Serving Jury Duty

Most people, at least in my circle, dread the thought of jury duty.  My attitude, for a long time, has been that I thought it would be interesting, and I wouldn't mind doing it, but I didn't want it to interfere with my life.  In other words, call me to do this during work time, not during the summer, nor around vacation time.

Well, I was called to report for duty this past week.  First, they send a form in the mail that has to be filled out and submitted.  When I saw it, I started to panic.  It's summer!  I don't want to spend my summer cooped up in some hot, stuffy jury room, hashing it out with 11 other angry people.  I had vacation planned.  I want to spend my days swimming and golfing.  We get out of 1/2 hour early in the summer, and I can't get out fast enough--dashing home to walk the dog at some park, or to swim at the pool, or to go and hit golf balls.  Jury duty sounded really, really depressing.

However, the questions on the form, whose purpose I imagine is to screen folks, did not ask anything that was going to get me out of the pool.  After I submitted it, I then received a letter, ordering me to report for jury selection this past Thursday.  It was interesting how much I dreaded it.  I kept thinking I was going to end up on some big murder trial, such as the O.J one and it would drag on for months, messing up my life and my free time.

I noticed the judge's name on the summons and rejoiced.  I knew him!  This would get me excused immediately.  I won't keep you in suspense.  It didn't work.  They didn't care.  The judge asked me if knowing him would interfere with my ability to be fair and impartial.  As they put you under oath prior to answering these questions, and, as Thomas More says, "What is an oath but words we say to God?", I couldn't lie.

During the questioning period, I thought that if I were sarcastic or somehow uncooperative, one of the lawyers would take a disliking to me and opt to remove me.  The prosecutor asked me nothing.  But when it came time for the defense attorney to ask questions, he turned to me and it went something like this:

DA:  Miss Hutchinson, do you have children?
Me:  No
DA:  Have you ever had children?
Me:  No
DA:  Do you have any grandchildren
Me: (with very sarcastic look on face, in a blatant attempt to belittle DA) How could I have grandchildren if I've never had children?

It was my hope that the DA would hate me after that.  But he laughed.  The judge laughed.  The prosecuter laughed.  Even the guy facing two class D felony accounts laughed.  Damn.

I was the first one chosen.

The judge explained that this trial was not at all like the ones we see on television-and that we would be finished at day's end.  This made me relax somewhat.

I have to say I did not enjoy my experience of jury duty.  At the end of the trial part, we were put into a dingy room to deliberate.  I was immediately chosen as "foreperson".  I thought about arguing this, but it was already 5:00pm, and I didn't want to be there all night, so I started talking.  I expressed my opinion that I thought he could be guilty on the first count (forcibly resisting a law enforcement officer), but not necessarily of the second (battery of law enforcement officer).  As we discussed, I realized that some people were opposed to my way of thinking.  But they were a minority.  One guy disagreed with me on the first count, and two folks disagreed with me on the second count.  But the problem is that they would not argue, or discuss in any persuasive way why they thought this way.  In the end, what I saw happening, despite my repeated attempts to get them to sway us, was a sort of detached caving in.  We all, frankly, just wanted to go home, and the decisions had to be unanimous.

I hit real frustration when the alternate juror, who was allowed to sit in the deliberations but was not supposed to say anything said "If I wuz on this jury, we'd all be goin' home now, because he's not guilty."  And then later he said "I hope that y'all aren't my jury if I get caught doing something wrong."  And then, of course, he told us the guy stood to face 20 years for battery of a police officer.  It really filled me with a sense of doubt.  Of course, the alternate juror was one of three guys that had been convicted of felonies.  And, oddly, in the case of battery of a police officer, all three were selected to be on this panel!

I had written a note to the judge, asking if he could define for us what constitutes "forcible resistance", but he wrote back and said, politely, "no."  I find it frustrating that were were asked to consider someone's guilt about an offense that couldn't be defined.  For me, that was the crux of the problem.  He was clearly (in my mind) resisting the officers (he was not under arrest at the time), but was he forcibly resisting?

So, in the end, the rest of the members of the jury agreed with me, and we came out with a guilty verdict on the first count and a not guilty verdict on the second.  I don't think we spent more than an hour deliberating.  That's not much time to give to someone whose life is as stake.

The judge told us that if any of us wanted to speak to him at the conclusion of the trial, we could.  I was the only one that remained.  I asked again if he could define that term for me and he couldn't.  It left me feeling unsettled, wondering if we did the right thing.  The real unsettling part was knowing that it wasn't truly a unanimous decision on either count; but the folks who disagreed either could not or did not want to voice a persuasive argument the other way.

It left me with a new, and not so positive attitude about our justice system and how just it really is.