Out of the Box: Humanized by jury duty

An interest in reparative justice and social justice doesn’t negate the ethics of jury duty.

That interest adds, however, to the heaviness of one’s heart.

It’s kind of like a reality TV show, to be honest. Starting out in a sea of people. Checking them out as competitors and possible companions. Though, in this case, it’s something of a reverse-win because almost everyone has their fingers crossed that they will be dismissed.

Walking into the giant room — which takes up most of one full floor of a skyscraper — one can’t help but notice that the sea of faces does not quite resemble the demographics of our city. And, yet, we all know that the criminal cases will have a reverse ratio in terms of faces of color::white faces.

During the orientation, I find out why. Only registered voters are called for jury duty. How did I make it 46 years on this planet without making that connection? When I am called for jury selection (Way earlier than expected — I didn’t make it through a single thing on my while-I-am-ignored-all-day to-do list), I am comforted when another potential juror quietly comments, “How will the defendants ever get a jury of their peers? It doesn’t seem possible.” He sees it, too.

Thankfully, as we — about 40 of us — ride up and line-up, it becomes clear that most of this cohort is equally kind and thoughtful about the pending civic duty that lies ahead of us. I’m feeling inspired. Our city is comprised of good people.

…

It’s kind of funny the degree of blind faith it takes to be a potential juror. They tell you to sign in — and you sign in. Don’t leave the room — you stay. Come to the front desk — you come and answer to roll call as if it doesn’t remind you of middle school homeroom. They tell you to pack (with 8–10 strangers) into an elevator that only people with fobs can control (none of you has a fob) — and you ride up, up, up in the elevator to Floor Unknown. They told you when you get out to line up by the windows — like lemmings, momentarily unchaperoned, you assume you’ve found the correct windows and hang out in something that resembles a line. A bailiff (a profession you never really understood before) comes out like they know you and calls you by name, telling you where to stand in line — you get in that order and don’t ask questions. You wait. You walk down hallways when told, “Follow me.” You enter a room with an unmarked door. Seriously, an unmarked door and forty adults just follow.

This basically violates any rules of personal safety that we’ve learned or would teach our kids.

(No one laughs when I say that aloud.) But we do it. Because we know it’s a civic duty. We know they can send a sheriff to our homes if we don’t show up, so logic would follow that if we mess this up, it’s kind of a big deal. I’m fairly certain that most of us are living by the same mantra that day, “Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up. Don’t mess up.”

I’m optimistic. I am toward the second half of the line. I figure the first in line must be the jury-to-be and we are the back-up options. I like this feeling. I’ll get to see how it all works and then go back to my to-do list downstairs.

The woman next to me, who I later learn has a young son getting his tonsils removed next week, asks what kind of case it might be. “Do you think it’s a murder?” she asks. “Oh, I doubt it,” I say. “There’s a wide range of felonies. They can’t all be murders.”

…

Mostly, I’ve looked forward to jury duty. I’ve always been curious about court and legal proceedings. Twenty years ago I had a job that brought me in and out of juvenile court on a regular basis. I loved it. Seeing another type of court and the jury selection process would be interesting. And after that, I want them to send me home.

When we enter the courtroom, the bailiff (it turns out to be a profession I really admire and appreciate) tells line leaders (it feels like kindergarten and I am thankful I don’t have to take line leader instructions) when to begin new rows.

Slowly I realize that I guessed wrong about our line order.

The jury box was at the back of the line.

The jury box includes me.

This is becoming less curious and a tad more anxiety-provoking.

…

Jury selection questions are nothing like I thought they would be. No one asks where I stand on issues of reparative justice, racism, sexism, gun control, or other indicators of my political beliefs. They don’t care which nonprofits I support, who I vote for, or how I get my news. They do ask questions that only make sense to me later. Apparently that is the way most things feel to jurors.

It takes a long time. We get excused for lunch and come back up. Seriously, it takes that long.

I honestly don’t remember the order of events for this part. But at some point the judge makes clear that the trial will last over a week. People are asked to indicate if they have major conflicts with that. A man with a medical procedure is excused. A woman who has room parent duties at her kid’s school is not excused. Thankfully, the woman who’s son will have his tonsils out gets excused. A few other potential jurors are thanked, sent away, and replaced by people from the far-away seats I wished I’d had.

Slowly those of us in the jury box are making peace with what lies ahead. The brain takes a little time to absorb realities like, “Clear your calendar for the next two weeks.”

…

Upon being sworn in, the deep seriousness of this civic duty sinks in. There are relatively few ways that average citizens have roles in our society’s day-to-day functioning. Voting is one. Jury duty is another. Beyond that, it’s military and other public service jobs. The average among us participate by voting and by occasional jury duty.

This is all sinking in as I make a mental list of all the things I need to cancel and the fact that my to-do list will be a complete fail. Nonetheless, I am aware that I am lucky in my family’s ability to make this work.

…

I won’t go into the drawn-out proceedings. What I want to highlight is the goodness of the people who sit on juries — the goodness of most of the people who report for jury duty. My heart swelled to realize the depth of good citizenship that filled the big room and our smaller jury room once we were given a home-away-from-home.

In the days that followed, we evolved as a cohort. The hardest thing, of course, is to be thrown together for the most intense of tasks — which requires passive listening for hours and days on end — and then to be disallowed to discuss any of the things we’ve heard.

The jury room (the deliberation room) is somewhat tight quarters once a conference table is thrown in the middle of it. So, our breaks do not afford much privacy. We try to get to know each other. We lament the absence of a microwave oven to warm our drinks. We wonder aloud if the room has been bugged. When the hearing gets tedious, we guiltily and then humorously acknowledge the tendency to nod off despite the best of intentions. Candy shows up in big bowls courtesy of the judge. Everyone hopes in the potency of candy and caffeine. It is incredibly humbling to realize that afternoon sluggishness kicks in anyway — even when the witnesses and the evidence are super-duper serious and compelling. Each of us, over the course of many days, figures out the best way to fend off afternoon fatigue.

…

There is a hurry-up-and-wait reality to being on a jury. Several times we shorten our lunch or arrive super early in the morning, only to wait ridiculous amounts of time. No one explains why. (Though, after the case is over, we are given this information and it feels reassuring to know that each delay was actually due to a salient exchange about the case and not due to anyone’s mismanagement of time.)

Those waits, all of us together in that small room, were when our group of 14 (12 jurors plus 2 alternates) would wrestle with the taboo of discussing the case. We wound up playing icebreaker games to fill the time, learning about each other and laughing harder than I’ve ever laughed with strangers. We made the most of what felt like being stranded on a desert island (or trapped in a windowless conference room with poor wifi).

As the evidentiary proceedings wrapped up, we had seen over 20 witnesses and a gazillion pieces of evidence. (To that end, I have to say that the invention of a MacroPad is one of the most brilliant things I’ve ever seen. I can only imagine how much that has improved the efficiency of court proceedings everywhere.)

We were “given the case” in the mid-afternoon. We were told that we could leave for the day and start early the next morning as long as we chose a foreperson. The judge had read us instructions — incredibly thorough instructions — which we would also get to have with us, along with all of the evidence. When the bailiff escorted us back to our room, she told us that once she gave us instructions, any other questions we had would need to be put in writing; it would all become part of the court record. Our witty banter evaporated, instantly.

…

Throughout the hearing, I had returned home each evening with a sense of great heaviness. The other jurors echoed this when we would talk about our role. It’s such a serious responsibility. The whole process unfolds in a crazy way that makes sense to the attorneys and judge; yet — by design — the jury has no clue why things are happening the way they are happening nor why they are happening in that order. We obediently do what we’re told and trust the process despite any indicators that it will actually make sense to us at a later date. It’s like being a kid in school. We feel passive and yet know that we are being asked to take incredibly mindful action that will change the course of someone else’s life. In retrospect, I think it’s the passivity that amplifies the heaviness.

The only comfort during the proceedings is the camaraderie of the other 13 people who are equally confused, overwhelmed, and trusting of the process.

It’s so many hours, then so many days, of taking-in harrowing details, verbal accounts, opinions, personalities, and legal rules. Not being allowed to do anything with all of that — yet knowing that somehow it would ultimately be our job to detangle it all and make clear findings about a field in which none of us has any expertise. Our shared qualifications? Being human, having consciences, being able to understand a decent amount of what has been presented, and being invested in doing our ethical best.

…

With a foreperson chosen, we head home and return the next morning to deliberate. There are way fewer jokes. Actually, the jokes trailed off the day before, when our two alternates were sent back to the big room without us. It felt like someone had taken cubs from our pack. Alternate jurors sit through the entire trial and cannot leave until a verdict is given, in case they need to pinch-hit for another juror who falls ill or has some other (verifiable) calamity. But, they cannot sit-in on deliberations.

The sending-away of our alternate jurors was a turning point. We were no longer killing time in the too-small windowless room with suspiciously crappy wifi. We were supposed to go through the pile of evidence and figure something out — then express it in legal jargon and nothing but legal jargon, so help us God.

…

I made some assumptions during the trial. I assumed that those of us who took notes (all hail judges who allow note-taking, which is my lifeline in all grown-up situations) were paying closer attention than others. Those of us who took a lot of notes (a few of us needed extra pads of paper), I assumed had paid the closest attention of all.

Not true.

Those of us with tons of notes were able to clarify our memories and cross-check facts.

But, the juror who made the greatest difference to our process was one who did not take any notes at all. This person noticed changes in voice patterns, posture, and detail that helped others of us see things with more clarity. Everything this person noticed was real, salient, and reliable. I am so thankful to this juror.

And to all of the jurors.

We had a good process. While I thought some would want to hurry through deliberation to just get home, I was reassured when I saw heads nodding to the idea that we had to be diligent so none of us would ever look back with regret over our verdict. We shared a commitment to being thorough, unhurried. Having this on the table allowed us to think strategically about how to best use our time. We went through the evidence with a sense of priority for things that would sway us one way or the other. Had we gone through the case material in any other way — the order it was presented, types of evidence, or matching the counts on the case — our deliberation would have taken days.

Thank goodness for strategic thinking.

We chipped away at the counts in reverse order, mostly out of a wish to mix things up a little, as we had heard the counts in order at the case’s opening and closing. We couldn’t sit through it in order again. Reverse order eased the process and gave us a slightly different lens.

I watched, though, as we raised hands to express certainty on each count and the details that accompanied it. All of the faces were pained. Postures slumping. There was no more joking. The bowl of candy, ravaged at this point, clearly was not helping.

Each juror was certainly, personally, and compassionately devastated.

There was no difficulty with unanimity. The only difficulty was with our souls. It hurt too much to be a part of this moment of justice. It hurt too much because, despite clear guilt — beyond a reasonable doubt — each of us saw the humanity in the defendant. Each of us saw how the defendant’s life would never be the same because of the stack of legal papers we would sign and later hand to the judge.

…

We called the bailiff (deliberation rooms get a doorbell to call the bailiff; jokes about when to use the bell help to kill time). We were surprised at how quickly the parties reassembled; we were brought back into the courtroom.

For the verdict, the courtroom felt different. We brought our sorrow with us. The alternate jurors were brought to sit in the public area — not in our little nest. The number of sheriffs in the room had tripled.

We did not know if we would need to speak (ultimately we did, to confirm with a “yes” that we had signed the verdict) or how long we would be there (not nearly as long as we had thought). The judge read the verdict in its entirety — the defendant receiving handcuffs immediately upon the first “guilty.” We heard all of the counts in order for a third, thorough, and tedious time (thank goodness we did them in reverse during deliberation). The weight on each of our shoulders grew heavier with each page.

And then, it was done.

…

Heavy hearted, we debriefed with the judge (all hail judges who meet with their juries after service). Then we went back to the big room, where we received certificates and letters to verify our service (I wanted CLE credits, honestly, even though I am not a lawyer). And before I knew it, our team dispersed — no numbers traded, no hugs — everyone just wanted to get home.

And I know why.

Because, after all that, we still face the difficult task of integrating all that we saw and heard, all that we know, and the intensity of what our decision would mean in the life of another.

It’s kind of like being in a car accident. You cope and do what you need to do — then it hits you a few days later and it lingers. I suspect that it’s hitting all of the jurors hard and it may amplify with time. We know the saddening path that lies ahead for the defendant; and we all lived with the conflict of finding a verdict that was true and substantiated nonetheless. I can guarantee that this decision weighs heavily on all of us.

Bound to each other like survivors of a plane crash — or competitors on a reality TV show — we did what had to be done; we did it in the most thoughtful of ways; and we each feel deep sorrow at having done so.