Impermanence

I was there - lying in the green leaves, eyes shut, wings circling above on wooden arms, pretending I could fly. It carried my mind away.

So You Think You Want to Be Picked For Jury Duty...

I recently sat on a jury to hear a mock trial case on campus concerning domestic violence. I found it to be more challenging than I originally thought it was going to be. We were advised that we might not be permitted to take notes – such activity is usually discourage/prohibited in real-life trials as doing so might allow a juror to “stake out” a position or miss something more important while writing down a point.

As a journalist and chronic note-taker by nature, I did not like this restriction. I found myself grasping for details that I thought I had nailed down until I found myself trying to regurgitate them.

I listened intently through the whole case, and thought I knew what I was going to vote – until we started deliberating.

In this case, there was not a lot of hard evidence. For a murder, for example, the hard evidence would be the dead body. In this case, we had a murder weapon (though whose prints were on the murder weapon was not disclosed to us) and, in theory, there were pictures of the crime scene as well (although those also were not disclosed to us).

Therefore, when we started deliberations, most of what we were arguing about stemmed solely from the testimonies that had been given to us from the trial – more specifically the testimonies of the defendant and the alleged victim. This allowed our debate session to quickly spiral into simply recounting what had been said on the stand as a means of defending their juror positions. Hard evidence might have made this a more simple case to decide – but as in real-life, domestic violence trials don’t always provide that opportunity, and juries are forced to do exactly what we did – solely take people on their word.

Juries are often forced to decide cases that can have political repercussions and ramifications. This point has contention with the debate over whether juries should have that power. American juries are, after all, twelve theoretically average American citizens – a jury of one’s peers. Given that, should “average” people who do not have extensive backgrounds (or even basic ones at that) in law and/or politics and government be charged with deciding the fate of another person?

At the other end of the spectrum, however, we don’t necessarily want the government making those decisions without some input from the citizenry. The most awesome power that the American government has over its citizens is the option to fine them, jail them, or kill them. To give government complete control over that would be dangerous, and would allow for more opportunities of government tyranny. Therefore, allowing a group of inexperienced citizens decide a case might be better than an experienced government that is capable of manipulating the rules.

Cases are also supposed to be about more than one’s own beliefs, even though one is on a jury as a community of peers of the defendant. As an advocate against domestic violence, and a friend to a few who have suffered through it, I found it somewhat difficult to put my biases aside and help make a “fair” conviction.

While listening to the testimonies during the trial, I found myself becoming increasingly aggravated, remembering what the people in my life have and are going through. I was recognizant, however, of the warning of why we were not going to be able to take notes during the trial – taking notes might allow a juror to “stake out” a position and not be open to other views of the trial.

By bringing my own personal experiences into the situation, I was effectively doing the same thing. I had to put aside my views to give the defendant as fair a trial as possible, remembering that all are innocent until proven guilty – just because those situations in my life had occurred did not mean that they were being repeated in another form through that trial and those people.

While struggling with repressing my bias in deliberations, I still found the defendant (in my opinion) to be guilty on three counts: reckless endangerment, aggravated assault, and attempted homicide. While we were able to unanimously vote “guilty” on the first count, we were split fairly down the middle for the second count. I was the only one who thought he was guilty on the third count.

While defending my position, and while others attempted to get me to change my vote, a colleague on the jury attempted to get me to do a “deal”, asking “Would you feel better about voting not guilty on attempted homicide if we were able to get him on the second charge?” Such bartering within the jury is not something that is supposed to occur. The mention of the possibility of this deal made me hesitate: I arguably would have been more at ease with convicting him on two counts rather than one, but I still thought he was guilty on all three counts. I would have been recanting my guilty vote as a compromise on what I felt was right.

While this was only a mock trial, such deal-making within an actual jury can be dangerous, especially when considering a crime as serious as attempted homicide. Jurors might be eager to just be done with the deliberations process so that they can be done with their duty as jurors. Someone who is tired of holding out against a group or trying (and failing) to persuade a group might just give in instead of “wasting” more time.

After all, convicting on a lesser crime still holds the possibility of sending the defendant to jail – it would just be for a smaller amount of time. While noting that this is a dangerous proposition, and suggesting that it might be something that the American judicial system should look into banning, it is something that largely cannot be prevented. No one else besides the jury is allowed in deliberations, and jurors do not possess accountability. Furthermore, the system is dealing with the unpredictability of human nature: just because we are told to do something does not mean that we are not tempted or that we will not do it.

I thought that as a political science enthusiast that this mock trial would positively enlighten me. I also naively thought at one point (before this trial) that I WANTED to get picked for jury trial, just so that I could be a part of the process. And now? I know why it's being left to me instead of a group of experts, but still. If I was the one on trial, I'd want the best of the best in that deliberation room figuring out what to do with me.