I was excited. I caught the 7:37am to the ITC station in downtown Fort Worth. I studied the bus routes and flashed my bus pass like I’d done it a thousand times. I joined the crowd walking to work in the mild coolness that is 8am during a Texas summer. There I was, little miss independent, in my corporate getup, proudly wearing my would-be juror identification badge, on my way to try something new, to join something bigger than myself. I felt very grown-up.
Ushered through metal detectors and juror selection check-in, I sat in a bench on the 7th floor for three hours before lining up and surrendering my courtroom pass to the bailiff.
The room was icy cold, maybe so people would stay awake, maybe so we would all more acutely feel the gravity of the situation, maybe so we would all want to get things over and get out as soon as possible. The judge was strict, the attorneys slick, and the defendant was scared. I could see it in his eyes.
The suave prosecuting attorney was explaining laws and asking questions. Voir dire for those of you who know. He talked to people about their pasts. He probed for biases. I kept thinking about the movie Runaway Jury and almost bursting into a big smile. I wondered if there were cameras somewhere in the room watching my every move, trying to see if I was crazy, or pro-victim, or a stickler for maximum sentences. It felt like a joke, a dream from which I would eventually wake.
But the minutes ticked silently by, and there were no jokes.
And I sat there in the cold, looking into his eyes. He barely looked older than me. He was being accused of this and that with a deadly weapon, penalized with up to life in jail. I'm not really sure what I was feeling. Not pity. Not contempt. Astonishment perhaps. I couldn’t believe I was actually sitting there. I was on unfamiliar emotional ground. I realized that I might have the chance to judge this young man’s actions. His future would be in my hands. I could send him to jail for the rest of his life. Me! Little 20 year old me who was more concerned with what to wear than morning than how I was going to think and act.
The minutes ticked by, and two seconds turned into two hours. And then I wasn’t chosen for the jury.
Who knows why. I didn’t voice any weird opinions (for once). I wasn’t acting like a playful 5 year-old. There was nothing in my past that would have affected my ability to judge the particulars of this case. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I didn’t have quite enough college under my belt. Maybe they thought young people are risks. I guess they’re probably right.
Somewhat relieved, I filed out of the pretty glass and metal standard government-issue building. Breathing the air outside was like breathing for the first time. I found my appropriate bus stop. I had an abbreviated conversation with the corner hot dog vendor while I waited for the the 1:37 train back to my Hurst/Bell station, ready to continue my life. I climbed to the second level of the train and sat next to an old policeman eating pretzels out of a ziplock baggie and solving a sodoku. He told me I was a good girl when I turned my phone back on and called my dad to say I was headed home. I looked out the window and thought about my life. I realized I have it easy. I discovered how much I absolutely love public transportation. I thought about how much I hate it when housing developments have no trees because the builders wipe them out so they won’t have to build around them. I texted my friend who was leaving for Mexico that afternoon. I was back in my world. My little stint in the business/legal/official/grown up world was over.
But for the individuals still in the courtroom, the story was just starting.
Post Script: I know many people who think jury duty is gross and bothersome. And maybe it is. But it is the way our justice system functions, and the way by which we will be judged were we to commit a crime. And if the system is corrupt, then all the more reason for honorable rational individuals (like most of us) to involve ourselves with the institution. In the same way that we do not give up on the modern church, even though it can be incredibly corrupt and misleading and humanistic, we should not abandon this system. A component of combating society’s problems is for individuals who are capable of wisdom and mercy to choose to walk out their lives with honesty, valor, and sacrifice, involving themselves with the people and in the institutions that most need redeeming.
