On Jury Duty
NY County Supreme Court © CC Wiki
On Monday 4.2.23 I reported for jury duty at Kings Supreme Court in downtown Brooklyn, just a block away from Borough Hall. By 830am, I passed through security and joined a few hundred other people waiting in a large room. We made up the day’s jury pool. As needed for upcoming trials, our names would be called to enter the next room where the voir dire process would take place.
Around 930, a court employee read a few instructions, directed us on filling out some forms, and then we watched an interesting video about the jury process. The first part of this video described the process of a trial and what is expected of a juror. The second part included information from research group Perception Institute which detailed how our brains make decisions. Our unconscious brain handles some 40 million bits of data a minute while our conscious brain handles only 40 bits of info. Why does this matter? As a juror, one must be fair and impartial - a potential juror needs to be aware of their decision-making process so that unconscious biases do not influence a decision. A fair and impartial jury of our peers is a pillar of our democratic justice system.
Some notes from jury duty.
As a paralegal, I was curious about the process of selecting a jury as well as seeing the inner workings of criminal court. Though I was ready, willing, and able to participate, my name was never called. I was present in the waiting room until around 4pm when I was dismissed. My day was mostly spent reading.
In the morning I read John Truby’s Anatomy of Genres which details the essential plot beats, themes and forms of all the major genres from horror to thrillers to love stories. I found this book by accident while in the bookstore a few weeks ago and picked it up. When I saw it, I remembered something Steven Pressfield said in a podcast I’d recently listened to. Pressfield said that all his years of writing screenplays taught him the essentials of story writing, that if you’re writing an action novel it must have certain scenes and beats, like that scene (in every James Bond movie) where the villain has the upper-hand and it looks like the hero isn’t going to make it out alive. This idea struck me and I thought I’d better read up on these essential themes and scenes so I picked up Truby’s book. I’m getting a lot out of it but unfortunately it’s tough to read - not the content but the format - there’s lots of bullets, underlined headings, and jargon to wade through which I find difficult to follow.
After lunch and a walk through Columbus Park I worked through last week’s edition of The New Yorker which had a blurb about former President Trump’s recent indictment (see also A History of Hush Money). I became interested in the case; I thought about the New Yorkers, like those I was waiting with, who would be called to serve on that case’s jury. President Trump is the first U.S. president to be criminally charged in our nation’s history.
On Tuesday, Trump was arraigned in Manhattan where District Attorney Alvin Bragg laid out the charges against the defendant. In his indictment, Bragg brought 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree. During the 2016 election campaign, Trump’s ‘fixer’, lawyer Michael Cohen, paid Stormy Daniels to refrain from speaking about her affair with Trump - ‘hush money’. According to the records Bragg’s office secured, Trump reimbursed Cohen with funds from Trump Organization when in fact this was not a legal business expense as there was no retainer in place for Cohen. The indictment against Trump hinges on testimony from Cohen in a case where he pleaded guilty to tax evasion and violation of campaign finance law.
Trump may also face charges in Georgia where he tried to overturn the 2020 election results as well as from the Justice Department following the January 6th committee’s report.
“In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the State and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the Assistance of Counsel for his defence.
-Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution
I thought about the task at hand for a jury. They must refrain from speaking to anyone about the case or posting about it on social media (including Myspace, our jury video reminded, indicating the video’s advanced age). They must also refrain from reading or learning anything else about the case from the news or any other source. In Trump’s case, how much of this is realistic for a modern jury?
No doubt this is a historic case. The jurors will have to deliver Trump’s verdict - guilt or not guilty. On Monday when I looked around the room, I saw normal people who have busy lives with families, children, and jobs. Most would rather be anywhere else than at jury duty. But it is a duty, a civic duty, and a crucial one - in some cases our entire democracy hinges on a fair and impartial jury of normal, everyday people who determine right from wrong.
