Trial by opportunity

Have you ever been on jury duty? My only time happened a few years ago, and it was a very educational process. But not in the way I expected.

If I were my daughter, by the time period of jury duty ended I would have exchanged phone numbers with at least three new friends and made definite plans to get together with one or more of them in the next few days. But, being me, I simply said good-bye, see you later, nice to have met you, and left the courthouse.

Getting called to jury duty in Champaign county means putting your life in limbo for two weeks. Your letter tells you to report to the courthouse in downtown Urbana on a Monday. When you get there and join your fellow jurors that first morning, you are instructed to call in every night to a recorded message. The message tells you which individuals (identified by number) are supposed to report the next day. How many they need will depend on how many trials are expected to happen, and that can change at a moment’s notice, so you call in every night to learn whether you’ll be able to go to work or class or keep a doctor’s appointment the next day.

It makes for a sort of improv life, but you don’t live it alone. You are joined by a couple hundred fellow citizens, a random mix of men and women, old and young, Black and White and whatever, working and retired, with young children at home and grown children gone from home and grandchildren nearby or far away, most of you new to the jury experience, some of you repeating for a second or third time.

The one thing you all have in common is a willingness to serve. Anyone not willing or not able took advantage of the opportunity to report a couple of weeks earlier and explain their situation, certainly in many cases exaggerating or outright lying about them, in order to be excused from jury duty. But the people you sit with in the jury assembly room every day, waiting to learn whether you will be called to possible jury selection or sent away before noon, are all people who showed up, other commitments and responsibilities notwithstanding.

Knowing that maybe I’d be at work and maybe I wouldn’t meant that all preparations for possible absence from my job at the university had to be provisional. “Just in case I’m not here when this student returns her qualifying exam answers ...” “Just in case I’m gone when that applicant’s materials arrive ...” “Just in case anyone has a life-or-death question that only I, out of all the people in the universe, can answer ...” Fortunately, my supervisor and the rest of the staff were happy to help in any way necessary, and of course, we didn’t really expect that I actually would be gone. We were simply getting ready.

And wisely, as it turned out.

I’d been called to jury duty three other times in my life -- in three other counties, so I couldn’t realistically believe I was being singled out for harassment. However, because I’d never been selected to sit on a jury, or even, for that matter, been required to report beyond the first day, I thought the most interesting part of jury duty would be getting to serve at an actual trial. And since I ended up on three juries during that two-week service period in Champaign County, I had ample opportunity to test my theory.

In my first trial, on day two of my jury period, a man was accused of attempting to burgle three parked cars. After the jury selection was complete, all thirteen of us (including one alternate) were led by a Sheriff’s deputy into a small but pleasant room and assigned seats around a long table to wait until time for the trial to begin. Many of us immediately opened books or magazines, some began quiet conversations with neighbors. After reading my current mystery novel for about 30 minutes, I needed some other diversion, and asked a man who had a Chicago Tribune if he’d mind letting me do the crossword puzzle. He didn’t, so I did. It wasn’t a very hard one, but it had its challenges, and other people at the table became interested in watching me labor to figure out those words that didn’t come easily. Someone commented that I was doing pretty well and someone else lamented cheerfully that she never could figure out these things. The man who’d loaned me the puzzle offered suggestions, and finishing the puzzle became a group effort. That led to our solving the word jumble, and then to general chit-chat around the table.

We’d been cautioned against engaging in any discussion of the upcoming trial, so conversation was more the getting-to-know-you, filling-time variety, during which I discovered that the distinguished looking lady in her late 60’s was the mother-in-law of the man who had mid-wived my first grandson. He was the only male mid-wife in town, so a couple of other people recognized his name as well, and we all enjoyed hearing her complimentary anecdotes about him.

Our alternate, a sweet-voiced pleasant woman, entertained us with the story of her one previous jury experience, in which she had also been an alternate and had sat through the entire trial but been dismissed before the jury retired for deliberations. She never did learn the outcome.

Having watched juries operate on untold number of movies and TV shows, I was interested in trying out an idea borrowed from my almost four decades of membership in the Baha’i Faith. One of the principles of Bahá’í consultation is that first a group has to ascertain the facts, and then agree on them, before they can proceed to decision making, so I thought it would make sense to start jury deliberations by first going around the table and letting each person state his current feelings about the defendant’s guilt or innocence.

When the time came for the jury to begin deliberations, someone at the table suggested that one of the two “crossword puzzle experts” should be foreperson, and when the Tribune owner declined, that left me, surprised and a little nervous with the responsibility. Everyone agreed to try my go-around-the-circle idea, however, and we learned that we had slightly differing feelings about whether the defendant was guilty of the first count, intention to burgle, but were generally in agreement that there was little doubt he was guilty of the second count, unlawfully entering the cars without permission.

It was impressive to me to see how hard the members of the panel worked to stay fair and impartial, and to be thorough in their search for a correct verdict. This certainly wasn’t a capital case, or for that matter a particularly difficult one. The defense had not even called any witnesses, a fact we were supposed to ignore since the State had the burden of proof. There was little or no reason to doubt that the defendant had been in the cars, the eyewitness and police testimony was solid, and we could easily have spent about five minutes, max, to come up with a guilty verdict and be allowed to leave while the afternoon was still young.

Instead, we spent at least 30 minutes and made very sure that everyone’s thoughts were heard, and that we all agreed with the final decision. With that concluded, we eagerly alerted our deputy that we were ready to return to the courtroom, and just as eagerly hurried out of the courthouse after quick good-byes as soon as we were dismissed by the judge.

During six of the remaining eight days my number was included among those posted in the recorded message, and I discovered that when I arrived at the jury assembly room each morning, I was now more interested in joining fellow jurors in conversation (usually around one of the big tables) than in reading. I especially enjoyed laughing with another Helen, a quick-witted, gregarious computer programmer. Not having a very common name, we both were tickled to discover each other, especially since we were about the same age. Helens are much more likely to be from the generation born around 1920 than those of us born two or three decades later.

We didn’t all get called in on the same days, and different ones of us disappeared at various times to serve on juries. Most of us were dismissed by about 11:00 a.m. each day. But enough of us seemed to land in the jury assembly room at the same times that we began to recognize one another, and feel comfortable and familiar together. A lot of our conversation was about the trial experiences we were having, with one another or others. We evaluated the performance of different attorneys, graded the judges, and re-hashed the verdicts, thoroughly enjoying our new found legal expertise.

I can’t remember any other names, but can recall some of the personalities in these chats. There was an Egyptian engineering professor, a dignified, olive-skinned man with thick gray curls who brought fruit to munch and talked about running several miles every morning. He loved to teach and was feeling frustrated by never knowing from day to day if he would be available for his class schedule.

The retired farmer, on the other hand, a large man with big hands and rough skin, was not missing anything during his time on jury duty, and he seemed perfectly relaxed and contented during our group conversations, joking and expounding enthusiastically about subjects ranging from diabetes medications to ingredients needed to illegally manufacture meth.

A young man with short hair and a quiet, subdued manner, with whom I served on the trial of a boy accused of possessing cocaine, surprised all his fellow jurors by being the only one among us who knew anything about how cocaine users routinely carry and hide their illegal substances. His information helped us better understand the State’s case and arrive at a guilty verdict.

One morning Helen and the farmer and the young man and a few others of us decided to pass the time by playing cards with one of the decks provided in the room. We didn’t remember the rules of Hearts so we made them up as we went along, and when one of the group was called away to jury selection, another player immediately took his place in the game.

Another morning I was questioned and then excused from a jury by the defense attorney -- one I recognized from the trial of the cocaine possessor. Apparently he recognized me as well. Returning to the assembly room, I spent an enjoyable few minutes waiting for dismissal while commiserating with a man and woman I hadn’t previously met, but who also had just been excused, in their case by a prosecuting attorney. They’d been jurors for another of her cases and in that instance the defendant was found not guilty. It appeared to us that these attorneys really didn’t have much faith in the average citizen’s ability to be fair and impartial.

If that was an accurate assessment of their thinking, I was sure it was wrong, especially after my third and final jury service. It involved a battery accusation in which a woman had followed a co-worker into the bathroom, knocked her down and started kicking her. The witnesses presented by the prosecution and the almost non-existent argument made by the defense lawyer gave us little information to use in reaching a decision, yet we were, as usual, instructed not to take anything into account except the testimony we had heard.

There were so many holes in the story -- What had the alleged victim said or done prior to the incident? What had happened in previous days that built up to the battering? Was the accused provoked in ways unknown to us? -- that at first I felt uncomfortable with a guilty verdict. But when we went around the table to share our initial feelings it became clear that I was the only one at the table who had any reservations. After our first tally, I decided “guilty” made more sense and that I agreed with the majority. Yet even though it was already almost 3:00 p.m. on the last afternoon of our two-week stint and surely everyone very much wanted to go home, the sooner the better, my fellow jurors refused to let me change my vote until we had thoroughly discussed the testimony and the reasons for our different judgments. After about 45 minutes I was finally able to convince them that I really did agree with their point of view that the perpetrator’s actions made this an undoubted case of conscious and deliberate battery, no matter what the provocation, and was completely comfortable with a guilty verdict.

My fellow Helen was on that jury, and I’d enjoyed spending more time with her, but after reporting back to the courtroom, delivering our verdict and being dismissed, I simply said good-bye and hurried out, anxious to get back to work and catch up on my e-mail. It wasn’t until later that I realized I’d missed an opportunity. She would have been a good new friend to have.

If I were my daughter, by now Helen would be an old friend with whom I had many shared memories. But being me … well, let’s just say I was tried -- and found wanting.