The Cost of Jury Duty
The Richmond Times Dispatch
by gayla m. mills
My friends in the county say they rarely see the inside of a jury box. But being a city resident, I've been called to jury duty every four years.
So I knew any day I'd get that letter in the mail, and sure enough, it was my time. Once again I drove along Marshall Street hoping to find the right parking deck, the one where you can get reimbursed. Again, I forgot to leave my pen knife in the car, so I slipped it off my keychain and placed it under the planter outside the courthouse. Again, I stood in line as we waited our turn to pass through security. And again, as we glanced at our watches in the cramped room with the free coffee — a collection of strangers thrown together by bad luck — I was chosen to serve.
We sat in the jury box and watched as the defendant was wheeled in. He looked hard-worn, with the weathered dark skin of a life hard lived. It wasn't two minutes into the trial before he said something too loudly, out of turn, with fist clenched. His attorney tried to quiet him in a familiar way that said he had done it many times before. Now his client had lost the sympathy of the jury even before the evidence was brought.
This wasn't a sleepy case that made you wish you were elsewhere. It was a case that strained your heart. The defendant, "Mr. Jones," had been staying in a shelter for the homeless, and was alleged to have destroyed property in a fit of anger. The wronged party, "Mr. Smith," had been trying to help the accused before his property was destroyed. Smith bore a strange resemblance to the defendant, both aged and crippled, both angry, both with previous convictions. Two sides of a coin, from the same metal, now on opposite sides of the courtroom.
As the testimony unfolded, revealing more and more about these men, I felt the weight of the evidence bearing down on me. How were we as jurors to get past our own competing emotions of sympathy and anger, of sadness and condescension? Some jurors squirmed, some looked intense.
I mostly felt sad, sad at the wasted lives, at the telling of the script of the man we were judging. A man who started off with small convictions for petty stuff. No rapes or murders or bank robberies, just a guy who had become angry over time, someone who must have watched the good life pass him by as he scrambled.
But he also had harmed people trying to do good. I could understand his anger, understand his urge to strike out in his helplessness, yet still see that some justice had to be done.
But what was justice?
After we found him guilty, we were sent back to decide a sentence. What we wanted was restitution to the victim, so the bill for the damage would be paid. But that wasn't going to happen. The guy couldn't even afford rent. So jail time it would be.
After much discussion and compromise, we ended up with a prison term. No one seemed happy about it. The woman wanting five years felt it was too light. The one wanting no jail time believed it too heavy.
I thought that no matter what punishment he got, it wouldn't make anything right. It wouldn't give these men their health back. The accuser wouldn't get his property back. The defendant wouldn't become less angry, or even come to see his own guilt. The world was against him, and this was just another example of its injustice. It was easy to imagine him at the end of his time served coming out the other side, still with no job, no enlightenment, no skills and no hope.
And now there would be no justice either, just an ending.
For the jurors it was a day spent downtown, a day that might linger for a short while but would soon be forgotten.
As for me, I retrieved my knife and headed off to the garage. Then I got in my car and wept.
(April 22, 2012)
Next
So I knew any day I'd get that letter in the mail, and sure enough, it was my time. Once again I drove along Marshall Street hoping to find the right parking deck, the one where you can get reimbursed. Again, I forgot to leave my pen knife in the car, so I slipped it off my keychain and placed it under the planter outside the courthouse. Again, I stood in line as we waited our turn to pass through security. And again, as we glanced at our watches in the cramped room with the free coffee — a collection of strangers thrown together by bad luck — I was chosen to serve.
We sat in the jury box and watched as the defendant was wheeled in. He looked hard-worn, with the weathered dark skin of a life hard lived. It wasn't two minutes into the trial before he said something too loudly, out of turn, with fist clenched. His attorney tried to quiet him in a familiar way that said he had done it many times before. Now his client had lost the sympathy of the jury even before the evidence was brought.
This wasn't a sleepy case that made you wish you were elsewhere. It was a case that strained your heart. The defendant, "Mr. Jones," had been staying in a shelter for the homeless, and was alleged to have destroyed property in a fit of anger. The wronged party, "Mr. Smith," had been trying to help the accused before his property was destroyed. Smith bore a strange resemblance to the defendant, both aged and crippled, both angry, both with previous convictions. Two sides of a coin, from the same metal, now on opposite sides of the courtroom.
As the testimony unfolded, revealing more and more about these men, I felt the weight of the evidence bearing down on me. How were we as jurors to get past our own competing emotions of sympathy and anger, of sadness and condescension? Some jurors squirmed, some looked intense.
I mostly felt sad, sad at the wasted lives, at the telling of the script of the man we were judging. A man who started off with small convictions for petty stuff. No rapes or murders or bank robberies, just a guy who had become angry over time, someone who must have watched the good life pass him by as he scrambled.
But he also had harmed people trying to do good. I could understand his anger, understand his urge to strike out in his helplessness, yet still see that some justice had to be done.
But what was justice?
After we found him guilty, we were sent back to decide a sentence. What we wanted was restitution to the victim, so the bill for the damage would be paid. But that wasn't going to happen. The guy couldn't even afford rent. So jail time it would be.
After much discussion and compromise, we ended up with a prison term. No one seemed happy about it. The woman wanting five years felt it was too light. The one wanting no jail time believed it too heavy.
I thought that no matter what punishment he got, it wouldn't make anything right. It wouldn't give these men their health back. The accuser wouldn't get his property back. The defendant wouldn't become less angry, or even come to see his own guilt. The world was against him, and this was just another example of its injustice. It was easy to imagine him at the end of his time served coming out the other side, still with no job, no enlightenment, no skills and no hope.
And now there would be no justice either, just an ending.
For the jurors it was a day spent downtown, a day that might linger for a short while but would soon be forgotten.
As for me, I retrieved my knife and headed off to the garage. Then I got in my car and wept.
(April 22, 2012)
Next