Word: direness
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Other tenants elsewhere have claimed harassment at the hands of HRE; other apartments are rumored to have been held off the market, a sin of the first magnitude in a city with a dire housing shortage. The stories are less black and white, but it seems reasonable, surely, to believe that a University that would send a lawyer to observe a meeting of tenants is capable of a good deal worse. And that is what dampens some of the ebullience surrounding the University Place settlement. It was Schmidt, after all, who sent Erickson to the meeting. And it was Schmidt...
...main reasons for all the waiting in many courts is the long and sometimes pointless interrogations known as voir dire. Scene: a maple-paneled room in Manhattan Supreme Court. At issue: a small drug sale. "Are you living with anybody?" the defense lawyer asks a middle-aged widow. The woman looks uncomfortable. "We're not gossip columnists," the judge intervenes. "We only want to ask questions that determine if you are a fair and impartial juror. Many people nowadays live together." The woman says she lives alone. The questioning continues...
...worst thing is not the irrelevant questions," says one survivor of voir dire, "but the fact that you're locked into a dingy room with 30 other would-be jurors and two or more lawyers, who then proceed to pound each of you with the same questions. This can take a half-hour or more for each juror, and then you have to hear it all over and over again. After a day or so, you'll grab at anything...
...common for the jury-selection process to take longer than the trial itself," notes New York Supreme Court Justice Arnold Fraiman. That complaint is hard to document, but a new study by three professors at the City University of New York does show that voir dire in an average felony trial in New York City takes eight hours over the course of 2½ days. The professors estimate that New York City judges trying felony cases spend at least one-third of their time on jury selection, and that one basic reform could provide the equivalent in man-hours...
...questions from the opposing lawyers, he is apt simply to ask the prospective jurors about their general ability to reach a fair verdict. The average time spent on jury selection in federal court is two hours, and, according to the C.U.N.Y. study, there is no evidence that longer voir dire significantly changes the rate of conviction...