Page 108 - FDCC Pandemic Book

Living in a Pandemic: A Collection of Stories on Coping, Resilience & Hope
atrium. Lawyers and parties and court staff in the security lines maintained some distance, but there simply wasn’t room to be six feet apart. Inside the courtroom the witness testified from behind a clear barrier and the judge presided over the matter from inside a plexiglass cage while everyone wore masks.
The rest of the first week was used to pick the jury. In some ways, Zoom voir dire went smoother than anticipated. Due to the limited time for questioning each panel, much of the work occurred through an analysis of the lengthy questionnaire the court sent to prospective jurors via email. After the court made an initial hardship cut, the remaining jurors were divided into groups slated for three different Zoom panels. Through agreement, the parties participated from our respective workspaces rather than through laptop computers while masked in the courtroom. This allowed us to set up our space with large screens and good lighting. Because my co-counsel was assigned the voir dire questioning, I got to experience my first and possibly last time watching voir dire in one of my cases while wearing jeans and eating snacks.
One of the prospective jurors in the first panel was a man working in his tobacco store. His camera was propped up off to his side and we listened as he waited on customers at the counter. A couple sales transactions in, the judge grew tired of the distraction and released him. Surprisingly, most of the jurors who made it to a Zoom panel made little effort to be excused. One exception was a young man who advised us all that he was sleeping with a Starbucks barista who had recently developed COVID-like symptoms. When that didn’t get him dismissed, he expressed his fear of taking public transportation. Still unsuccessful in being excused, it seemed he Googled “how to get out of jury duty” and reported that if he had to be on the jury he thought his unconscious bias would become his conscious bias and he couldn’t be fair. That strategy worked and he was removed for cause. After three Zoom sessions spanning a day and a half, there were enough remaining in the venire to exercise strikes and seat sixteen jurors.
The “courtroom” was set up in one of the ballrooms at the Meydenbauer Center in Bellevue, Washington. The judge was perched on a dais off to one side of the room, flanked by the US and Washington state flags. Counsel and court staff sat at long tables shrouded in black linens. On the far back wall loomed an enormous screen, ready for demonstratives, exhibits, and the faces of remote witnesses. Sixteen chairs were spaced out in three rows in the back of the room, a post-it note on each indicating to the jurors which seat was reserved for their assigned juror number. There was essentially no additional room behind the jurors’ chairs, but when anyone came into the courtroom, the judge’s deputy jumped up and found an extra chair to wedge into a corner or a doorway. The court wanted to ensure that the trial gave the appearance of an open proceeding, even if the facilities made it difficult to seat spectators.
Court protocol required face coverings at all times. Live witnesses were allowed to
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