Courtroom Waiting…

[rat­ings]
Here is an old “rant” I posted years ago about the wait­ing one does for court cases. At the end of the post I’ll add updated com­ments and per­spec­tives now that I’m a pri­vate con­sul­tant, and no longer a gov­ern­ment employee.

rant

Ever won­der why the peo­ple com­plain about how inef­fi­cient gov­ern­ment is? Well let me tell you a tale…

I get a call one day from a sec­re­tary at a city prosecutor’s office ask­ing me if I got a sub­poena for a case that after­noon. I replied I had, but was going to wait until I got a call that I was needed before I showed up for court. I was told that the offi­cers in the case had been “called in early” because the case was sup­posed to move quickly. I asked if she knew when I might be needed, and the reply was that another pros­e­cu­tor said I should be there at the time on my sub­poena (a half hour ago).

Huge red flags went off in my mind. The time on the sub­poena is never cor­rect. Most of my court cases I’ve never even been needed on the same day listed on the sub­poena, often not even the same week. Be that as it may, there is always the excep­tion. So I threw on my court attire, grabbed up my case files, and headed on off to court.

As I walked down the hall­way in the cour­t­house, I noticed peo­ple with “juror” stick­ers on their shirts sit­ting out­side the court­room – not a good sign. When I walked in the judge was telling the court bailiff to bring in juror #14. This means that they hadn’t even selected a jury yet. Let alone had juror instruc­tions, open­ing state­ments, direct/cross/re-direct on the case offi­cer. Since I was to tes­tify on a blood alco­hol case, they would also prob­a­bly have an offi­cer tes­tify on the field sobri­ety tests admin­is­tered by another offi­cer, and they would need to have the phle­botomist tes­tify as to the blood draw before I could tes­tify on my analy­sis and results in the case.

Put sim­ply, they couldn’t pos­si­bly get to me for 2–3 hours at a min­i­mum. I tapped the pros­e­cu­tor on the shoul­der and gave him my num­ber. Told him to call me when they were start­ing the wit­ness before me, there was no rea­son for me to sit around for a few hours. Heck, I had work to do.

I fig­ured I would stop by the prosecutor’s office to let them know politely not to call me on cases until they were close to need­ing me. It’s not that I get paid a huge salary as a gov­ern­ment foren­sic sci­en­tist, but it’s waste­ful to have me sit­ting around for mul­ti­ple hours doing noth­ing. I am impressed by other states where the prosecutor’s office is billed for wit­ness time. Makes for a lot less hall­way sit­ting. Something like that should really be put into place in Arizona – heck every­where. The prac­tice the pros­e­cu­tors have of “stack­ing” wit­nesses in the hall­way is irre­spon­si­ble at least, bor­der­line beg­ging for a tax­payer inves­ti­ga­tion into wasted tax­payer dollars.

While in the pros­e­cu­tors’ office, I couldn’t find the pros­e­cu­tor who had told the sec­re­tary to tell me to get to court right away. While walk­ing down the hall, I was pulled in by another pros­e­cu­tor and con­sulted on another case. The talk lasted for 15 min­utes or so, and I headed back to my office. I had a voice­mail on my phone, and it was cur­rently ring­ing. I answered and it was the offi­cer from the cur­rent court case telling me the pros­e­cu­tor needed me back in court. I checked my voice­mail, and it was an ear­lier call from the same offi­cer. It seems I had been called almost upon me leav­ing the courtroom.

So I headed back to the court­room. When I walked in, the judge was giv­ing the jury their instruc­tions – open­ing state­ments hadn’t even hap­pened yet!

So I sat in the back of the court­room and played with my Treo Smartphone for about a half hour. During which time the first offi­cer took the stand, and part of direct exam­i­na­tion was started before they broke for lunch!

The pros­e­cu­tor told me he was sorry, but needed me there because he wasn’t sure if the other wit­nesses could be there soon enough in case the first offi­cer got off the stand. I didn’t argue with him that even if that hap­pened, no defense attor­ney worth his salt is going to let me get up there and tes­tify as to my blood analy­sis with­out foun­da­tion laid by the offi­cer admin­is­ter­ing the FSTs, and the phlebotomist.

On the way out I com­mented that I had never even been inter­viewed, or had a dis­cov­ery request for my report or case notes. The pros­e­cu­tor said he would need me back by 1:15.

At 1:30 I went back into the court­room after lunch, and in the room was the judge, the defen­dant, the defense attor­ney, and the pros­e­cu­tor – period. The pros­e­cu­tor said he meant to call me, but the defen­dant had changed his plea when they got back from the lunch recess.

This is why gov­ern­ment is so inef­fi­cient. Those who are in power have no rea­son or incen­tive to be effi­cient. I under­stand not want­ing the judge and the jury sit­ting around wait­ing on a wit­ness, but there has to be a happy medium between that and mul­ti­ple wit­nesses sit­ting in a hall­way for mul­ti­ple hours on cases – some­times days. In this case my actual wait time wasn’t that bad, but I lost a good three hours out of my day mak­ing three trips back and forth to the cour­t­house. Imagine if prosecutor’s offices had to pay wit­ness salaries out of their own bud­gets – even if the wit­nesses and the pros­e­cu­tors all work for the same gov­ern­ment entity (city, county or state). I guar­an­tee there would be fewer wit­nesses sit­ting in a hall­way for shorter peri­ods of time. And as a tax­payer, I would rather have my foren­sic sci­en­tists work­ing on cases, and my police offi­cers out pro­tect­ing the pub­lic, rather than sit­ting in a hall­way act­ing as a secu­rity blan­ket for a prosecutor.

/rant

So that was an anec­dote from almost two years ago, back when I was a gov­ern­ment employee. I’m not going to say that I don’t have to wait to tes­tify now that I am a pri­vate con­sul­tant, but for some rea­son it’s never for as long

In the major­ity of the cases I am called on to tes­tify now, I charge a “flat fee”. So no mat­ter how long I am wait­ing, I am not get­ting paid any extra. My expe­ri­ence has been that usu­ally I wait for less than an hour before tes­ti­fy­ing. This is a very rea­son­able amount of time to be present out­side of a court­room, in order to guar­an­tee the judge and jury aren’t made to wait for extended peri­ods of time. And this is the case whether it is the pros­e­cu­tion or the defense who is call­ing me in as a witness

The nice part is that since I am a pri­vate con­sul­tant, I don’t have a huge back­log of cases that are wait­ing for me to get to while I’m wait­ing out­side of court. I now pick and choose cases I want to accept, and con­trol how many cases I want to put on my cal­en­dar. So there isn’t ever any pres­sure that I’m wast­ing time out in front of court. I can just bring a good book, review the case, bring another case to review, or bring a portable video game to pass the time with­out wor­ry­ing about how long I’m sitting.