Lessons from the jury box
Like most people I know, I am not trying to be on a jury.
Of course, I’ll show up when they tell me to and of course, I’ll be honest and forthcoming if I actually make it to the jury box to be questioned—or voir dired, as they say in the business. Afterward, I might even feel a little proud to have fulfilled this tiny bit of civic duty, even as I complain about the inconvenience to my schedule and the long day or two of sitting around doing nothing in a roomful of strangers.
My latest jury duty started out like all my other jury duties: The day before I was required to report, I perused my jury summons carefully and made the call to an automated line to see if I actually had to show up. I did. So the next day, I packed a book, a water bottle and a jumbo bag of cough drops and took the subway downtown to 100 Centre Street in lower Manhattan. When I got there, I peeled off all my winter layers, went through the security checkpoint and took the elevator up to the 15th floor to the main jury room.
The next day and a half passed slowly as I mostly concentrated on following directions, not asking stupid questions and trying not to cough. Toward the end of day two, I was pretty certain I had avoided any real disruption to my life and was mentally prepping to hop on the subway and head home. And then, much to my surprise—and chagrin—at almost 4 pm, I heard my name called and the next thing I knew, I was being herded down to a courtroom on the 11th floor—Supreme Court, Part 41—where, along with 60 other strangers, I was to be voir dired for an impending trial.
Whoa! I’m not going to lie, for a curious person like me, it was more than just a little interesting to sit there and hear about the people I had been sitting around with for days—what part of the city they lived in, their educations, their jobs, their spouses and their kids. And then, there were questions about their experiences with crime and cops and the justice system. And then, even more personal questions about their sensibilities and their notions of fairness and violence and their ability to impartially serve on a jury for a murder trial.
Yes, a murder trial.
As you can probably guess from the title of this little post, I was chosen to serve on this jury. For an actual murder trial in the State of New York Unified Court System. I’ve noticed in the past week, that this is the exact point in the story where my family members and friends kind of perk up and say, really? A murder trial? Wow! Was it interesting? Was it terrible?
So, I’ll just go ahead and tell you. It was terribly interesting. And terribly terrible. And many other adjectives like tedious and frustrating and gruesome and sad and funny and heavy and just about every other emotion you can think of. I also suspect it might have been life-altering and although I’m still processing exactly how this experience has changed me, a couple of observations—which might actually be framed as lessons—are starting to emerge and it feels important (to me, anyway) to write them down now while the experience is still fresh in my mind:
Patience is paramount. The term speedy trial is an oxymoron; the justice system is not built for speed. I’m sure I knew—intellectually, anyway—that trials don’t unfold quickly and concisely like they do on Law and Order, but nothing really prepared me for the pace of this process. For one thing, the crime we were considering happened in 2019. Six years to come to trial and no-one ever explained why. The other thing is that the courts are not designed to respect people’s time. We spent an absurd number of hours in the jury room, just waiting. We were instructed to be there promptly at 9:00 am and then left sitting for two or three hours waiting to be brought into the courtroom to begin the day’s proceedings. Or, in the middle of testimony, there would be an issue requiring a conversation between the judge and the lawyers and we would be abruptly ushered out of the courtroom and back into the tiny, dusty—and mostly stifling—jury room for 10 minutes or sometimes, two hours, only to be brought back into the courtroom and told we were breaking for lunch or adjourning for the day. Not knowing about the timing was frustrating and exhausting and learning how to be present and patient and accepting about things over which I had no control is a lesson that I definitely am still working on.
Trust the process. On the evening between days 2 and 3 of jury selection, I came home and vigorously lamented the idea of being chosen to serve on this jury and maybe even schemed about some last ditch effort to avoid it. My husband, who has served on a jury himself and can be wise in these moments, said something smart and simple that night and it definitely shifted my thinking: If you were on trial for your life, wouldn’t you want someone smart and thoughtful, like you, on your jury? The answer is yes, I would, and from that moment on, I was committed to being a good juror if I was chosen. First, there were a lot of rules and many of them were based on the honor system. The one about not talking about the trial was the toughest. I’m not going to lie, it took a lot of self-discipline and some serious reminders from my husband and at least one close friend, not to say anything about the trial to anyone. There were a couple of nights when I really wanted to unpack what I saw and heard, but I held fast and resisted the urge. Similarly, as was reiterated to us daily by the judge, I refrained from going online and researching the people involved in this crime. And, again, I’m so glad I didn’t know anything about the defendant or about the victim or any of the witnesses.
While I understand deeply that our justice system is flawed and often fails in many important ways, this experience, at this particular time, in this particular place helped to reassure me that some of the systems are effective and when followed with fidelity can actually help achieve justice. In my case, when it came down to the last couple of days of the trial and I was feeling troubled and overwhelmed and not even remotely sure of the outcome, I took solace in my allegiance to the process and in my growing belief that it actually had the possibility of working.
Don’t look away. This situation required me to look closely at things far out of the realm of my experience and way out of my comfort zone. It required me to watch an innocent and unwitting witness being confronted with her own text messages so that she was forced to admit embarrassing and personal things about herself in this very public forum, even as she tearfully recounted the violent and traumatizing details of the murder of a person she had met only hours earlier. It required me to look at the five women, weeping in the front row of the gallery, which I learned later were the mother, sisters and girlfriend of the victim. It required me to listen carefully to hours of tedious details about blood splatters and fingerprint ridge lines and ballistic reports, phone records and video surveillance. It required me to walk past a young man day after day and wonder if he did the terrible thing he is accused of. And, finally, it required me to look at dozens of graphic images of a human body destroyed by bullets, all while watching the women weeping in the front row. And, although I’m sure I had to close my eyes for a second or two while viewing those awful images, jury service really didn’t allow me to look away. Ready or not, the most dramatic and heartbreaking aspects of the human condition were on vivid display and I was in the front row.
Shared humanity. I’ll never wonder again why we leave this job to a group of 12 people, rather than to any single individual. It is a very very heavy weight—not only to make sure the courts are treating the defendant fairly, but also to be a witness for the victim and for the people who loved the victim. In the final days of this trial, my heart was so heavy and my mind so clouded by information that I really felt I had no business being entrusted with this profoundly important decision. The one saving grace was the other people in the room. There were 18 of us in all—12 jurors and 6 alternates—and in the 10 days we were together, there developed between us a kind of quiet trust and understanding. There were hours of silence, sometimes awkward, but often comfortable. There were inside jokes, good conversations and small kindnesses, as we shared snacks and tissues and recommendations for lunch in Chinatown. When it came down to day of the deliberation, we shared our insights and questions, our certainties and reservations, but most importantly, we shared our humanity and the awful burden of this moment.
Which, in the end, made it feel not quite so heavy.
