I spent three days on jury duty this week. It was an interesting and thought provoking experience. Throughout the process everyone treats jurors very seriously. One is constantly reminded of the jury being critically important to the process. Jurors are treated well. That is to say everyone shows the jury respect. There are comfortable chairs both in the jury box and the jury deliberation room. There are snacks and beverages in the deliberation room. The judge, who rules the process, speaks to the jury in respectful tones and works hard to minimize the announces of process and delays. Plus there are oaths to take which are explains and anything but mere formality. This all helps the jury to take their role seriously.<\/p>\n
I found myself paying closer attention to testimony and discussion than I can ever remember paying in my life. It was not a strain even though the testimony was sometimes repetitious and not that interesting. It was still important. After two days of listening to testimony and evidence it was time to deliberate.<\/p>\n
Everyone on the jury takes this deadly seriously. We are after all deciding the future of another person\u2019s life. We don\u2019t determine the punishment \u2013 that is the role of the judge. But the jury determines if there will be a punishment. It\u2019s a big deal.<\/p>\n
The jury I was on spent four hours in deliberation. Everyone wanted to be sure that they were absolutely sure of their decision. Did the prosecution prove their case? It\u2019s a big difference between \u201cwe think they did it\u201d and \u201cwe are sure without doubt that they did it.\u201d No one on my jury seemed to be willing to just vote with the majority to get it over with. We reviewed evidence \u2013 pictures, videos, audio recordings. We discussed timelines and testimony. It was intense.<\/p>\n
I mentioned that during the trial I fell asleep every night and woke up every morning thinking about the case \u2013 reviewing the evidence and testimony in my mind. I weighted what I had observed and analyzed every piece of it. The people I told about this agreed that they were doing the same things. This is responsibility and this is people working to take that responsibility seriously. It is not easy. It is not easy mentally and it is not easy emotionally. But it is what responsibility is about.<\/p>\n
I came away from this experience feeling better about the jury process. There may have been some things I might have done differently if I had been one of the attorneys in the case. Though of course I can\u2019t really know that. But I do believe that the jury did everything they could have and should have. That is a comforting thought.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I spent three days on jury duty this week. It was an interesting and thought provoking experience. Throughout the process everyone treats jurors very seriously. One is constantly reminded of the jury being critically important to the process. Jurors are treated well. That is to say everyone shows the jury respect. There are comfortable chairs […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-law"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/215\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.n1zyy.com\/mistert\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}