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Elizabeth Weintraub
What Happens When You Report for Jury Duty in Sacramento?
The defendant’s lawyer kicked this Sacramento real estate agent out of the jury box like yesterday’s news. I wish I could tell you what happened in that courtroom but I can’t until the trial is over. However, I can tell you what it was like for me to be called in to perform my civic responsibility by reporting for jury duty in Sacramento.
To start with, I walked away feeling a bit disappointed that I was unable to serve on the jury. I realize this goes against what most people think and verbalize about serving on a jury. I mean, what’s your first reaction when you receive a notice to appear for jury duty, known as a Summons for Jury Duty? Be honest! You groan. You don’t want to do it. You might say OMG. You might use a more descriptive four-letter word. It’s a little frightening for some people as well, I imagine. You wonder how you can get out of serving on a jury, and I am betting you go through all of these emotions because you’ve never served on a jury or been involved in the process, or maybe I’m just describing myself.
My reaction — that I was disappointed — astonished me. It was not what I had anticipated. I had been expecting to feel elated to have been dismissed, and that’s not what I felt. Here’s what led up to that experience:
I was expected to report to Room 203 in the Sacramento Courthouse, which is up the stairs and to the left. This is after putting my bag on a conveyor belt to be X-rayed and walking through Security. The directions aren’t very clear about what you’re supposed to do in that room, but first you line up on the red line in front of the windows. You hand the clerk your Summons for Jury Duty, take a badge holder from the box located right under your nose, which I missed, and pick up a 4-page form to fill out.
Then, you take a seat and wait. You can check your cellphone, read a book or buy snacks / drinks from a vending machine. Eventually, there will be a G-rated movie with Robin Williams. The first video we watched was a judge, a woman, talking about why we have Jury Duty and our responsibilities under the United States Constitution. I was very happy to see a woman chosen to make that video, and am reluctant to call any judge a “woman judge” using sex as a modifier, because judges should not be viewed as female or male, they are all Superior Court Judges.
Then another judge came into the room to talk to us. He said we would be astounded to learn how many citizens in Sacramento fail to appear under a Summons for Jury Duty, and the mere fact that we were present in that room meant our parents raised us correctly. He gave a little pep talk, thanked us for our service and left. I looked around the room. A beautiful woman walked by wearing a brown polka-dotted jumpsuit, offset by a tight brown belt around her tiny waist that accentuated one of the biggest rear ends I have ever seen. I couldn’t take my eyes off her huge butt. It was out of proportion to the rest of her body.
The jury room is a great people watching place!
Next, was a young woman in her 20s, with a long pony tail, dressed in a two-piece red and white striped t-shirt and skirt. The top portion seemed twisted in the back because the back of her bra was exposed. I wondered whether it was twisted on purpose and whether I would offend her if I tapped her shoulder to point this out. I don’t know about younger kids, I mean she might say it’s the way the outfit was designed and I should mind my own business, which is exactly what I ended up doing.
When we were called upstairs to the courtroom and seated in the jury box, the judge, again another woman and I was very happy about that, began to explain some simple basic concepts to us. I listened closely, and I heard something I sort of knew in the back of my mind but did not really understand nor fully appreciate until I was seated in that jury box. I’m talking about presumed innocence. We all know that we’re supposedly presumed innocent until proven guilty, or at least that’s the way many of us repeat it.
I don’t think the word “until” is used in this particular sentence in the law. Because “until” would imply that the accused is guilty and we just haven’t proved it yet. No, the defendant is innocent UNLESS proven guilty. Totally different meaning. If there was no evidence presented against the defendant, the judge would have to let the defendant go because the defendant is presumed innocent.
And they mean it. It’s not just an ideal that is not upheld. It’s our Constitutional Right. Everyone us, if we were brought before a jury of our peers, would need to be presumed innocent unless the prosecution presents convincing evidence to the contrary. What a concept. It never struck home like it did yesterday sitting in that courtroom. There is nothing like real life experience to help shape our attitudes.
Presumed innocent unless proven guilty. I mean, who knew?
If you ever receive a Summons for Jury Duty, I hope you will go.
Reporting for Jury Duty in Downtown Sacramento
My husband cannot figure out how I got to be the age of 61 and never called in for jury duty. I don’t know, either. I’m a registered voter. But today, that lucky streak is over. I am called to report to Superior Court in downtown Sacramento at the bright and early hour of 8 AM. I had asked for an exemption because I am the sole breadwinner for my family, and I am self-employed. To serve on a jury for any extended period of time would be a hardship, but I guess I made the mistake of mentioning that I am a Sacramento real estate agent, because my excuse was denied. It’s fun to be part of a profession that is despised by so many by mistake.
Serving on a jury has me freaked out. My husband, an unemployed journalist who used to cover the court many years ago in Chicago, gave me a practice run down, so I’d know what to expect. Shot a series of questions at me. Scary stuff like: “Have you ever committed a felony?” Whoa. I don’t know. Have I? I suppose I could have somewhere in my past, let me think. You know, I was a teenager in the 1960s. What exactly constitutes a felony?
He accused me of being obstructive and obtuse. I was being completely serious. I don’t know if I would make a good jury person. They say things like you must know whether a defendant is guilty beyond all reasonable doubt. I can always find reasonable doubt. Well, except for maybe O. J. Simpson. Good thing I wasn’t on that jury because we’d still be in deadlock, or whatever.
Sometimes, you can just look at a person and know they are guilty. Know what I mean? I can look at photos of people who are now dead in the death notices in the newspaper, and I can tell if they were nice people or total jerks. It’s in the photos, their eyes, the way they hold their mouth; I can sense the sincerity of the smile, the wrinkle above the eyebrow, and let’s not even get started talking about hairstyles.
I will be asked to set aside my thoughts, not to analyze, no prejudging and to base a decision based solely on the facts presented by opposing sides who are trying to twist the law into their own favor, and I really don’t know if I can do it. I hope that doesn’t make me a bad person.
The Point Bonita Lighthouse is 2 Hours From Sacramento
There is no escaping the extreme heat in Sacramento unless one leaves town. All this week, the forecast is for temperatures above 100 degrees. Granted, it’s a dry heat, but it’s still blazing hot all the same. That’s why it was so enjoyable yesterday on our way back to Sacramento after a lovely weekend in Sausalito to take a detour and discover a hidden gem: the Point Bonita Lighthouse in the Marin Headlands.
Imagine the cool wind blowing across your face and through your hair. Imagine not thinking about what goes down must come back up. Imagine the trail, which is almost a straight shot down to the newly restored bridge that leads to the lighthouse, after it winds a path through a hand-dug tunnel covered in algae. It doesn’t seem like the 1/2 mile, which the National Park Service says it is, yet you know in your head, your aching feet and panting lungs coming back up the hill that it is almost twice that distance. If you were standing, say, a 1/2 mile away from the Lighthouse when you measured the distance, it would be a 1/2 mile, but it is NOT a 1/2 mile from the parking area. It never is.
I suggested to my scoffing husband that he count his steps. All 5,280 of them. Because a 1/4 mile is 3 city blocks. A 1/2 mile is 6 city blocks. If each block is 40-feet wide, and a city block contained about 10 houses, that would equal 400 feet 
of distance, because 10 houses x 40 feet is 400 feet per city block. You take 400 feet x 6 blocks and that equals 2400 feet or just under 1/2 of a mile. I didn’t walk by 60 houses to get to that lighthouse. No sirree, it was more than 100 houses. And I know my houses because I am a Sacrament real estate agent.
But today I would give anything to be sitting on the deck at the Point Bonita Lighthouse. Gazing at rocks dotted with sleeping sea lions and at the city of San Francisco, wrapped, no doubt, in fog.
Photos: Elizabeth Weintraub
A Weekend in Sausalito
Living in downtown Sausalito would be pretty cool if it weren’t for the close quarters that people have to share. In the summer, there are even more people. In some ways, it reminds me of Newport Beach, kind of laid back without all of those pesky beaches. The residents and tourists seem fairly well behaved and low key, kind of like being in the company of adults in Davis without the college kids around. But some of them, well, they make you want to stick a sharp object into their bicycle tires.
My friend, Myrl, another real estate agent in Sacramento, is the person who gave us the 
idea of spending a weekend in Sausalito. Myrl knows all of the cool, fun places to go. She makes me feel like I should not plan to go anywhere outside of Sacramento without calling her first and asking her where we should go. She also told us about Fort Point, which is a historic Civil War fort, built in 1861, and nestled underneath the Golden Gate Bridge, on the San Francisco side. The photo to the right is the room for the Fort Point doctor.
After climbing a stairway and then a circular stairs to the top floor, you can enjoy a spectacular view. It’s very windy. With the wind comes a chill. Now, usually it’s pretty chilly in the Bay area, and everybody knows you should bring a jacket, which I had packed but it was in my room back in Sausalito. The weather in Sausalito this weekend has been incredible. Sure, it was 128 in Death Valley and probably 109 in Sacramento, but it was a pleasant 79 degrees in Sausalito, which for Sausalito is very hot for the end of June. It was not hot, however, at Fort Point. It was cold.
It was so cold that I ducked into the onsite travel store and slid an Alcatraz jacket off its hanger. Size small. It fit me perfectly. How lucky is that? Roasty toasty. Another couple was in the store. The woman was clutching something in her hands, maybe a cannon replica, could be a deck of playing cards, it was hard to make out. They both headed toward the checkout counter when I did. The Fort Point clerk, dressed in full uniform, was there but had now disappeared. My husband wondered outloud if perhaps he had gone to perform the cannon demonstration. But then he showed up, wearing his official Civil War hat and gear for that post.
Who was here first? He asked. We looked at each other. I thought I was first, since I was standing there wearing the jacket, all zipped up, credit card whipped out and in hand. He thought so, too, and motioned me forward. I asked him to cut the price tag off the zipper up by my neck. He might not have heard what I said because he fumbled with the scanner and after realizing the scanner was attached by a cord too short to reach across the counter and up my neck, I asked a second time if he would cut the price tag off me. I was comfortable, too comfortable to remove the jacket.
The clerk reached under the counter, found a hole puncher and very carefully managed to hole-punch the plastic thingie holding the price tag and released it. He did a good job. I smiled at him and made small talk, “I imagine you sell a lot of these jackets here at Fort Point.” It was then that the couple in line behind us decided to speak up. The tall guy in the t-shirt, cutoffs and tennis shoes, skinny as a rail, snorted to his companion, “It is soooo HOT here, I can’t stand it.”You asshole. I wanted to punch him in the face. I do not go around wanting to punch people in the face. Not only is bad for a manicure, but I imagine it would bruise my knuckles.
His companion didn’t miss a beat. “I can’t stand this heat, either.” Maybe I should stand on top of her feet? Or elbow her in the gut on my way out the door? Oh, sorry, I could say, didn’t see you. It was at least 55 degrees or colder at Fort Point. Great for wine, but not great for a tourist from Sacramento wearing a sleeveless shirt.
We were treated to plenty of other conversations during our stay. See, in Sacramento, you go out to dinner and most people speak in hushed tones, regardless of how many martinis they’ve thrown back. We have confidential business dealings that others don’t need to hear. If we have personal information, we generally keep that to ourselves, behind closed doors. But not in Sausalito, apparently.
One guy, leaning up against a parking meter on his bike while yakking on his cell told everybody within earshot that he had to drop off a stool sample on Monday. Another couple dining at Copita talked over one another very loudly, so we got to hear all about how they were the ONLY couple in Mill Valley who had NOT taken their children to Hawaii, oh, the horrors. When one of their dining partners mentioned the article put out by AP about a first-hand experience by a reporter in Death Valley on that 128-degree day, the guy who forgot to bring oven mitts to wear when his steering wheel got too hot to touch, this same woman who was so cruel to her children felt it was necessary to one-up-her friend to say she read that very same article in the New Yorker. Which, of course, she hadn’t, because the AP article was written yesterday.
We thought about going to Stinson Beach, since neither of us had been there. But the line for the exit, backed up all the way down 101 said otherwise. Instead, we hopped a ferry to San Francisco, hiked over to our favorite dim sum restaurant, rode the ferry back to Sausalito and took the leisurely route back to Sacramento. Back home, where I don’t have to open my hotel room window and lean out to yell, “Do you realize we can hear every word that you are saying?”
You Can Buy and Sell at the Same Time
You may read about this remarkable real estate transaction in the Kiplinger Newsletter this fall. It’s a story about clients who decided to buy and sell at the same time, with odds against them. The thing that makes it unusual is the fact it is hard, if not pretty much darn impossible, for a home seller in Sacramento to sell his home and then buy another home concurrently with an FHA loan. Throw in the fact that the home the seller/ would be-buyer is buying is a short sale in Elk Grove, and it becomes even more unlikely. Complicate this further by the fact the home the seller is selling is located in a somewhat not so desirable location, and the scenario sounds almost crazy nuts.
It was nuts. When I initially met with this seller and his fiancé, I could sense that he wasn’t quite sure that this Sacramento Realtor could be trusted. Many people don’t trust real estate agents. Heck, many people don’t trust anybody, period. But I sometimes meet people whom I suspect have a bad taste in their mouth for agents. I can see it in their eyes.
For me, well, I have nothing to lose. A client either wants to work with me or they don’t. No skin off my nose. If they don’t want to work with me for some odd reason, I am certainly not about to try to persuade them, because the world of real estate is tough enough as it is, and I don’t need any crazy people complicating it further. I gave it to him straight. Being straight meant he either put his trust in me and listen to my advice or he can go elsewhere, and if he goes elsewhere, he probably will not buy a home. That’s how this market is today.
An FHA buyer who is putting down 3.5% often falls to the bottom of a multiple-offer presentation. Moreover, if an FHA buyer also has a home to sell as a contingency of sale, well, you can pretty much forget about it. Not gonna happen.
Except it did. I went to the seller of a short sale in Elk Grove, who was my client. Elk Grove is a super hot market in which 20 offers is not unusual. When the buyer wrote an offer through one of my team members, I explained to the seller that I was the agent responsible for selling that buyer’s home, so you know it will sell. In fact, we were so confident in my ability to sell it that the buyer gave the seller 17 days to remove his contingency to sell. Within that time period, not only did I sell the buyer’s home, but I closed it.
I submitted the offer to the short sale bank. The bank wanted more money. The seller offered the bank more money (it was Fannie Mae, which often demands over market prices). The bank approved the short sale but reduced my commission. I ended up obtaining a statement from the U.S. Treasury to prove to the bank that in a HAFA short sale, commissions cannot be reduced. The bank backed down and revised its approval. Then the buyer’s appraisal came in for the amount the buyer originally offered.
My client trusted me. Both of my clients trusted me. They both got exactly what they wished for.
The bank backed down again, reduced the price to the buyer’s original offer, and we closed yesterday. Yes, indeedy, you can certainly buy and sell at the same time.
