“Jury duty.” To the average person, it belongs alongside “fender bender” and “root canal” on life’s little list of undesirable experiences.
An internet search of ways to avoid jury duty turns up actual legal advice as well as tips from the people’s law school, a.k.a. Reddit. The users’ ideas range from the practical (opine strongly about an element of the case, such as guns) to the whimsical (wear a bow tie) to the inadvisable (soil your pants).
When I reported for jury duty on a recent Monday, I simply assumed that, as in the past, I’d be dismissed by late morning. That was a bad assumption – although my experience, ultimately, was a good one.
After several hours of waiting, my name was called. Thirty-five of us reported to a courtroom for questioning to determine our fitness to serve on this particular case. (A 36th prospective juror didn’t show; the judge issued a bench warrant for her. That got everyone’s attention.)
One by one, we described our marital status, our occupations and our family’s occupations. We also indicated with a show of hands if we had any experiences, opinions or biases about aspects of the case.
After a few questions drew many hands, the judge reminded us that each hand-raiser would face further questions. And if he thought our answers were crafted for maximum dismissal potential, well, hadn’t he already had one person arrested today?
That really got everyone’s attention.
Presently, a jury was selected. I was among the “lucky” 13: 12 jurors and an alternate. A baker’s dozen of us, suddenly in need of changing our plans for the coming days.
The case got underway immediately. It was both a lawsuit and a countersuit, involving a relationship and a business gone bad. I use these terms generously. Right off the bat, we learned the relationship was an extramarital affair. The business, purportedly created to invest in real estate, had exactly two transactions in its three years; both were purchases of expensive vehicles which figured into the case.
The testimony and evidence mostly refrained from gratuitous details. But there were some amusing ones, such as the Mercedes-Benz Sprinter van that he (the plaintiff) said he had sold to the Nigerian army as planned – but which she (the defendant) claimed was meant to be a “push present” after she gave birth to their son.
Quite a lot of daylight between those stories, no? So it went with most everything else they said.
We had heard the entire case and reached a verdict by midday Wednesday. To most of the world besides the litigants, the matter will be soon forgotten if it was noticed at all.
Of more lasting significance, to me anyway, was the experience itself.
If you ever feel like you interact only with people more or less the same as you, serve on a jury. Our little group of 13, like the 35 in the selection pool, represented a true cross-section of Fulton County: by age, race, occupation, geography and every other way observable during the course of our service.
Yet, at a time when Americans seem unable to see eye-to-eye on much of anything, we listened to the same testimony and witnesses and were strikingly close to reaching a uniform conclusion from the moment we began deliberating.
Maybe it helped that nothing about the case had anything to do with politics. Certainly, it helped that we all heard and saw the same facts – unlike on social media platforms that determine what we see by what we already believe about the world. After the initial sense of dread at having to rearrange my calendar wore off, it was a refreshing experience.
Don’t get me wrong: I won’t be dropping by the courthouse anytime soon to volunteer my services. But the next time I get a summons, I won’t reach for a bow tie either.