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Jury Duty + Car
Thursday, November 9th, 2006 10:30 amI've been neglecting my LJ duties as well as calendar duties lately. This morning I was going through and updating my calendar with all the things that had happened since last I updated it, and I saw that just one month ago I was at a LAN game. 'Woah' went I, for this event in my mind seemed surely several months ago. Such is everything that happened in October, that it seemed much longer than one month's time.
For those of you who have not seen me or talked to me, there will be a lot to say, and patience too short to say most. I shall try anyway.
So I got a summons to Jury Duty a while back, which I believe I mentioned. I then proceeded to get picked by ballot for a trial, avoid any challenges, and got sworn in to doing my duty. Oh yes, and the trial was scheduled to go for three weeks. Yay. The day went from 10am until 4pm with an hour for lunch at 1pm. Despite being such a short day, I came home every night exhausted. You see, the case involved fraud, which is hardly exciting. Evidence involved pieces of paper and then more paper. The defence counsel were boring old men who droned on. The sheer effort involved in not only staying awake through batshit boring happenings, but then actually concentrating and paying attention to the batshit boring happenings...well, as I mentioned before, I came home exhausted every night.
A brief run-down of what the trial was about. Back in 1999-2001, the state manager of Fisher & Paykel decided he needed more money to spend entertaining clients. He got friendly with a local cabinet maker who made display kitchens for F+P products. The gist of what happened is that the cabinet maker invoiced for kitchens that he had never done, or did work but misrepresented what it was on the invoice. The state manager then signed off on it and sent it to head office to get paid. The cabinet maker would occasionaly then forward money received to the state manager, and keep a lot for himself too. There were 18 counts of fraud, and two accused. That made 36 decisions for the jury to get through. We knew it was going to take a long time to get through the deliberations, but the judge apparently had high hopes. He did not think a hotel booking needed to be arranged, or at least a hotel booking was never mentioned to us. We went into deliberations at about 1pm-1:30pm on October 31st. After it was all over (at 2am!) we asked our Jury Officer what the hell with the lack of hotel, as we were all tired and irritated and what not after being in a small room argueing with each other for over 12 hours. She said that unfortunately a hotel cannot be arranged after about noon, because of the logistics of organising everthing and everyone for it. So I bet the judge was kicking himself! Everyone has to stay available while the jury is deliberating, so all the counsel were there along with the accused, the judge, the usher, and the clerk of arraigns. There was also a guy in a van downstairs waiting the whole time to take the accused away if we found them guilty.
Oh, the verdicts? Well, we were informed that to find someone guilty of fraud (beyond reasonable doubt), we needed to have proof of three things.
1) That a detriment occured (in this case to F+P). The judge expanded on this to say that it did not matter if F+P received other value for it, just that they paid on something that was false.
2) That an act of deceipt/fraud was committed (by the accused).
3) That the intent to defraud was present at the time of the fraud.
Also, innocent until proved guilty. For a few we thought they were guilty but found them not guilty because there was reasonable doubt. We found the state manager guilty a few more times than the cabinet maker, because we couldn't always find intent on the cabinet maker's part. On count 11, we couldn't decide at all for either of them. We sent a letter to the judge about the lack of decision at about 1:30am. At 1:40am-ish once the court has assembled, we were summoned from our room to the chairs in the courtroom. The judge said that in a case like this he could instigate a deadlock measure, in which he could take a verdict if only 10 out of the 12 of us agreed. We then went back to our room and found the cabinet maker not guilty - we convinced 10 of us that there was truth/reasonable doubt. Everyone was split down the exact middle for the state manager, so we declared hung for that one. See, half of us believed the cabinet maker that the invoice was for something done one year before (or thought it introduced enough reasonable doubt), and the other half believed the state manager when he said under oath that the invoice was for entertainment funds. No way either side could convince the other side. So our civil duty done, we finally got to go home. Taxi cabs were organised for us to go home in, which was nice. The judge didn't give a sentence or a date for a sentence at that session. I should call and find out sometime.
I shall just mention one other thing because Jury Duty Happenings took a lot of post space.
I have my new car now, I got it on the Thursday before Jury Duty summonings, so that makes it the 12th of November. It is a Suzuki Cino Swift 1995, 5 door. I learnt to drive in a Cino Swift, so I loved it straight away. Picked it up for a song, only $1000! The guy was leaving for the mines the next day and just wanted it sold, got the impression he'd put it in the Quokka before for more, but people got put off by what it looked like. I didn't care about the looks as much, I wanted a car that was mechanically sound and would just work for me. That's what I got, yay! It's a metallic sea-green colour. It had cobwebs on the side mirrors and the back wiper. A patch of slight rust on a small panel towards the rear of the car. A crack in the windscreen. The shiny was not shiny in spots, from over-exposure to the hot sun in mining country. That's it, that's all that looked horrible. Sweet, says I, snap and yoink, here's a deposit and I'll collect it tonight with the rest of the money.
Things this car has that Disco-Shag didn't have:
Quiet engine, 5 speed gearbox, rear wiperblade, rear de-fogging thingy, hot and cold air that works on all settings, AIR-CON (whoo!), a back seat that is comfortable to be in, a boot release lever, a driver's seat that gets as close to the pedals as I want, an engine I'm not afraid of breaking all the time, a bigger fuel tank while still having decent economy, dashboard light dimmer (swanky), an intermittent setting on the wipers, fuel injection (no more choke, baby), tinted windows. I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting.
I love this car! I get behind the wheel and I feel like I'm in a luxury car. It's such a pleasure to drive, I love driving it. So...magnificent to me.
The name? Oh. Right. The name of my wonderful new car is: Chantelle, the Green Canary.
And with those two topics, adieu until next I type.
For those of you who have not seen me or talked to me, there will be a lot to say, and patience too short to say most. I shall try anyway.
So I got a summons to Jury Duty a while back, which I believe I mentioned. I then proceeded to get picked by ballot for a trial, avoid any challenges, and got sworn in to doing my duty. Oh yes, and the trial was scheduled to go for three weeks. Yay. The day went from 10am until 4pm with an hour for lunch at 1pm. Despite being such a short day, I came home every night exhausted. You see, the case involved fraud, which is hardly exciting. Evidence involved pieces of paper and then more paper. The defence counsel were boring old men who droned on. The sheer effort involved in not only staying awake through batshit boring happenings, but then actually concentrating and paying attention to the batshit boring happenings...well, as I mentioned before, I came home exhausted every night.
A brief run-down of what the trial was about. Back in 1999-2001, the state manager of Fisher & Paykel decided he needed more money to spend entertaining clients. He got friendly with a local cabinet maker who made display kitchens for F+P products. The gist of what happened is that the cabinet maker invoiced for kitchens that he had never done, or did work but misrepresented what it was on the invoice. The state manager then signed off on it and sent it to head office to get paid. The cabinet maker would occasionaly then forward money received to the state manager, and keep a lot for himself too. There were 18 counts of fraud, and two accused. That made 36 decisions for the jury to get through. We knew it was going to take a long time to get through the deliberations, but the judge apparently had high hopes. He did not think a hotel booking needed to be arranged, or at least a hotel booking was never mentioned to us. We went into deliberations at about 1pm-1:30pm on October 31st. After it was all over (at 2am!) we asked our Jury Officer what the hell with the lack of hotel, as we were all tired and irritated and what not after being in a small room argueing with each other for over 12 hours. She said that unfortunately a hotel cannot be arranged after about noon, because of the logistics of organising everthing and everyone for it. So I bet the judge was kicking himself! Everyone has to stay available while the jury is deliberating, so all the counsel were there along with the accused, the judge, the usher, and the clerk of arraigns. There was also a guy in a van downstairs waiting the whole time to take the accused away if we found them guilty.
Oh, the verdicts? Well, we were informed that to find someone guilty of fraud (beyond reasonable doubt), we needed to have proof of three things.
1) That a detriment occured (in this case to F+P). The judge expanded on this to say that it did not matter if F+P received other value for it, just that they paid on something that was false.
2) That an act of deceipt/fraud was committed (by the accused).
3) That the intent to defraud was present at the time of the fraud.
Also, innocent until proved guilty. For a few we thought they were guilty but found them not guilty because there was reasonable doubt. We found the state manager guilty a few more times than the cabinet maker, because we couldn't always find intent on the cabinet maker's part. On count 11, we couldn't decide at all for either of them. We sent a letter to the judge about the lack of decision at about 1:30am. At 1:40am-ish once the court has assembled, we were summoned from our room to the chairs in the courtroom. The judge said that in a case like this he could instigate a deadlock measure, in which he could take a verdict if only 10 out of the 12 of us agreed. We then went back to our room and found the cabinet maker not guilty - we convinced 10 of us that there was truth/reasonable doubt. Everyone was split down the exact middle for the state manager, so we declared hung for that one. See, half of us believed the cabinet maker that the invoice was for something done one year before (or thought it introduced enough reasonable doubt), and the other half believed the state manager when he said under oath that the invoice was for entertainment funds. No way either side could convince the other side. So our civil duty done, we finally got to go home. Taxi cabs were organised for us to go home in, which was nice. The judge didn't give a sentence or a date for a sentence at that session. I should call and find out sometime.
I shall just mention one other thing because Jury Duty Happenings took a lot of post space.
I have my new car now, I got it on the Thursday before Jury Duty summonings, so that makes it the 12th of November. It is a Suzuki Cino Swift 1995, 5 door. I learnt to drive in a Cino Swift, so I loved it straight away. Picked it up for a song, only $1000! The guy was leaving for the mines the next day and just wanted it sold, got the impression he'd put it in the Quokka before for more, but people got put off by what it looked like. I didn't care about the looks as much, I wanted a car that was mechanically sound and would just work for me. That's what I got, yay! It's a metallic sea-green colour. It had cobwebs on the side mirrors and the back wiper. A patch of slight rust on a small panel towards the rear of the car. A crack in the windscreen. The shiny was not shiny in spots, from over-exposure to the hot sun in mining country. That's it, that's all that looked horrible. Sweet, says I, snap and yoink, here's a deposit and I'll collect it tonight with the rest of the money.
Things this car has that Disco-Shag didn't have:
Quiet engine, 5 speed gearbox, rear wiperblade, rear de-fogging thingy, hot and cold air that works on all settings, AIR-CON (whoo!), a back seat that is comfortable to be in, a boot release lever, a driver's seat that gets as close to the pedals as I want, an engine I'm not afraid of breaking all the time, a bigger fuel tank while still having decent economy, dashboard light dimmer (swanky), an intermittent setting on the wipers, fuel injection (no more choke, baby), tinted windows. I'm sure there's other things I'm forgetting.
I love this car! I get behind the wheel and I feel like I'm in a luxury car. It's such a pleasure to drive, I love driving it. So...magnificent to me.
The name? Oh. Right. The name of my wonderful new car is: Chantelle, the Green Canary.
And with those two topics, adieu until next I type.
