Jury trial tomorrow.
I'm busy loading my weapons of choice.
And I'm looking for the whites of their eyes.
UPDATE: Tepper tells the tale.
Unfortunately, we did lose. Not in the jury box - I think I did a pretty good job of explaining the case to the jurors. As Dave has already explained, the judge didn't let the jury decide the case because, as a matter of law, the defendant couldn't be held liable for the acts of his independent contractor. (At least in this case).
I felt at least a little bit better when the attorney for the Defendant told me that my examination of the witnesses - David and the defendant - scared the daylights out of him. Like I said, I think the jury got the picture.
So we lost this time, but I think this loss is limited to this case. First of all, the Virginia legislature has significantly revamped the anti-spam laws. I don't necessarily think they are written any better this time around - they're just a s byzantine - but they are definitely tougher. And unfortunately, they make it harder for small ISP's to go after spammers, and weaken the "bounty hunter" effect the soon-to-expire law has. Of course, when the driving force behind the law is AOL, big shock that it's written to favor large ISP's.
This was my first jury trial in Virginia. One thing I found interesting about the process is how Fairfax County Circuit Court handles jury selection. When the parties first enter the room, each counsel table contains a list of the jury pool. That list contains information about each potential juror - name, address, occupation, spouse's name and occupation, and - here's the kicker - landowner status.
Yes, in a jury trial in Virginia, you are entitled to consider whether the potential juror is a landowner when selecting a jury. It makes my old joke about gaining the franchise when we bought the house a little more real.
One last interesting note about the jury pool in Fairfax County - of the occupations listed, roughly half were tech-related. Network administrator. Programmer. Computer consultant. Two of the jury pool - one of whom actually made it on to the jury - actually admitted to being regular readers of weblogs. All but one - who we didn't select - used email on a regular basis. Now you know why I said I thought the jury got it? If the rest of Fairfax County looks like this jury pool - and I have no reason to believe it won't - then Fairfax is death to the spammer whose fate rests in their hands. I look forward to trying that case next time around.
Posted by wasylik at May 6, 2003 03:00 PM | TrackBack