As I looked at the faces populating my computer screen and listened to a judge and two attorneys ask them the sorts of questions you might encounter at one of those awkward mixers — what sort of books do you read? What are your hobbies? — one question kept popping into my head.
If I were on trial, would I want these people to decide my guilt or innocence?
To my surprise, I now have an answer to that question because, against all odds, I was chosen for a jury that heard a criminal case.
Dozens were interviewed. Six were chosen (along with one alternate who was excused before we started deliberating). I have been called a few times before in my life. Each time, I lasted about as long as it took to say I was a member of the media. This time, I was the first name selected.
I have no idea why I was considered a good compromise choice by the two attorneys involved. But I do appreciate, now, how serving on a jury can erase cynicisms and mistrust. The legislative and executive branches could do with some sort of similar plan to inject regular people into their processes, giving them real power.
President for a day?
On second thought, maybe appointing a president for a day wouldn’t be such a great idea. Jury service, though, is a unique opportunity to become both a check against tyranny and a powerful voice in the system.
It has an honored history. Among the many offenses listed against King George III in the Declaration of Independence was this: “For depriving us in many cases of the benefits of trial by jury.”
The founders included the right to a jury in the sixth and seventh amendments to the Constitution.
That’s something to think about on Memorial Day weekend.
Thomas Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by
which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.”
That’s all pretty serious stuff for people like myself and the five other regular folks from the Wasatch Front – three men and three women, of various ages, backgrounds and professions — who all wondered what the heck we were doing in a courtroom, feeling various shades of curiosity and apprehension.
The case
I won’t go into the specifics of the case or the names involved. Those aren’t relevant. It could have involved any set of facts, with people eager to provide two sides to the story, and with a defendant facing possible jail time.
It included a judge, a prosecutor and a defense attorney, all with legal training and experience, and six ordinary and diverse people, lacking in legal training, for whom everyone in the courtroom had to stand at attention whenever they entered or left.
One minute we were wondering what to wear for work on a Friday. The next, we were deciding a man’s guilt or innocence.
And it all worked beautifully. My fellow jurors took the duty just as seriously as I did. When we were sent on breaks to the jury room, no one spoke a word about the ongoing trial.
Deliberations
When the time came to deliberate, our foreman led a serious, count-by-count discussion of the evidence, with various jurors offering serious counter arguments or raising doubts. We persuaded each other with facts and evidence, not emotion. This was not “12 Angry Men,” the play that became a memorable 1957 movie with Henry Fonda. It was six reasonable people measuring whether reasonable doubts existed, and finally, with solemnity, reaching a guilty verdict.
Comedian Groucho Marx used to quip that he was married by a judge but he should have asked for a jury. It’s a funny joke, but it contains hidden wisdom. Dictators don’t let juries decide important cases. The judicial system is kept honest by the collective wisdom of people chosen at random.
I suspect it’s similar to the way the collective choices of millions of consumers make a free market work better than one where choices are dictated by a few people with power, or how frequent elections work better than appointments from an all-powerful ruler.
Juries don’t always get verdicts right, of course. Neither do judges. We live in an imperfect world.
Being a good citizen?
A few years ago, the Pew Research Center did a poll that found 67% of American adults agreeing with the notion that answering the call to jury duty “is part of what it means to be a good citizen.”
My guess is that if the other 33% tried it, they would agree, as well.
To the answer I posed at the beginning of this column — yes, I would trust a jury of regular people to decide my guilt or innocence, provided I had a good lawyer, of course.