Next week I’m going to report for jury duty. Reporting for jury duty strikes me as a great opportunity to observe the legal process in action.
Has anyone reading this blog ever been selected as a juror? What was your experience — and did your view of jury trials change after being on a jury?
This is a great topic.
I was called for jury duty about 25 years ago while I was in graduate school in Massachusetts. I assumed that I would be struck quickly because I was then a member of the Virginia and D.C. bars, but I was not.
I made it into the pool for a commercial fraud trial, and I survived the questioning of the two lawyers. I was actually sitting in the jury box when I was knocked out on the last preemptory challenge.
I had initially dreaded the idea of serving on a jury, but by the time I was struck, I had warmed up to the idea and was actually looking forward to the experience. I remember sitting there wondering if I would turn out to be either a Henry Fonda or a Lee J. Cobb. When I was told to leave, I was incredibly disappointed.
I was at the Middlesex County Court house for most of the day, and I learned a great deal just observing how the process actually worked in a large, urban courthouse. I started to stay around and watch the trial anyway, but I decided that I had had enough of the real world for one day.
Yup, it’s interesting. As a lawyer, you’re probably not going make it passed voir dire, which will make the couple of hours it takes for someone to tell you that you can go home rather frustrating, but if you do manage to get seated on a trial I’m sure you’ll find it fascinating.
The case I sat on was incredibly dull, and the dynamics between jury members were mind bogglingly complex. We arrived at our verdict on a first ballot vote and without any discussion. (Honestly, it took us longer to elect a foreman.) Once we have arrived at our verdict we all started to discuss why we each came up with our decisions and almost two people had similar reasons. Some of the jurors, one could argue, came to the “correct” conclusion through astonishingly faulty logic. Others employed next to no reasoning at all.
It’s an amazing little Petri dish of human nature.
I served on a jury a few years ago and, like Jon Froelich, was most impressed by the “sausage-making” character of the deliberations. One lesson I learned is that lawyers and judges should not assume that jurors will remember or understand much of what they are told about the law and the evidence. Jurors have a great deal of new information presented to them during a trial, and many are considerably less adept at absorbing and processing new information than lawyers are (at least law-related information). Based on my experience anyway, I doubt that jury trials provide more accurate results than bench trials. On the other hand, I think they may still play a useful role in enhancing the perceived legitimacy of trial outcomes.
I served on a jury in Boston while an undergraduate. It was an armed robbery and assault case against two young African American males, where the victim was a middle aged African American woman. We deliberated for about half a day before voting to acquit on the third ballot.
Most of us jurors were convinced that there had been some sort of altercation between the woman and the youths. However, the victim’s story had changed from the time of the initial police report to her courtroom testimony, and we eventually concluded that the state had not proved their case. Interestingly, the body language and demeanor of the judge and the lawyers (both prosecution and defense) signaled to me at least that they thought the case was a waste of their time.
My overriding impression of the experience was that the members of the jury took their responsibility very seriously and rose to the occasion. The only other time in my life when I spent so much time interacting with such an economically diverse group of people was in the birthing class during my wife’s first pregnancy. I tend to agree with commentators who call the jury the foundation of our democracy.
Melissa,
I have jury duty on 6/15. We just miss the possibility of being on a jury together.
I have never been on one either.
Rebecca
I served on a jury many years ago (civil case); and was unimpressed by the lawyers and very impressed by how the jurors saw issues the lawyers didn’t even bring up.
I served on a grand jury years ago when I was living and working in DC. DC has so many lawyers that there are no more automatic exemptions for lawyers or even judges.
I was impressed by several things:
1) My fellow grand jurors, none of them attorneys, took their jobs very seriously. I remember once one of my fellow jurors spotted the fact that not all of the elements of an offense had been supported by evidence, when I had missed it.
2) I saw one prosecutor in particular who was fantastic. He went the extra mile to visit the scene of a crime one evening after the previous day’s testimony had been confusing (he got the witness to clarify). He handled hostile witnesses deftly. He even handled one witness who refused to answer any questions at all, without doing anything more than he needed in order to seek contempt sanctions. Just watching him work was educational.
3) We returned indictments in almost all of the cases we were asked to vote on. But we did not live up to the ham sandwich quote. We were only asked to vote on cases where indictment was likely. I think it performed a useful checking function on the government; whether it’s an efficient check is a different question.
I served on a jury about 20 years ago in Newark, NJ, years before I became a lawyer.
It was a criminal case, Armed robbery (attempted carjacking), where the coactor was shot and killed by would be victim, who was an off duty police officer.
It was a good experience, not exactly like 12 angry men, in that we convicted the guy. But the notion of 12 people from the community, which included a cross section of the county, rich and poor, black, asian and white, urban and suburban, young and old, male and female.
Like in 12 angry men, there were a few who would have voted whichever way got them out the quickest, and there was one holdout on just about every point. And, the person who was strongest for conviction from the get go and the one holdout who was the last person to vote for conviction were both African Americans from the inner city.
I was dismissed from the jury pool after a half a day without being called to a court for voir dire.
The morning started with a video produced by the Milwaukee County Circuit Court that gave helpful information about the jury process. I looked around and was pleased to see that my fellow jurors were watching the video attentively. People seemed to be taking their role seriously.
A juror in Milwaukee has quite a few options for how to pass the time waiting to be called to a court: the case management area has free Wi-Fi and two computers for internet access, and you can even participate in a blood drive.
Shortly before noon, all jurors with a last name starting in A-G were asked to come to the front. I was surprised to notice how excited and nervous I was — this was the moment! When we got to the front, we learned we were being dismissed. Like some of the other commenters, I was somewhat disappointed. I was interested at least to observe voir dire from the perspective of a juror.
Thinking strategically about jurors, a trial lawyer may want to consider that by the time many jurors get to voir dire, they have been sitting around all day waiting. The wait creates some fatigue and also possibly some anxiousness. As such, jurors may not be completely fresh when the trial starts. The people I observed on Wednesday seemed, as I noted earlier, to be taking their role seriously. I didn’t hear anyone grumbling about being selected, and the folks I spoke to said they didn’t mind being called.