As he approaches presiding more than 500 jury trials, Orange County Superior Court Judge M. Marc Kelly Wednesday reflected on two panels that stood out during Jury Appreciation Week — both from lengthy murder trials that lasted more than a month.
“You can’t help but build a bond” when jurors are together for that long, he told City News Service.
“That’s a long time,” he said. “They were committed all the way to the end.”
One of those panels still meets monthly, he said.
“Once in a while they come by to say hello” to their former judge in his courtroom in the Harbor Justice Center in Newport Beach.
Kelly even recalled a pair of jurors who fell in love during a trial.
“They ended up getting married,” Kelly said.
The judge acknowledged the reluctance many people feel when receiving a jury summons but emphasized how vital their service is.
“We ask ordinary citizens to come in and take time out of their day and away from their families to listen to facts they know nothing about and law they know nothing about — and in my experience, they get it right virtually every time,” Kelly said at a ceremony Wednesday to honor local jurors.
“I love how juries represent all walks of life,” he said. “To me it’s humanity at its finest.”
Fourth District Court of Appeal Justice Thomas Delaney, a former Orange County Superior Court judge, shared a story at the ceremony about a foreign-born defendant who was anxious about his trial. When the defendant saw a room full of people in the court, he wondered who they were, Delaney said. When told they were the jurors who would decide his fate, the defendant smiled, Delaney said.
“`I thought a government official would decide my fate, but those people look like me,”’ Delaney recalled the man telling his confused attorney.
“He thought it was a foregone conclusion,” Delaney said. “He was gone, he was done.”
Delaney didn’t know what happened in the case, but he noted the defendant realized “it was the process he began to trust. The decisions are not made by a dictator or an individual. They’re made by you.”
Delaney recalled how he once was called to jury duty in Orange County.
“And even I thought it was very inconvenient,” Delaney said. “But your role here is really critical as frustrating as it might seem.”
Orange County Superior Court Presiding Judge Maria Hernandez said the system has been upgraded by new technology that helps manage how many prospective jurors have to truck down to the courthouse.
An automated system manages how many jurors are needed based on how many trials are starting, Hernandez said. Orange County was part of the pilot project for the new system.
With the old system, hundreds of jurors would be summoned to the courthouse, but now there are days when it is more like Wednesday when only 60 jurors were needed, Hernandez said. The rest of a jury pool can call in to see if they need to go to the courthouse.
Orange County has long been fortunate in the number of residents who respond to jury summonses, Hernandez said, noting the county maintains a 50 to 60% response rate
During the COVID-19 pandemic, Hernandez recalled how some counties saw jury response rates drop as low as 7%.