Jury Duty

There are some basic duties that come with citizenship, and this seems to be a month with many of those duties on my calendar. There is the decennial census, with a census date of April 1 (even though I got the form and filled it out and mailed it back in March). There's the income tax deadline. And then, there's jury duty.

I actually was initially summoned for a date in January, but I had an already scheduled trip for work for the date in the summons. So I called and asked if I could make it another date, and they gave me an alternative date of April 6. I told them that would work, and put it on my calendar and colored it red so that no one would plan anything else for me for that date.

The summons came in March, with the April 6 date. I filled out the questionnaire, as requested, and mailed back. According to the summons, I was a in a standby group, so with any luck, I wouldn't even have to go in, but I wouldn't know until after 5 p.m. on April 5, when they posted the instructions for jurors for the following day.

I called right at 5 p.m., and the recording had not yet been updated; a few minutes later, it was, and I got the news that I needed to report for duty the following morning.

The last time I had been in the big room on the 7th floor in the Fulton County Courthouse was when Sarah's mock trial team was there for the regional mock trial competition. Each school had an assigned area in that big room; some of them had pizza boxes and cartons of soft drinks or bottled water; our school had a full buffet with bread, cold cuts, condiments, salads, fruit, cookies, and chocolates.

This time, there was no food, only people who had come because they had to. They scattered themselves throughout the room. A few ignored the "No Cell Phone Use" signs but most were quiet, and if they talked at all, talked in a low voice like they were in a library, to the person sitting next to them. There were a few long tables across the front of the room, with chairs and electrical outlets; I had brought my laptop and spent an hour on email. Some people had brought books to read; the woman sitting closest to me - the one who watched my stuff when I went to the bathroom, and I did the same for her - was grading papers. But maybe half the people there had not brought anything with them at all, and they were just sitting. I still don't understand that. Maybe they had never been called for jury duty before, and thought they were going straight to the jury box and it was going to be just like Law and Order on television.

At 9:30, they started calling names. They told us to try to remember our number, but when they did call mine I was so focused on getting my laptop turned off and packed away that I forgot to listen, once they had called my name.

Only once before have I ever gotten sent to a courtroom for jury selection; usually I have just sat in that big room until they told me I could leave. That time, I was number 1, but they only needed 6 people to hear the trial (a lawsuit, I think, but I don't even remember) and I wasn't one of them. They spent maybe an hour on jury selection, and then I was on my way.

This time there were sixty of us, lined up in the corridor, waiting to file into the courtroom. I was number 35. Number 36 was very anxious; she was a dancer, and was scheduled to perform that night. Number 34 was trying to get some work done on his Blackberry before they brought us into the electronics-free zone in the courtroom. A few people who didn't have on the white "JUROR" stickers sat on the benches in the corridor in little clusters. A woman was crying in the women's bathroom, talking on her cellphone in Spanish. In the hallway, there were a couple of women with small children; they all looked really unhappy. If it's a child abuse case, the woman who had been grading papers told me, I just can't do it.

We finally got into courtroom, packed into the pews with laminated cards with our number as placecards. The judge thanked us for being there, and acknowledged that we probably didn't want to be, and that we probably thought that our standby status meant we wouldn't have to report at all. It was a long drive for those outside the perimeter to get to downtown Atlanta so early in the morning, and we had other things to do. But from our group, twelve people would be chosen to serve on a jury.

She read the indictment. Even with only the listing of charges, in the legal language of the grand jury, this was clearly a horrific crime. The judge asked questions of the group, and we responded by holding up our laminated cards. Did we know anything about the case? Did we know the victim, the defendant, any of the attorneys? Had we or our family members been the victim of crime, or been accused of a crime we didn't commit? Were we friends with judges or attorneys or police officers? Did we have training in science or medical training? Did we believe that a prostitute could not be a victim of sexual assault, or that an accused person had to prove their innocence? Did we think we couldn't be fair, or couldn't serve becauses it would be hardship? The lawyers watched us raise our hands, made notes, scrutinized us. When we broke for lunch, the judge told us to call the people we needed to call to say we might be busy for a few days. If we had said it would be a hardship, she expected us to do what we could to resolve the problem ourselves. And we were not to talk about the case among ourselves or with anyone else.

After lunch, they started individual interviews. The interviews were done in the privacy of the jury room, with the prosecutors on one side of the table and the defendant and his defense attorneys on the other side; the judge was at the end. Some were quick and some were not. Between 1:10 p.m., when they started, and 5:30 p.m., when they stopped for the day, they talked to the first 33 jurors. Juror 34 and I sighed; we would have to be back, with 36 through 60, at 10:30 in the morning to resume voir dire; 1 through 33 didn't have to come back until afternoon.

Before we left at the end of that first day, we were told not to look anything up about the case, not to talk to anyone, not to blog or Twitter or post on Facebook. We were back the next morning, 34 and 36 (she had made it to her performance, and was in a much better mood the second day) and on up to 60. The interviews went faster the second day; they only had a few questions for me (did I have any training in pathology? How long ago was that?).

So the attorneys had their notes and their lists, and when the time came to actually select the jury, the baliff carried the jury listing back and forth between the two tables. They wrote, they highlighted, they consulted others on their team, and twice they went up to talk to the judge. Then, suddenly, it was over. They called out names, and one by one 13 of us - 12 jurors and an alternate - made their way to the jury box. They didn't call me (too much pathology training or too little?) but they did call number 34. Then the judge thanked the rest of us for our patience and our service, and told us we could leave.

Outside, we scattered. I crossed the street to the parking deck with number 23, who had raised his hand the day before on all those questions about knowing lawyers and judges. Are you an attorney, I asked. He asked what had given him away - the pin stripe suit? the wingtip shoes? Actually, I told him, it was the answers to the questions the day before. I'm not that kind of lawyer, he told me. It was going to be an upsetting case, he said. I told him I had thought it was upsetting, just to hear the indictment read.

While we were waiting for the final jury selection, the prosecution brought in a cardboard box, with the victim's name written on the side. I hadn't remembered the names of either the defendant or the victim from the indictment. So when I got home, I did what I had been told not to do the night before - I did a Google search, and found out more about the victim, the defendant, and the crime. It was a terrible crime, and I was glad that after all these years it had not been forgotten. It was a relief, that evening, to be able to talk about it, if only to say that those events back in 1994 were horrific, and if the man on trial was the man who had committed the crime, that I hoped that the prosecution could make a very strong case.

There wasn't much about the trial in the newspaper, but every evening I looked for updates. The trial had started as soon as we were dismissed, at the end of the day on Wednesday. The prosecution finished presenting their case on Friday, and the defense was expected to call no witnesses; it was expected to go to the jury Friday afternoon. So the jury was going to have go home, and keep whatever horrors they had heard to themselves over the weekend, and then return Monday morning to resume deliberations.

Yesterday - Monday - there was a verdict.

Guilty, on all counts.