Law and Order - Part Three

It only takes one. One bobblehead to spoil an otherwise good group of jurors. One pompous know-it-all that makes you cringe each time the judge sends you back to the deliberation room so that he can meet with the lawyers. Just one.

And we had him.

The bobblehead's name was Marcus. Marcus looked every bit like actor Mark Walhberg if Mark Wahlberg were ever to shave his head completely bald, wear an oversized gold watch, and sport brightly colored Polo shirts. Marcus was a car salesman. It killed him, or so he stated a hundred times over the three days we were together, that he was away from the car lot.

"In sales you gotta be there to make any money!" he stated.

He was sure to let us know that after the first day alone he had more than forty phone messages on his cell phone. I wasn't aware that cell phones were quite so important to car sales.

"I called in last night and they've got three guys running all around trying to do what I normally do in a day," he boasted.

It was becoming more and more apparent, what with the phone calls and extra staff, that Marcus was the glue that held this dealership together.

But Marcus wasn't a slave to his trade. No, he liked to party and was sure to let us know all about it. Most mornings he came into the deliberation room (late, of course) and set his head down on the table. Someone would ask, "Are you alright Marcus?"

"Yeah," he'd respond. "I'm just beat. I just went to bed a few hours ago."

"Wow, that's a late night," someone would respond. I was never quite sure if they were just being nice and making small talk or if somehow Marcus was the "cool" guy they wanted to befriend. I kept my nose in a book as much as I could.

"We were all over the place last night," he explained. "It wasn't me, though. My girlfriend was dragging me around."

There were times when our courtroom schedule really cramped his plans: "I gotta get out of here. There's a new restaurant I have to try out tonight."

Any momentary silence in the room was an opportunity for him to think out loud, thus inviting others to pull him into a conversation so that he could enlighten us with yet more details about his life.

"I need to find a paper and see what time my buddy is teeing off at the US Open," he said to no one in particular.

After a few awkward seconds of silence there is a taker.

"Oh, you know Dustin Johnson?"

"Yeah, I used to party with him up at Coastal."

"Do you play golf?"

"Yeah. I played all four years in high school and had some big scholarship offers but I decided not to take them," answers Marcus.

I want to ask him how that worked out for him but, instead, I bite my tongue.

Our final day of hearings included a lot of downtime in the deliberation room while we waited for a police officer to come back to the courthouse for some follow-up questioning. We sat and sat and sat with little to do. By this point all small talk had been exhausted and we wanted this to be over. After about ten minutes of silence, of which he rested his partied-out head, Marcus shot up like rocket. Asking someone for a piece of paper, he proceeded to make a paper football.

"I'm really good at making these," he said. "I didn't pay too much attention in class when I was in high school but I could sure make a tight paper football."

I smirk and wonder if anyone saw me.

Once he finished the football the old mustached guy next to him jumped into action.

"I haven't played this in years but I'll give it a shot," he said. He got up out of his chair and moved around the table so that he could sit across from Marcus. Two other people had to stop reading their books to slide over and make room for him.

It took only a few moments to realize that Marcus was quite the expert at this game. He consistently flicked field goals right down the middle while the old guy, Bill, shanked them left and right.

"I used to never lose," bragged Marcus. "We played all the time in detention. I was in there all the time!"

I feigned a look of shock.

Marcus, at best, was a character who made this adventure a little more interesting. I'm not saying I enjoyed him but, in retrospect, he added a little flavor to what was, at times, a mind-numbing experience filled with sitting and waiting.

I would have expected that if anyone was going to provide some fireworks during our final deliberations it would have been him. I wouldn't have been surprised to see him take this final opportunity to grab just a little more stage before our final farewell. But he didn't. In the end Marcus was ready to go quietly. So, as fate would have it, someone else stepped up to take his place. Someone we would grow to disdain much more than a young, pompous car salesman.

It was Bill and he would prove to have, in addition to the mustache, quite a willingness to stand alone against us all.