Ah, jury duty...

[I should probably mention that this is a repost from a few years ago.]

I’ve been called for jury duty many times (what seems a statistically improbable number of times, actually), but have only served twice. The first time was in Philadelphia County in Pennsylvania. The second time was in Columbus, Ohio.

I must admit to some surprise at how very different the Columbus jury pool was from the Philly jury pool. Apparently the movers-and-shakers in Philly are better able to avoid their civic duty. Or perhaps Columbus movers-and-shakers are more civic minded. I don’t know. What I do know is that the Columbus pool was much more mixed. I saw pool members with more education, more professionals, here in Columbus.

Admittedly the Big Wait is boring. There's little to do. Sure, you can read a book, work one of their jigsaw puzzles, watch bad daytime television. But the fact that you're forced to sit in this room with these strangers for two weeks grates on you.

And listening to the experienced educate the virgins about the happenings inside the court rooms, that also begins to grate. Though rest assured you will tell the same tales once you are one of the experienced ones. You may think you're above it, but you're not.

As happens whenever a group of more than one gets together, the gossiping begins. "Did you hear there's a potential death-penalty case on the board?" No one wants to be called for that one because no one wants to be around past their required two weeks. "Did you hear about the guy who fired his attorney at lunchtime?" "Did you see the news trucks outside?" Didja, didja, didja???

Then your name is finally called, you finally see the inside of a court room, you finally see a bad guy. Oh, right, innocent until proven guilty. I mean, you finally see someone who has been accused of a crime.

One word of advice, if you're ever that someone who has been accused of a crime, don't show up for trial in a t-shirt and jeans. Also, make some attempt to look serious. The jury pool—and eventually your jury—has better things to do. Regardless of whether they want to serve or not, they do have their own lives to lead. Do not sit there looking like this is all one big joke. It will earn you no points, no sympathy. It will work against you.

I ended up on the first, and only, jury for which I was called. Turned out to be a criminal trial for a guy who had been charged on three counts: aggravated burglary, kidnapping, and rape.

You think that sounds fun? It's not. It's very personal. It's very detailed. You have to watch and listen while a shaken woman tells you her side of the story, while the man accused scoffs and loudly tells his lawyer that she's lying.

It requires looking at some strange woman's torn bra. At a knife that was used not to open a CD case or to cut off a loose string or to chop carrots, but rather, allegedly, to threaten someone's life. At a strange woman's used sanitary napkin. At a stack of pictures of bruises and cuts and imprints on skin of we know not what.

It requires reading through police reports and hospital reports and trying to figure out what happened when no two pieces of evidence say quite the same thing. When no two witnesses say quite the same thing.

The timeline is such a big deal. In one version of the timeline, this took place in maybe 30 minutes, maybe an hour. In another version of the timeline, this took place over 7 or 8 hours.

Her injuries don't support a 7 or 8 hour ordeal, so if you believe that timeline, then she's lying. The shorter timeline would make sense with her injuries, but the timeline from the horse's mouth is actually the longer one. So does she have the time wrong? Or does she have the whole experience wrong?

Two people who had friends in common. Two people who had known each other for a couple of weeks. Two people who had had consensual sex before the night in question, though they were not dating. This all said something to some members of the jury.

While you're thinking about all of this, processing, trying to remain unaffected, trying to sit on the fence and decide which way the evidence pulls you, don't forget the biggie: you currently hold someone's life in your hands.

Aggravated burglary? Rape? If we say guilty, he's going away for more than a few years.

Quite frankly, I made up my mind very early on. I made up my mind before we ever started deliberations.

I paid close attention during our discussions, our list making. [On a side note, the funniest moment had to be when the judge attempted to bring us a whiteboard that wouldn't fit through the door.] I read the reports, looked at the bra, examined the pictures. I participated in the discussions.

I never did change my mind.

A part of me was very curious to watch the jury at work. I had a little flashback when my fellow jurors went through the judge-provided elements of burglary and kidnapping with the same surprise most students experience in Criminal Law.

I was sometimes surprised, sometimes disappointed, in the facts some considered important. For some, the whole case turned on the fact that this incident occurred while the woman was menstruating. For some, that clearly made it rape as they believed she would never willingly consent at that time of the month (which, frankly, told me more than I wanted to know about my fellow jurors' sexual histories).

Some were hooked on the fact that they'd had sex before. Some figured that since she'd consented before, she probably had this time, too. Others figured that since she'd once had sex outside a relationship, clearly she was not someone who's word we should hold in high esteem. 

There was discussion of the part of town in which the incident occurred. Discussion of the kind of people who supposedly live there, the things that supposedly happen there.

There was discussion of just how drunk she was that night. She said she hadn't had much to drink because she hadn't felt well. Another witness said they were all drunk and high.

If she was drunk, it would make more sense that she had just messed up the timeline. But she said she wasn't drunk. So she's not being honest about something. But what? The details leading up to a rape? Or that there was a rape at all?

Again, do not forget that there's a man's life hanging in the balance here. Don't want to be too dramatic or anything, but still. We're not here to play hopscotch. Though at this point I could have used a belt of scotch.

Turns out I really don't have the stomach for this. This case was, I believe, a relatively gentle rape case, as obnoxious as that wording choice is.

He may have threatened her with the knife, but he didn't use it on her. We're not talking a gang rape, we're not talking a child raped by her father. We're not even talking about close-up pictures of intimate body parts as there was no vaginal trauma in this case.

I'm not trying to make light of any rape, no matter the details. I'm simply saying this experience could have been worse for the jury, for me. I do not know if I could have sat there through anything worse. There was a point during this testimony when I didn't think I was going to make it. I was light-headed, sick to my stomach.

I have no idea how people do this everyday. And people do. Judges, attorneys. Bailiffs. Yet as I was feeling sick, there was the prosecutor, asleep in his chair. He certainly didn't seem affected.

Are they all just stronger than I am? I actually hope that's the case. Because if not, then either they simply don't care about others or they've become immune. And I don't think either of those options are a good thing. For the individuals or for the system. We need people who can feel taking care of us via the justice system, not robots who do their jobs in order to get their paychecks.

The defendant's family was certainly feeling something. They were there in the courtroom everyday. Tears on faces. Tissues in hands. We would pass them in the hallways. The laughing, joking jury glad to be on a break. The crying, sighing family eager to put this in their past.

If you're wondering how it all came out, we found him guilty on all three charges.

He was so clearly surprised, that his surprise surprised me. He'd spent the trial being cocky and self-assured. His lawyer had spent the trial shushing him. When the jury verdicts were read, that seemed to be the first time it had dawned on him what was happening.

They polled the jury. That was an uncomfortable moment. He was at that point glowering at each of us in turn, trying to look us each in the eye, though many on the jury refused to look at him.

When we returned to the jury room, the bailiff filled us in on his history. Seems that at the time of the incident in question, he had been out of prison for only about seven months. He had served around 17 years. I don’t know all the details of that previous crime, but it involved robbing a store and shooting—but not killing—a cop in the process.

Until the bailiff shared that little tidbit, I had not fully realized how heavily this was weighing on me. As corny as it may sound, I truly felt as though a weight was lifted from my shoulders, my chest, at that moment. I took a deep breath and felt the tension ease.

I found out later that for the aggravated burglary, kidnapping, and rape, he got another 15 years and has to register as a sex offender upon release.

At the time of this trial, he was only 35.

I have an idea of what his life is like now, having toured a state prison a few weeks before this stint on jury duty. It's not exactly Kings Island.

In the end I'm left wondering, what will jury duty be like next time? What will be the details of the next case?

What? You thought I'd do whatever possible to get out of serving next time? No way. I did my duty and helped justice prevail. Should I be summoned again (and with my record of summonses…), of course I'll be there to do it again.

I vote for the irrational approach...

There was an article on CNN last month about a 3-year-old boy who was patted down by the TSA (it should be noted that the incident occurred in 2010, which was before they changed the rules and made pat downs of children a rarity). Obviously everyone is in an uproar and there are tons of opinions being offered for both sides of the story. On the “reasons that children should not be patted down” side, this has to be one of the worst:

“There hasn't been one instance in the United States of a 3-year-old carrying explosives onto an airplane or doing ill will to anyone.”

The point is kind of to keep it from ever happening. Screening children after someone uses a little kid to smuggle in restricted materials is pretty much shutting the barn door after the horse has already eaten Mrs. Neighbor’s flowers. If we'd been checking shoes before that particular little incident, it wouldn't have happened; checking our shoes now doesn’t undo the past.

Those who wish to do harm to others will exploit the system that is in place. The easiest way to do that is to look for the weak points in the system. With airport screenings, the obvious weak points are all the groups of people we have decided should not be subject to the same screenings that the rest of us endure. So that is children, the elderly, and the handicapped. Don’t forget that it doesn’t have to be the child, the older person, or the person with the handicap doing the wrong. They can merely be the patsy who is used by an otherwise able-bodied person who wants to wreck havoc in the airport or on the plane.

And no, I’m not saying that we should all be strip searched. And no, I’m not saying that we should all be resigned to having to be felt up each time we fly. I'm just saying that if you’re going to argue against something, at least have a reasonable argument. And there are several. For instance, the body scanners have no particular record of success; there are questions regarding whether the body scanners would even pick up the materials we are supposedly screening for; there are questions regarding the safety of the radiation exposure involved with the body scanners; and, most importantly, there are other measures that can and should be taken that would without a doubt increase our security without invading our privacy. For instance, greater control of restricted areas of airports; better screenings of airline and airport personnel; and better training of TSA and other airport security.

So let’s do the things we know will help and will not be an invasion of anyone’s privacy before we rush to implement procedures that provide a false sense of security while invading our rights.

Oh wait, it’s too late for the rational approach. We already rushed ahead with the unproven, invasive, possibly dangerous methods and are still ignoring the easy, noninvasive, unoffensive stuff….