More Jury Duty Misadventures; the County Wants Help ID’ing a 1992 Murder Victim–Coachella Valley Independent’s Indy Digest: Jan. 9, 2024

Indy Digest: Jan. 9, 2024

Before I dive into the topic of today’s Indy Digest intro, I’d like to apologize for this newsletter’s arrival a day later than normal. This is the first time in almost four years of the Digest’s existence that I didn’t send a newsletter as scheduled, unless I am forgetting something (which, given what a doozy these four years have been, is entirely possible). I am sorry.

Long story short: I messed up—with an assist from the Riverside County Superior Court Jury Office. Now, here’s the longer version of the story (and be warned, it is long, so bear with me).

Several months ago, I received my yearly (more or less) jury summons in the mail. I delayed my report date from October to this week. When I checked the online jury portal over the weekend, I learned I was summoned to the courthouse in Indio, with instructions to arrive by 7:30 a.m. yesterday (Monday, Jan. 8). The online portal also told potential jurors with some sort of hardship to submit an excusal request—and I did.

I’d love to serve on a jury one day. I think it would be interesting—and I’d be proud to do it as a civic duty. Unfortunately, that day is not now: Serving on even a short trial would cause me a serious financial hardship, because I’m currently the publisher (and the only person handling sales/revenue) for two different news publications. I later learned that the trial for which I was a potential juror was expected to go through Jan. 26—in other words, for the better part of three weeks, during which I’ll be in production on the monthly print editions of both the Independent and our sister paper.

That said … I realize that my hardship, while it seems pretty damned hard to me, pales in comparison to others’ hardships. Other reasons jurors can request excusal include having “no reasonable means of transportation to the court,” a “personal obligation to provide necessary care to another,” a pre-planned surgery, and so on.

Even though people requesting a hardship excusal can submit a form online, everyone still has to report to the courthouse. In my case, I had no problem getting to Indio. I didn’t have to find (and pay for) a substitute caregiver for a day, or postpone a medical procedure. So, as far as reporting jurors go, I was pretty fortunate.

So, off to Indio I went. This is probably the the seventh or eighth time I’ve had to report for jury duty since I moved here, and every other time, I’ve been excused and sent home before the lunch break—and I, stupidly, assumed the same thing would happen yesterday. I didn’t take my laptop with me, nor did I make any other preparations to salvage what I could of the workday if I didn’t get excused before lunch.

And, well, you can guess what happened.

A little before 9:30 a.m., the first big set of potential jurors was called to a courtroom; those of us who weren’t called were told we could take a break until 10:30. Around 11:45, a second batch of names was called—and everyone else was told to return at 2 p.m., because we may or may not still be needed. Around 2:15, we were told we’d indeed be sent to a courtroom—but not until around 3 p.m.

A little after 3, we were finally called into the courtroom. The judge introduced everybody, told us what the case was about, explained how long the trial was supposed to take, had us sworn in, etc. He then asked everyone who wasn’t requesting a hardship excusal to leave, and return Tuesday (today) at 1:30. The rest of us were sent into the hallway, given little pencils, and told to fill out a hardship-excusal request … the same one I’d already filled out and submitted online.

Around 4:15, the sheriff’s deputy assigned to the courtroom called the names of the people who were not excused—and then, finally, the names of those who were excused. Fortunately, my name was in the latter category.

I had a lot of time to think about the whole jury-duty process as I waited around the Larson Justice Center yesterday, in between stints of doing as much work with my phone as I could (before it finally died). I thought of how both the jury commissioner and the judge expressed what sounded like sincere appreciation to us for reporting, whether we’re excused right away or put on a trial. They also made jokes that they’re often asked, by friends or people at parties, the best ways to get out of serving on a jury.

So .. if serving as a juror is such a sacrifice, and it’s so appreciated, why don’t the powers that be take some seemingly easy steps to make the jury-service system less terrible? Couldn’t the government respect jurors’ time more, by—for starters—reviewing hardship requests before a person is required to report, or at least at the start of the day when a juror reports in-person? Couldn’t jurors get paid more than $15 a day (an amount which hasn’t changed in more than two decades), plus 34 cents per mile of travel to the courthouse (but only one way, for some reason)—paid only after a juror is seated on a trial?

A couple of years ago, I wrote in this space about another bad jury-duty experience I had. I’d received a summons even though I’d already reported for jury service six months before (people are supposed to be excused for a year after reporting or serving), and I couldn’t log on to the online jury system, apparently because my birthdate was wrong—even though it worked just fine with previous summons. I surmised that since juror lists are created via both DMV and registrar of voters records, I was in the system twice. However, I could not confirm this, because every time I called the jury office—well more than a dozen times over several weeks—I got a message to call back later, or my call was cut off. Two different emails also went unanswered.

That Indy Digest caught the attention of someone in the jury office. A very nice woman called me—but did not want to be quoted—and confirmed my assumption that I was in the system twice. She apologized for the fact that I was unable to get someone on the phone, and for the lack of a response to my emails, blaming the problem on a staff shortage. I gently pushed back, saying there were clearly bigger problems in play here than a staffing shortage. She said she understood my viewpoint, but that the staffers were doing the best they could. I also asked her if i could talk to someone, be it her or someone else, on the record about these challenges; she replied that she’d look into it. I never heard back.

I don’t know if the jury office has made progress on that responsiveness issue, as I didn’t try to contact the office this time. But some progress is being made on the pay issue. The Legislature actually passed Assembly Bill 881 last year to expand a pilot program that increased jurors’ pay for lower-income people in San Francisco to four other counties.

In a piece for CalMatters last October, former public defender and superior court judge Newton Lam explained how well the San Francisco pilot program was working. “Reports indicate the program has effectively reduced socioeconomic and racial disparities in juries and has strengthened participants’ trust in the legal system,” Lam wrote, while pointing out that the pilot program would only cost the state between $3 million and $9 million per year (depending on who’s doing the calculating)—while also saving the courts $2.3 million because “it will also take less time to secure enough jurors to start a trial.”

However, that modest expense was too much for Gov. Gavin Newsom—he vetoed the bill, citing the added cost at a time when the state is facing a huge budget deficit.

This veto had no effect on my jury-duty experience yesterday. But it does illustrate the gap between the seemingly genuine praise heaped on us prospective jurors yesterday by the judge and jury commissioner—and what the people who have the power to make things better for jurors are actually willing to do.

—Jimmy Boegle

More News

• Riverside County officials have released a sketch of a 1992 murder victim in an effort to identify her and give her family some closure. CNN reports: “In the early 1990s, long-haul trucker Keith Hunter Jesperson killed at least eight women in his travels across the United States. To gain notoriety, he sent anonymous confession letters to journalists and investigators, many of them signed with smiley faces. Since Jesperson’s arrest in 1995, investigators in at least six states have worked to unravel the identities of his victims. On Monday, authorities in Riverside County unveiled a sketch of what they described as the final unidentified victim in his killing spree, which also spanned Nebraska, Wyoming, Oregon, Washington and Florida. Jesperson, 68, confessed to killing the women and is serving four life sentences at the Oregon State Penitentiary. Because some of his victims were drifters or sex workers who were not in regular contact with their families, investigators have had difficulty identifying them. The body of the California woman, whom Jesperson referred to as Claudia, was found on August 30, 1992, along Highway 95 near Blythe. But Claudia may not be her real name, and her identity—and that of her family—remain unknown, Riverside County District Attorney Mike Hestrin said this week.” In a video you can watch here, the DA’s office said it’s believed the victim was killed near Indio.

• I flew over the weekend … and it seemed like people were less eager to take window seats, presumably because of what happened on an Alaska Airlines flight departing for Ontario from Seattle on Friday. Today, it seems investigators are getting closer to figuring out what may have happened. CNBC reports: “United Airlines said Monday that it has found loose bolts on door plugs of several Boeing 737 Max 9 planes during inspections spurred when a panel of that type blew out during an Alaska Airlines flight using that type of aircraft last week. Alaska Airlines later Monday said its initial inspections of the jets had turned up ‘loose hardware’ and that, ‘No aircraft will be returned to service’ until formal reviews are complete. … The Federal Aviation Administration on Saturday grounded dozens of 737 Max 9s after the panel blew out midflight on Alaska Flight 1282. Alaska has 65 of the Max 9 planes in its fleet. United has 79, making it the biggest operator of the jet model. ‘Since we began preliminary inspections on Saturday, we have found instances that appear to relate to installation issues in the door plug—for example, bolts that needed additional tightening,’ United said in a statement. ‘These findings will be remedied by our Tech Ops team to safely return the aircraft to service.’”

• In a piece for the Journal of the American Medical Association, two doctors express concern that vaccine hesitancy in the United States is reaching increasingly dangerous levels: “Despite the care taken in the development and deployment of vaccines and their clear and compelling benefit of saving individual lives and improving population health outcomes, an increasing number of people in the U.S. are now declining vaccination for a variety of reasons, ranging from safety concerns to religious beliefs. Setting aside for now the controversial issue of vaccine mandates at the federal, state, or local level in the U.S. … the situation has now deteriorated to the point that population immunity against some vaccine-preventable infectious diseases is at risk, and thousands of excess deaths are likely to occur this season due to illnesses amenable to prevention or reduction in severity of illness with vaccines. To counter the current trend, we urge the clinical and biomedical community to redouble its efforts to provide accurate plain-language information regarding the individual and collective benefits and risks of vaccination.”

• Let’s do one more medical news item. Remember back when some folks—like the president at the time—were touting hydroxychloroquine as a COVID-19 treatment? Well, a new study indicates these claims had awful consequences: The Hill says: “Nearly 17,000 people across six countries may have died because they took hydroxychloroquine (HQC) during the first wave of COVID-19 in 2020, according to a new analysis published by French researchers. Hydroxychloroquine is an anti-malaria drug that was prescribed off-label to treat COVID-19 in the early stage of the pandemic, as researchers and physicians scrambled to find a way to combat the disease. It was also proposed as a preventative measure. … The Food and Drug Administration granted a temporary emergency use authorization for hydroxychloroquine on March 28, 2020, which was revoked on June 15, 2020. Former president Trump repeatedly promoted the drug, touting hydroxychloroquine and a related drug called chloroquine as a possible ‘miracle.’ ‘What do you have to lose? Take it,’ Trump said during one of the White House coronavirus briefings.”

• Keeping with the medical publication theme, but going in a very different direction, MedPage Today published a heartbreaking piece about violence, and threats of violence, against health care workers: Pediatrician Nina Agrawal writes: “One morning last summer, when I was seeing patients in a Bronx clinic, a nurse told me to lock myself in an exam room. A patient’s father was looking for me, angered about my report to child protective services. Even though he eventually left, my chest cramped when I learned that he planned to return. … Not long after, I decided to resign. A year ago, Surgeon General Vivek Murthy, MD, MBA, sounded the alarm on workplace violence in healthcare as a contributor to skyrocketing health worker burnout and resignation. Despite his national advisory calling for zero-tolerance violence policies, the issue of gun violence in healthcare remains underreported and unchecked, particularly in clinics and other non-hospital settings. From 2010 to 2020, the Joint Commission, the largest standards-setting and accrediting body in healthcare, received 39 reports of hospital shootings.”

• And finally, on a much lighter note … you may have seen memes or social media posts over the weekend regarding people going bonkers over … a fancy coffee cup. What is this about? NPR explains the craze over Stanley tumblers: ““The fever was on display last week when people camped outside overnight at Target stores just to get their hands on a limited-edition ‘Stanley + Starbucks’ collaboration. One man went so far as to jump the counter to steal a box of the pink glossy cups. And late last year, the limited-edition pink and cherry red tumblers caused mayhem at Target. Ordinarily, the company’s popular Quencher model costs an average of $45, but resellers already are taking advantage of the hype by posting the limited-edition ones on sites like eBay for hundreds of dollars. Even the hashtag #stanleybrand has 65.3 million views on TikTok, while #stanleytumbler alone has 1 billion views. So what’s the craze behind these seemingly ordinary bottles? The Stanley brand boasts about the superior quality of its popular tumblers, which are double-wall stainless steel and able to keep liquids hot or cold for extended periods of time. … As a testament to its durability, last November a woman’s car endured a fire and amazingly one of the few things that could be salvaged was her Stanley water bottle, which still contained ice afterward.”

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