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Illustration by Catherine Chan
When I got the letter informing me I had been called for jury duty, I was irritated. How long would I need to be off work? What about my responsibility to my team members? Would my projects slip and my performance review suffer as a result? I spent the rest of the night complaining to my husband and Googling “how to get out of jury duty.”
I begrudgingly showed up at the courthouse on the appointed day and counted about 230 other people. I felt good about my odds of being excused. The judge described the charges: Two men were charged with sexually assaulting two women. The judge called for people with biases due to the nature of the crime, those who were too ill to participate and those with hardship cases (students who would lose a semester, or those who would be without income). The courtroom was now down to about 80 people and I realized my odds had changed considerably.
When I was called, I walked to the front of the large courtroom, passing the rail and leaving the public gallery behind me. I stepped up into the witness box and turned to face the room. I had gone from being an anonymous member of the gallery to the focus of attention in the room. I felt a humbling and unfamiliar sense of formality.
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The defence lawyer asked me a yes-or-no question about my potential biases. Once I had answered, the judge asked me to look upon the accused. One of the men looked at me, then quickly dropped his gaze. I felt his self-consciousness and imagined his fear. Suddenly my concerns about work responsibilities felt insignificant, even selfish. In that moment I understood what was being asked of me in a way that the jury selection letter didn’t convey. I was selected to be on the jury.
The case was complicated by the fact that the two victims were intellectually delayed. They were above the age of majority, so it really came down to whether or not they had the capacity to consent to sexual activity. Our judicial system exists to provide the framework to make these judgments, but this was a question to be answered by lay people, by representative members of our society.
What does it mean to be sure beyond a reasonable doubt? Resolving this ambiguity required much more active participation than I had anticipated; I thought about it from different perspectives while riding the subway and walking the dog.
When I came home each day, I would share what I was learning about our judicial system with my husband and our school-aged kids. I showed them online pictures of the courtroom and discussed the roles of the judge and lawyers.
“I wouldn’t want to be on a jury because the details of violent crimes could give me nightmares,” my daughter said.
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My husband and I explained how adults need to shoulder many different types of responsibility to make our society work, some of which is unpleasant. I watched her sit quietly as she absorbed this new understanding.
I thought the trial was well-run. Previously, my perspective was influenced by courtroom stereotypes of the judge falling asleep at the bench while lawyers spoke in incomprehensible legalese. Instead, the two-week trial moved along at a good pace, none of the witnesses or evidence presented were redundant, nothing was unclear and it was never boring. The purpose of a jury trial is to open up the legal system to lay people; if they lose their audience through tedium or confusion, they have failed.
From watching TV courtroom dramas, I half-expected the lawyers would use their closing arguments to take cheap shots at one another, but they were genuinely respectful. I found it heartening to see that there are still public spaces where admirable conduct prevails.
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We deliberated for a day and a half, during which time we were sequestered. On the first day we worked until 7 p.m. and then had dinner at a nearby hotel where we stayed overnight. In the hotel room, the television had been disabled, the clock radio was removed and they took away our cell phones. During our deliberation, we reviewed all of the evidence in the order it was presented to us, agreeing on the facts as we went along. It’s quite an undertaking to make a significant decision with 12 people, all of whom have equal say.
We found both men guilty. There was a moment when we looked at each other and felt the weight of what we had decided to do.
Many of life’s most satisfying experiences are not initially appealing but force us to think and grow in new ways, which are rewarding in retrospect. Meaning in our lives also comes from being part of something larger than ourselves. Initially I viewed jury duty as an annoying bureaucratic obligation, but it turned out to be a rich life experience.
Jennifer Bone lives in Toronto.