Politics: Jury Duty

I haven’t ever served on a jury. And I haven’t been called in minute, so maybe I’ll yet be able to participate in one of the most important citizen duties I can. I am writing this week because of the national news story about a certain ex-president who has a trial beginning jury selection.

Now, I am writing this Sunday/Monday, so I don’t know much. I know the judge has a question of “can you be impartial about this defendant.” God, I hope they can manage to find people for this jury who for some reason can be impartial. Presidents tend to bring out strong feelings in many people. And yet, there are people who persist in their ignorance of current events… so I have hope at finding a jury somehow of relatively uninformed people with little opinion.

Anywho, that isn’t what I wanted to write about. I wanted to write about the importance of this task. This particular trial might have brought it to the fore, but this is something I have long pondered. Everyone hates jury duty. And it’s awful in a lot of ways. It is an incredible responsibility.

When we sit on a jury, we are holding our fellows to account. We are determining whether our state, which represents all of us, is representing our interests. This is “easy” (relatively) with a crime like greed-theft. One citizen steals a car from another.

I do not want “citizen justice.” I do not think I should have the right to determine the true guilt of someone else, nor should I have the power and authority to execute punishment. Nor should any other individual have that right over me. I would argue this is one of those role appropriate to the state – when interpersonal conflict arises, the state acts as mediator and enforcer. Whether it’s contracts, safety (traffic lights), or laws. No one person should bear this responsibility and no one person should have this authority.

So when one citizen steals from another, the state acts as representative to support both the individual wronged (stolen from) and the community (at risk for more theft). The prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge, the court staff, and the jury all in this case represent “the state.” Yes, I think both attorneys represent elements of the state. The prosecutor in stance of guilt and the defense… well defending a citizen from an overreach of authority and power.

The state is supposed to (in the best of theories) defend the weak from the strong. Provide a bulwark against abuses whether it’s a parent abusing a child or a company abusing an employee or one person abusing another. Laws regarding libel are a great example of this. And our application of these laws are historically an interesting debate in freedom of speech versus the damage speech may cause. So the defense attorney is representing the best elements of what the state should provide. In theory of course.

In similar theory, the twelve jurors are representing all of us in listening to both sides of the argument and providing fair arbitration. It’s an important and difficult job. Not every case is straightforward. And we, as a society, demand a difficult bar of beyond a reasonable doubt to prove guilt of criminals.

I definitely think there are many people who take this task too lightly. Or enjoy the power to “punish” too much. This is a risk of drawing randomly. It is also a benefit in a real way. There are twelve people, and the likelihood of all twelve treating this task without the weight it deserves is unlikely.

So honestly, I hope that somehow New York can find twelve (which really will probably be 15-24 with alternate jurors) who are intelligent enough to give this duty the weight it deserves while being somehow lacking a strong opinion on one of the most decisive men of our country.