And justice for all

Whenever anyone in my peer group mentions the words "jury duty," it's immediately preceded or followed by some version of the phrase "get out of." As in, "I got called for jury duty last year, but I managed to get out of it." Or, "I'd hate to have my fate rest in the hands of a bunch of idiots who couldn't get out of jury duty."

Well, I suppose I am one of those idiots, because I could not get out of jury duty. To be more precise, I did not get out of jury duty. I could've tried harder, I suppose. It's not as if I actually wanted to be on the jury. Work has been kicking my ass lately, and this was not going to help. The judge told us from the outset that it was a second-degree murder case that would run for at least a week and a half. Good-bye, one day of waiting around and quick dismissal; good-bye, easy two-day trial in which someone stubs his toe on a fire hydrant and sues the fire department. The second the judge said it was a murder trial, I was sitting there half-thinking, how on earth am I going to get out of this? and half-thinking, well, at least it'd be interesting, and what if I got out of it and got sent back to the jury pool and had to sit on some lame personal-injury lawsuit instead? Then what? And the way my luck was going this week, I just knew, the second the court guy (I have no idea what his official title is, but he wasn't the judge) called out the name of the prospective juror for seat number six, that I was going to get called for seat number seven. I knew it. And I was right.

So here's the thing. I could have tried harder to get out of it. But first of all, I was sitting in an actual courtroom, in the jury box, being questioned by a judge, with the defendant sitting across the room staring at me. I've never been in a courtroom before. When I had jury duty before (and managed to get out of a lame personal-injury lawsuit), we were questioned by two pretty cheesy lawyers in what looked to be a conference room. A criminal voir dire is a whole 'nother story. It's sobering, to say the least. I mean, it's one thing to stretch the truth when you're answering to an ambulance-chasing lawyer in a bad suit and nude pantyhose. It's another thing to, well, lie to a judge.

Second, it seemed fairly clear that both of the lawyers wanted me. (Wanted me on the jury, silly.) That's not my ego talking or anything. There weren't that many people in the first pool of prospective jurors who had college degrees, and I figured they wanted some variety; also, I was one of the few non-blacks (and the only Asian), so again, variety. More to the point, they barely asked me anything. Everyone else got the third degree, and if they had asked me similar questions, I might have revealed certain biases honed from, say, working at The Nation and writing a column on wrongful conviction; or having a million lawyer friends, half of whom have either worked or currently work in public defense. I don't trust cops. Race is a pretty big issue with me. I have a knee-jerk sympathy (born of liberal guilt) for the disenfranchised, whether they deserve it or not. But no, while the D.A. grilled other people about how long they'd worked at their current job, and what they did before that, or how they felt about being a potential juror, or whether or not they could trust eyewitness testimony (to which my answers would have been, "eight months," "worked at The Nation writing a column on wrongful conviction," "not so psyched," and "not at all"), all he asked me was what kind of writing I did. And when I said I wrote about movies, he smiled and said, "Reviews?" and I said, yeah, something like that, and then he went to the next person. That was it. For whatever reason, he had looked at me and thought, jackpot, she's my girl! Whoo, model citizen! I resent that a little. That's racial profiling, man. Or whatever.

But the third reason I didn't try to argue my way off the jury was simple. Everyone else was doing it. And everyone else was doing it in such a pathetically desperate, blatantly exaggerated manner that it made me embarrassed for the human condition. All of a sudden, no one in the jury box could understand English—I'm talking at least four people who claimed, in good English, that they didn't understand anything the judge had said. Everyone had work concerns. Everyone had a problem with being involved in a murder trial. One woman behind me said she had a medical condition that made her have problems with "memory loss and cognition," and she also got easily fatigued, so she might fall asleep or collapse or something during the trial. (I guess her problems with memory loss explain why she forgot to mention any of this before.) The jackass sitting next to me, a huge man in a denim jacket who apparently managed some kind of messenger service, couldn't stop sighing loudly about how "retarded" this whole thing was, and raised his hand every time the judge or one of the lawyers asked a question starting with "Would anyone have a problem with ...?" When the judge asked whether anyone had ever been the victim of a crime, after about seven or eight people had weighed in with "attempted rape," "car theft," and "my house was broken into," this guy raised his hand at the last minute and said defiantly, "Someone stole my Metrocard and swiped it." The nerve! What is the world coming to, when innocent messenger-service managers are subject to such terrible crimes? Later, he raised his hand again and said that because he was going to lose so much business over the course of two weeks, he would make a really bad juror since during deliberations, if everyone else thought the guy was guilty, he was going to say he was guilty; if everyone else said innocent, he'd say innocent, just for the sake of ending things.

So yeah, the reason I didn't speak up and try to get off the jury was that my sense of irritation at potentially having to serve on this jury was far outweighed by my sense of pride. Or maybe it was shame. I listened at these losers doing everything they could to get thrown off, and at first I thought, I don't want in any way to be associated with them. Then I thought, I wouldn't want these people on the jury, either. Because here's the thing. If, God forbid, I should ever stand trial for anything, then I would want the jury to be made up of people like me—not idiots, not geniuses, just people who have a reasonable amount of sense and will try to be fair. Maybe it's not such a good thing to perpetuate the idea that smart people should get out of jury duty, and that the fate of the accused will be decided by fools. In the end, despite my admittedly negative body language and thinly veiled glare of resentment, I said nothing except that yes, I would try to listen to the evidence. And I got picked.

Anyway, after an initial struggle and a serious conversation with my managers at work, I have made my peace with this thing. I'm on the jury for a second-degree murder trial, and I can only hope that in the end, I can be open-minded and fair and decisive, despite the fact that I might have to be responsible for sending some young kid—and he does look young—to prison for the majority of his adult life. Of course, knowing me, I'm going to be the lone skeptic hold-out jerk who ties the jury up in deliberations for days. They're gonna love me.

Oh, and one more thing: Now that I'm resigned to my fate, I totally want to be foreperson. Wouldn't you?

Comments

[Mike]

Giving some comment love back. Good luck tipping the scales of justice.

[HH]

You are doing the right thing. You're in criminal court - those cases in NYC go faster than any in civil cases - and folks here in the big city get called for civil cases separate from criminal. Criminal cases are more interesting - so they say. I served on a criminal case once (empanelled once, dismissed, and another time dismissed because I was never called, that latter was pure luck). My colleague jurors were a mix of pros: lawyers, doctors, a stockbroker, a retail manager, a couple of freelance writers, a social worker, etc. A well-educated group. The case was attempted robbery and assault. And then, we were sequestered. That's right: sequestered, an overnight haul in a yellow school bus up to Tarrytown, placed in a cheap-ass Holiday Inn, where we could not discuss the case, no tv, no phone calls, zilch. And we wound up hung. Later, through capricious circumstance, I ran into the "victim," and I found out that the defendant had two priors and that we were the second jury trial. It went to a third, after which the defendant was found guilty. We were never allowed to know of his priors, and one person on the jury stuck her heels in, claiming the prosecutor did not make her case. It was incredible. All of it. So, you have a second degree murder case - in NY, that's the biggie. If nothing else, it should prove fascinating - most of the time. And yes, you should be foreperson.