Tales & Trails of a Traveling Wiseguy

Hawk and I gave testimony this morning at the criminal trial stemming from the car crash we were involved in 4½ years ago. I've already written about why it took so long to get to this point. Now that the time finally came, and we traveled to Seattle at taxpayer expense for the trial, it's... anticlimactic.

We were at the courthouse in Seattle before 8am this morning, arriving in plenty of time for what we were told would be an 8:30am appearance in the trial. We waited in the offices of the prosecuting attorney. He came at around 8:15.

"Dang, he's a kid!" I chuckled to myself. He looked no older than 25. He probably gets carded 100% of the time. But it's common that lawyers in the district attorneys' s offices are young. It's one of the few places were young law school graduates can get jobs that routinely involve representing cases in court, as opposed to merely doing research all day to help make much more senior counselors look good when they appear in court.

The prosecutor spent 30 minutes or so reviewing with us the evidence he planned to present in conjunction with our testimony. For me it was a recording of the 911 phone call I made and a trio of photographs of the scene of the accident, two of which I recognized as pictures I took (and shared with the police detective investigating the case 3 days after the accident).

They took us up to the court room sometime after 9am. 8:30 testimony? Ha. Even after 9 "a few people weren't ready yet"— which included a few of the jurors, the defendant, and the judge. We sat on a hard wooden bench in the corridor until the court was ready.

As I sat waiting for the judge to come to work— and, to be fair, for the defendant in handcuffs with a police escort to arrive— I marveled at the contradictions of the courthouse building itself. It's an imposing historical building (built in 1916) with all the corridors swathed in polished stone but cheap old fixtures everywhere. For example a 1950s-ish water fountain emblazoned with the logo of a company long since bankrupt, clumsily retrofitted for 21st century expectations like filling water bottles.

Hawk was called in to testify first, then I was called in. I observed the 14 member jury was composed of 9 women, 5 men. 8 were White or appeared White. 6 were people of color, including 1-2 South Asian and at least 2 East/North Asian.

My testimony was brief, about 15 minutes total. Half of that time was spent sitting quietly while the attorneys struggled to get the IT and A/V setup working correctly to play my 911 call.

Dang, I sounded stupid on that 911 call. "I don't know where I am," I pleaded at one point. It might have sounded to jurors like I was disoriented. It wasn't that. It was <insert Apple Maps joke> because my phone's map app kept showing me a moving circle when I was trying to explain my location to the 911 dispatcher. If I'd had any chance to prepare I'd have been way smoother. 😅

The defense lawyer had no questions for me as a witness. I was surprised by that. I thought surely he'd want something on the record about my testimony. For example, he could have gently challenged my recollection of specific details— as it was 4½ years ago. He could have underscored my testimony that I didn't actually see the car hit us before it hit us. He also could have underscored my testimony that I didn't see who exited the driver's seat of the car that caused the accident. That's a common ploy in vehicular assault/reckless driving cases— "There no proof the defendant was driving the vehicle!"

Like I said, it was all anticlimactic. All this effort and expense at 4½ years out.

This afternoon it was Planes, Trains, and Automobiles to Seattle. We're in town to testify at a criminal trial tomorrow morning.

Today's journey started when we hopped in an Uber just 19 hours after arriving home last night. Repacking between trips wasn't hard. a) Very little is reused between the previous trip and this one. They're for different purposes and to very different climates. It was 103° and sunny in Phoenix yesterday. It's 55° and drizzling in Seattle. b) This trip is brief, just one night, so there wasn't much to pack. Oh, and c) experienced traveler. It's not my first less-than-24-hours-at-home rodeo.

Lines at SJC were surprisingly short when we arrived sometime around 3:30pm. That was surprising because it seems like nowadays everything is running at capacity in the airline business. Sure enough our flight was 100% full. I guess we simply beat the crowd to the security lines.

This trek had a slightly different experience than all the rest. We flew Alaska Airlines. I haven't flown Alaska other than once 10 years and several hundred thousand miles ago. More to the point, it's only the second or third time in that long I've flown in economy on any airline as a no-status passenger. What would it be like?

Flying Alaska was surprisingly better than flying no-status would've been on some other airlines. I had a good seat assigned... though that may have been a perk of the county's volume purchase relationship with the airline whose hub is in the county. Then I was able to select an exit row seat while checking in this morning. That, especially, was surprising. On airlines like United, exit rows are only offered to elites, and they're generally filled up days, even weeks, before departure. On the minus side, checking a bag would've cost me. Fortunately I don't do checked bags on short trips.

Also, the Alaska flight to Seattle left on time and arrived early. THAT is way different from flying Southwest! 🤣 To be fair to Southwest, though, their flight SJC-SEA this afternoon also left on time & arrived early. It figures the one time I don't fly them they manage to run on time.

Once on the ground at SEA we Ubered to our hotel downtown. I'm glad the county gave us an Uber voucher instead of asking us to take public transit. That means this chapter of "Planes, Trains, and Automobiles" doesn't actually include any trains, but it's worth it because the train from the airport to downtown is ridiculous slow. Like, seriously, if you value your time at effectively zero, go ahead and spend 90 minutes on a train with crazy people leering at you instead of 20 minutes in a private car.