he called attention to himself. He didn't need to: If you've racked up a won-lost record like his, you are something of a minor deity in South Texas. Or maybe not so minor.
So: It came his turn. The plaintiffs' attorney paused, then asked something along these lines: Coach, this must be a pretty busy time of year for you.
The Coach: It really is pretty busy. Lot of things going on.
Plaintiffs' Attorney: Coach, with all these things going on, do you think it might be hard for you to focus on the testimony you'd be hearing in this trial?
The Coach: You know, I think it would be. I really do.
Plaintiffs' Attorney: Thanks, Coach.
Then, in due course, one of the two defense attorneys took his turn.
Defense Attorney: Coach, I've just got one question for you: Who's going to win the Super Bowl? Chuckles all round.
(I think The Coach picked Baltimore, but I couldn't swear to it. I was too busy picking my jaw up off the floor.)
And that was that. No "Could you be impartial . . .?" Nada.
In due course, the voir dire ran its course. Then it came time to cut the first batch loose: Among the seven or eight souls excused, needless to say, was The Coach, mercifully freed to pursue his labors. I remained until the final seating of the jurors, whereupon I, too, was freed.
None of this is a rap against The Coach. At no time did he demand special treatment; neither did he parade his celebrity status. He was relaxed, affable, approachable, and he endured the selection process without complaint.
I can understand that he, like the rest of us, would not have relished the prospect of two weeks' worth of jury duty, particularly in a case as painful as this one promised to be. (In the event, in case you were wondering, the parties settled after the trial's first day.)
And I can sort of understand that even lawyers wearing expensive suits would accord such deference to one who had attained The Coach's station in life.
What I can't understand is the notion that any individual, however glittering his or her résumé, would, by silent but universal consent, be accorded an automatic pass without even going through the motions.
Maybe this says more about my naivete, and my lack of familiarity with The System, than it does about any of the other parties.
Even conceding my unimpressive record as jury fodder, however, I would submit that this simply serves to confirm - again - the wisdom of George Orwell's aphorism: All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.
Brooks Peterson
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