Late Night, Early Morning in Seattle

We're in Seattle on a 19 hour bender to testify at a criminal trial Tuesday morning. It's for a car crash that happened 4.5 years ago.

The county got us comfy digs at the Marriott Renaissance hotel downtown. After I gave the hotel my Marriott membership number, with my lifetime Titanium status, they upgraded us to a corner junior suite with a wraparound view. Woohoo, right?!



...Except the wraparound view is of the freeway. It's a good thing we're not here for the view.

It was about 8:30pm when we got to the room. Our first order of business after dropping our bags was to get some dinner. Food choices are actually poor here in downtown Seattle. There was basically nothing within a 1/2 mile radius that was open at that hour, other than the hotel's bar downstairs. So to the hotel's bar we went. The food was... okay... and expensive.

We stayed up until about 11pm. It felt like we should have more time in the evening to do personal stuff. I figure that's because the flight swiped several hours of our time. We didn't want to stay up too late so we turned out the lights at about 11. Our morning alarms rang at 6:00 so we could get up, shower, dress, eat breakfast, and walk over to the courthouse in plenty of time for our 8:30am appearance.

Four and a half years— and 15 minutes— later

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.

Back Home Again... for at least a FEW Days

We flew home this afternoon from our quick trip to Seattle to testify at a criminal trial. Our time on the ground was barely 20 hours. We landed just before 8pm Monday and took off just before 4pm Tuesday. Our time outside SEA airport was even shorter than than, less than 15 hours, as we got back to the airport before 11am today. We killed several hours at the airport.

Why kill several hours at the airport? Well, first, our participation in the trial was brief once it finally happened, as I explained in the link above. We had a flight booked several hours later in case things went even slower at the the trial this morning than they actually did. As this case is already 4½ years in the making, I figured nobody would bat an eye if it fell several hours further behind at this point.

Second, we did look at switching to an earlier flight. One of the benefits of our tickets on Alaska Airlines is that we could change for free with confirmed seats. With Alaska having its hub in SEA, and building up its service in SJC, there are several flights each way daily. A minus, though, was that the only seats on the flight 3 hours earlier were middles toward the back. Nope! I'd rather spend 3 extra hours in an airport with free wifi and a comfortable chair than even 2 hours in a middle seat in coach.

Today I was pretty tired from being run ragged. I fell asleep for a short nap in my seat at the gate. You know I must have been tired to sleep sitting up in an airport. I couldn't even do that last time I was stranded overnight at an airport! Then I slept for most of the 2 hour flight to SJC.

We walked through our front door this evening just after 6:30pm. We walked in and promptly turned around... to go out for dinner. We ate at a local favorite pizza-and-subs place. It was comfort food and low-key. We needed that after feeling run ragged by the travel.

As I talk about feeling run ragged, though, you know what's funny? I already have the next trip booked. In fact I booked it last night from our hotel in Seattle. This weekend we're going to see the superbloom in Southern California! We'll leave less than 72 hours after we go home this evening. 😰