Jury-Rigged : Courts Building Tries the Patience of Jurors, Who Say the Cramped Waiting Room Is Murder

It’s cramped, crowded, noisy. People wait outside in a smoky corridor. Is this the latest “in spot” on the all-night party circuit?

No, it’s the jury room at the West Los Angeles Courts Building, one of the county’s shabbiest judicial enclaves, where the supervising judge holds court in a trailer in which two pillars block the view of spectators, and where, until just a few months ago, traffic cases were heard in an old shoe store.

The shoe store is empty now, slated for demolition to make way for a parking lot. Traffic tickets and small-claims cases have been moved to new, rented quarters in an office building on Robertson Boulevard.

But jurors are still griping about conditions at the courthouse, where their assembly room seats only 40, and where as many as 135 have been called at a time in recent weeks.

Although half a dozen Winslow Homer prints set a nautical tone in the L-shaped room, the air is hardly as bracing as a sea breeze.

Smoking is banned in the room itself, but nonsmokers are often forced to share benches with tobacco users in the hallway. Smoking is also allowed on a sunny, 17-seat patio that opens off the jury assembly room.

“Lord have mercy,” said juror Alice Jenkins, a placement interviewer for the state employment office. She was reading “Dear Abby” as she waited to be called for the reading of the verdict in a case in which she served as an alternate.

“If you smoke it’s OK, but it’s stuffy and smoky,” she said. “Why in the world do they call us down here to sit day after day? It’s a waste of time and a waste of taxpayers’ money. I’m bored stiff, and I’ve read till my eyes were tired.”

She also said she was worried about feeding her parking meter a few blocks away.

Jenkins’ complaints were typical, but county officials said they are doing the best they can, under the circumstances.

Many jurors are routinely assigned to a call-in system, which allows them to go about their business, provided they call in twice a day to see if they are needed.

But there is always a pool of at least 35 potential jurors on hand, and the seven judges and one commissioner assigned to the West Los Angeles Branch of the Los Angeles Municipal Court District often require extra panels. Often, though, these extra jurors end up being sent back to the jury room if attorneys settle a case at the last minute.

“You never know if cases are going to trial or not,” said Ann Keough, supervising judge of the West Los Angeles court. “Some that you think will, do not, and vice versa.”

As a result, there are frequently days when more than 100 jurors are called to report in person, said Sandra Barone, a county employee who keeps track of jurors at the courthouse. It happened twice during the first two weeks of this year, she said.

Although she expressed some sympathy for her charges, Barone noted that they generally have to spend only two weeks on jury duty. Most of the criminal misdemeanor cases heard at the courthouse last only a few days, and many employers do not pay the salaries of jurors for more than 10 days of jury duty.

“It’s a privilege being a citizen,” she sighed with the sigh of someone who has heard the same complaints many times.

“It (jury duty) is a duty, and I don’t think they should complain, but they’re sitting here for so many hours, so they get tired,” Barone said.

“I let them go out and take walks for 10 minutes if they ask to do that, because sometimes they have to stretch their legs.”

Robert J. Quist, deputy administrator for the Los Angeles Municipal Court District, also made sympathetic noises, saying: “It’s terrible, and I really don’t have any easy answers now. . . . We’re going to have crowded conditions until we open up new courthouses.”

He said the opening of new facilities on Robertson Boulevard has reduced the number of people visiting the West Los Angeles Courts Building by 60%, easing parking problems and congestion in the hallways.

He also said workers are already cleaning out a 5,700-square-foot space for three new courtrooms in the West Los Angeles Municipal Building, which is across Purdue Avenue from the courthouse on a cul-de-sac just south of Santa Monica Boulevard.

The new space, scheduled to be ready sometime during the summer, will take the place of three temporary courtrooms now housed in trailers, he said.

Eventually, he said, plans call for construction of an entirely new courthouse in West Los Angeles with room for up to 10 courtrooms. The existing building, erected in 1960, would make way for a landscaped plaza.

The workload will also be relieved by the construction of a new courthouse at Imperial Boulevard and Aviation Boulevard, near Los Angeles International Airport, which will handle all Westside cases south of the Santa Monica Freeway.

Money for the new construction is expected to come from extra penalties tacked onto traffic, criminal and parking fines.

“If everything goes well, by 1995 we’d bring back the courts from Robertson and also be able for the first time in 15 years or more to have civil trials and unlawful detainer (tenant eviction) trials at Purdue,” he said.

Westside civil cases and land lord-tenant gripes now are heard at the central courthouse in downtown Los Angeles, while the West Los Angeles court handles criminal misdemeanors and felony preliminary hearings and arraignments.

“Everybody is trying to address the problem. It just takes time and effort to do so, not to mention money,” said Juanita Blankenship, director of juror management for the Los Angeles County Superior Court.

The Superior Court system supplies jurors not just for its own courts but also for municipal courts such as those on Purdue Avenue.

Editorial assistant Christina V. Godbey contributed to this story.