One More Civic Duty for Mayor: Jury Service

Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa was cooling his heels in the dingy downtown criminal courthouse Wednesday morning, just another Joe Schmo with a jury summons.

It didn’t matter that he had meetings scheduled with the president of United Airlines and the mayor of Busan, South Korea.

To the Los Angeles County court system, “indispensability at work” is no excuse for skipping out on jury duty -- even if you’re the head of the nation’s second-largest city.

And so, for what seemed like the first time in his 2 1/2 -month tenure, the mayor who prides himself on kinetic energy was engaged in that defining act of jury service: waiting around.

For a major portion of his four-hour stint at the criminal courthouse, Villaraigosa was parked on a bench in a crowded hallway, twiddling his cellphone, tapping his shoes and waiting to hear if he’d be assigned to a nearby courtroom.

His secretary, Cathy Finley, stood at his shoulder with a stack of binders stuffed with official city business. Members of his security detail briefed him on developing police matters.

But there was time to kill.

A steady trickle of fans stopped by, and Villaraigosa chatted them up. He hung out with reporters and made standard-issue small talk with other nonfelonious citizens who had been called to fulfill their civic duty.

“We’ve been here since the end of July,” a juror named Francisco Coronado said after introducing himself.

“July?” the mayor said. “Oh, my God!”

It was good-natured commiserating, not a bitter complaint. Indeed, Villaraigosa said he hoped his presence would send a message about the importance of jury duty.

He said this was the third time he had been summoned in the last five years.

“Look,” he said, “I tell people that serving on a jury is an honor and one of the most important obligations of citizenship.”

That positive attitude may come in handy. Before his lunch break, Villaraigosa was told to report to a criminal courtroom Monday morning. There, prosecutors and defense lawyers may quiz him and even put him on a case.

The mayor said his last summons came about a year and a half ago, when he was serving as a City Council member.

He said he was nearly tapped to serve on a jury but was eventually dismissed because he knew the judge, the public defender and the prosecutor, raising potential conflict of interest concerns.

“I said, ‘I know all three of you and I don’t want anybody to think I was taking sides,’ ” Villaraigosa said. “They finally took me off.”

Mark Geragos, the L.A.-based defense attorney who represented Scott Peterson, figures there is little chance that Villaraigosa will get a seat at a criminal trial -- not because he is mayor, but because he once headed a local chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union.

“I don’t think the mother of a prosecutor has been born that’s going to allow a member of the ACLU to remain a member of their jury in a criminal case,” Geragos said.

Villaraigosa is not the only L.A. mayor to be ordered to report for potential jury duty. James K. Hahn was called a couple of times during his four-year tenure but was never chosen to serve on a jury. Richard Riordan was summoned in 1996 and spent two weeks on call in a courthouse. He read a few books, helped a prospective juror with a jigsaw puzzle and took at least one nap.

That two-week minimum commitment for prospective jurors was the norm in California until 2000, when the courts moved to a “one day, one trial system.” Now, prospective jurors such as Villaraigosa can check in from home to learn if they need to report to court over the course of a week.

When a prospective juror is called in, administrators have the day -- and that day only -- to determine if that person should be assigned to a courtroom. Prospective jurors dismissed from service at the end of the day will not be summoned again for at least a year.

Villaraigosa was told to show up Wednesday, and halfway through the day he was assigned to a courtroom where lawyers will determine whether he will serve as a juror.

The mayor would be able to get out of it only if Los Angeles faced a serious emergency, said Judge Jackie Connor, chairwoman of the Los Angeles County Superior Court system’s trial jury committee. “If this was New Orleans, we’d look at it differently,” Connor said.

The dress code for jury duty is described as “casual ... but respectful of the court.” Villaraigosa, who rarely stoops to business casual attire, arrived in a crisp black suit and a gold silk tie. But he seemed right at home in the bustling public spaces.

Although the criminal courthouse is across the street from City Hall, its atmosphere is a world away from the stately home of the city’s government, with its high frescoed ceilings and engraved quotations from the likes of Cicero.

The fifth floor hallway -- which leads to the courtroom of Judge Lance Ito, among others -- was a bustling, chaotic scene. Accused felons consulted with their lawyers. Inconvenienced mothers crocheted angrily. An unhappy toddler keened in the background.

But Villaraigosa smiled his way through the morning.

He ran into Ara Bedrosian, an attorney he has nominated for the Police Permit Review Board. He wrote “Si, se puede” (“Yes, we can,” a rallying cry of the labor movement) on a copy of the weekly Los Angeles Downtown News for a Spanish-speaking mother and her six children.

Coronado, the 29-year-old juror, said it was heartening to see that the court system didn’t give special treatment to the powerful.

“It’s nice to see that the mayor’s actually here,” he said, “that he’s actually waiting out here like everybody else.”

Officer David Torres of the Los Angeles Police Department wasn’t so sure. When asked if a mayor on jury duty was a wise use of taxpayer funds, he took the 5th.

“No comment,” he said.