Jury Selection

After six weeks of the trial, the last closing arguments were given. What a relief. I had sat in that jury box all that time. It was a comedy for me, but a tragedy for the accused.

The end of the prosecution and defense happened on the Wednesday night before Thanksgiving, and many had complained there was no way they could come back to this goddamned place after the holidays to deliberate. Enough was enough. No, we’ll end this tonight and get on with our lives.

How could I speak up? I wasn’t even allowed.

After a brief break, all the jurors were herded back out to the courtroom and sat down, hopefully for the last time, in the uncomfortable chairs. The judge read the 26 pages of jury instructions, and then she sequestered everyone for deliberations.

No one deliberated. That’s what I knew. Everyone asked about everyone else’s Thanksgiving plans. The menu. The visitors. The big game.

“Let’s start our holidays, shall we?” asked the foreman. “I think I speak for everyone here when I say ‘guilty.’” The silent affirmation, polite and discrete, would have been deafening.

When I heard this and I was speechless. Everyone was ready to convict in just 45 minutes, which included dinner from Subway and a cursory acceptance of the jury instructions. The judge had said just reviewing the evidence would take a week, and gave vibes that she felt it could go either way.

“Pain doctors,” Juror #4 had said with a sneer.

“Pain doctors,” agreed Juror #11, but his agreement was probably just with Juror #4′s sneer.

The rest laughed. I heard this, yet I remained silent when I did.

“Um,” Juror #7 had said, “Are we at all disturbed that the head DEA agent lied about the physical exams...saying the doctors didn’t do any..that they didn’t even have exam tables in the rooms?” Juror #9 had rifled through the exhibits and found the pictures from the raid which showed the exam tables.

“How could they do ’em with these boxes on top?” Juror # 2 had asked.

“Look closely,” said Juror #7. “Those are boxes labeled ‘DEA EVIDENCE.’”

“Oh, c’mon!” the foreman shouted. That’s what I heard. “They’re pain doctors. It was a pill mill, for Christ’s sake!”

“The charts showed the exams,” argued Juror #7.

“These are electronic medical records,” the foreman had explained. “You can just copy and paste all that stuff.”

“Um,” again interrupted Juror #7, “are we at all disturbed that the prosecutor planted evidence?”

“What? Where?” challenged the foreman.

“The letter. That letter from that patient’s mother.”

Juror #9 had fished out a hand-written letter and read, “Please stop treating my son for pain. The Lord will heal him, but instead you’re just getting him addicted. Last week he overdosed. You’re killing my son.” He then pulled the chart, comparing the date of the letter and the office visit dated the next day. “Patient reports medication is making him functional and controlling the pain. Pain scale is 3. No problems reported.” He stopped and made an expression of confusion. “What is the address of the clinic?” he asked.

Juror #12 read the address from one of the other charts.

“The zip code is wrong,” said Juror #7. “There’s no Bates stamp on this letter. They never got this letter.”

“So what?” the foreman had answered. “They’re Pill Mill doctors. The prosecutor said all we had to do was find just one—just one!—case in which we thought these so-called doctors prescribed narcotics in—let’s see—how’d he put it—in an ‘other than legitimate medical’ way.”

“Yea,” agreed Juror # 10. “What about that Green patient?”

“Yea, the Green patient,” agreed the foreman. “Remember, he said there was no way these doctors didn’t know we were lying to get drugs.”

“Yea,” Juror #10 said again, adding, “the prosecutor said that suspecting something is a lie and not trying to find out for sure is called 'deliberate ignorance.'”

“Is that a crime?” asked Juror #12.

“Wasn’t Green,” pointed out Juror #7, “one of the patients they dismissed from their practice for doctor-shopping? These guys even reported him—not to mention—about 200 others—to the DEA with the evidence of their doctor shopping.”

“Does that really matter?” asked Juror # 2, as his first volley into it.

“OK,” Juror #7 had pointed out, “you get caught and your doctor reports you to the DEA for drug diversion—with the evidence. Then the prosecutor calls you and says, ‘Hey, how’d you like to helps us out? Testify against these doctors and you get a chance to lessen what we do to you.’”

“Not to mention,” added Juror #2 with I could only imagine was an air of epiphany, “payback to the very doctors who turned ’em in.”

“In fact,” Juror #9 informed everyone after taking a moment to stack several charts in some order that he had been using, “every one of these patients had been busted.”

“And,” added Juror #7, as I heard it, “they actually admitted they were liars, by testifying they lied to the doctors to get the drugs.”

“Yea,” the foreman said, “but really! Where there’s smoke…right? All of them you can explain? I don’t think so. Remember, all we need is one. I mean, these doctors are here in trial. Something must have been going on. They wouldn’t be here if there wasn’t, right?”

“Yea,” answered Juror #12, “a lot of deliberate ignorance.”

“Certainly, there’s at least one instance here in six weeks of testimony,” agreed Juror #5, “where something fishy was going on. They probably knew.” A lot of nodding in agreement.

That’s when the room fell silent.

Silence can be heard. That’s what I heard. It killed me, but I remained silent.

“What about the prosecutor’s expert witness—the real pain doctor,” the foreman had offered.

“Dr. Whats-his-name,” Juror #8 jumped in.

“Yea,” the foreman said.

“He does the same thing, doesn’t he?” asked Juror #7. “Why isn’t he in trouble?”

“Because,” the foreman had explained, “he also sticks needles in people. He doesn’t just write prescriptions. He does blocks, too, and spinal taps—stuff like that. He doesn’t just write prescriptions.”

“But,” Juror #7 continued, “even he has a segment of his patient population where all that stuff didn’t work.”

“And?” asked the foreman.

“Well, for them, he just writes prescriptions. So how come he’s not on trial?”

“Because,” the foreman said sternly, “as I told you, he does other things, too.”

Right, I thought, the needles and stuff.

“Damn right,” someone had agreed.

“I just wonder,” Juror #7 had said to the foreman, and I pictured him whispering it for emphasis, “what’s the difference between the patients the good doctor writes prescriptions for and the ones the bad doctors write them for?”

“Because,” the foreman had answered in a mocking whisper right back, “he’s a good doctor and these guys are Pill Mill doctors.” That’s how I heard it.

“So, you’re saying Pill Mill doctors discharge over 20% of their patients with suspicious drug screens and report ’em to the DEA?”

“This one did,” said Juror #2.

“Yea,” said the foreman. “What better way for Pill Mill doctors to keep in the DEA’s good graces and keep from getting caught.”

“Listen,” Juror #9 had said, “the charge is conspiracy. We just have to all feel like they wanted to do this. We don’t have to prove they did it.”

“That’s right,” the foreman had said. “Conspiracy. Am I right, everyone?” He looked around the room.

"Conspiracy of manslaughter for the overdose? Can you conspire to commit manslaughter?" asked Juror #7. "Is that a thing?"

"I don't think that really matters," concluded the foreman.

That’s how I heard it, and still I remained silent.

“Bailiff,” he had called out the door. “Please tell the judge we’re ready with our verdict.” He had paused for one last look at everyone. “Right?” he added. No one said anything. “I don’t know about you, but after six long, boring weeks I’m ready to get this all finished. Tomorrow’s Thanksgiving and I sure as hell don’t wanna have to come back here after the holidays and do this again.”

Justice in action. That’s how I heard everything. Speechless. I’ll never know the whole story, but I certainly had enough doubt to not convict. The DEA lied, the prosecutor lied, the patients lied. Everyone lied. But it didn’t really matter what I thought. I wouldn’t be saying anything. I was only an alternate juror, and I would be home for Thanksgiving no matter what happened, but I’d hear all about it.

The doctors went to prison. That’s how I heard it.