From A Decade Past, Jury Duty
Jan. 31st, 2007 09:41 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsWell, I did my time and I'm out on the streets again. Yes, for the past couple of days I've been held by the municipal court system-- allowed to go home at night on my own recognizance, but required to report to the Public Safety Building every morning at 9:00 am. It was long and arduous and mostly dull, but at time it was an interesting experience I'd willfully repeat. I wasn't there as a suspect or anything sinister like that, but as a juror.
I will say there were several things that I found striking about the experience. The first thing that I noticed was that, while the city sends out 300 jury summonses a week, they expect only about 20%, or 60 people, to actually show up for jury duty. This week, however, a painful 43 people showed up-- 15% of those summoned, and not enough to actually supply the needs of five courtrooms. The other 85% are potentially on the receiving end of a five-thousand dollar fine and a year in jail (although in Seattle's history, nobody has ever actually been sent to jail for evading jury duty). And out of the 250 or so people who did not show up this week, the city eventually ends up processing citations against only about fifty of them. Every week.
That's shameful. People often excuse it by saying, "Oh, they can reschedule to a later date." If that's true, where are the people who rescheduled for this week? Shouldn't they have had the civic responsibility to show up? Like voting, there's little excuse for not doing jury duty. It's relatively painless, and while it's part of your civil duty, it is also your civil right to do jury duty without being penalized by your employer. I mean, Hell, one of the people sharing the jury pool room with me was Bill Nye The Science Guy. Former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, I recall, served as a juror sometime last year. If these people have the time, so do more than just 15% of the residents of Seattle.
One thing that really bugged me was that the jury pool was almost all white. Out of 43 people, there were two black members, and I know that the makeup of Seattle is not less than 5% black. I think if justice were to be served to black defendants, then maybe more potential black jurors should show up for their summons.
One comment that came out of the conversations I had with other jurors, especially those who had actually gone through the process of deliberations, was "All my fellow jurors were such nice people. We argued and got angry, but they were nice people." And maybe that's another problem with the jury system. Only nice people show up; responsible people, people who feel the need to perform their civic duties as required by law and custom. This was rarely a "jury of one's peers," since a lot of defendants were neither white nor particularly nice (in one case, I thought the defendent was an asshole, but by six to zero we found him not guilty of the crime of which he was accused), yet in many cases their fates were being decided by nice, white people.
There was an essay on the noteboard in the jury pool room. The essay was about FIJA, the Fully Informed Jury Act, which requires all jurors' handbooks to contain information regarding a jury's right to nullification. Here, in the back room of a JURY POOL was an article that would scare the eyeballs out of every prosecutor who knew about it. It informs jurors of their right to nullification; that is, of their right to decide that, regardless of the evidence or the letter of the law, a jury has the right to decide that compassion and reason require that they find the defendant not guilty. The Supreme Court has ruled time and again that jury nullification is an absolute right at the very heart of our judicial system-- that the unanimous decision of a jury of one's peers cannot be questioned once it is entered into the record.
I wasn't in the Jury Pool room the whole time. But while I was there I did note that I was the ONLY person who read the essay. That, too, was sad.
But Jury Duty... I won't say it was fun. Educational, yeah, I now know what the bargain basement of justice looks like.
I will say there were several things that I found striking about the experience. The first thing that I noticed was that, while the city sends out 300 jury summonses a week, they expect only about 20%, or 60 people, to actually show up for jury duty. This week, however, a painful 43 people showed up-- 15% of those summoned, and not enough to actually supply the needs of five courtrooms. The other 85% are potentially on the receiving end of a five-thousand dollar fine and a year in jail (although in Seattle's history, nobody has ever actually been sent to jail for evading jury duty). And out of the 250 or so people who did not show up this week, the city eventually ends up processing citations against only about fifty of them. Every week.
That's shameful. People often excuse it by saying, "Oh, they can reschedule to a later date." If that's true, where are the people who rescheduled for this week? Shouldn't they have had the civic responsibility to show up? Like voting, there's little excuse for not doing jury duty. It's relatively painless, and while it's part of your civil duty, it is also your civil right to do jury duty without being penalized by your employer. I mean, Hell, one of the people sharing the jury pool room with me was Bill Nye The Science Guy. Former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, I recall, served as a juror sometime last year. If these people have the time, so do more than just 15% of the residents of Seattle.
One thing that really bugged me was that the jury pool was almost all white. Out of 43 people, there were two black members, and I know that the makeup of Seattle is not less than 5% black. I think if justice were to be served to black defendants, then maybe more potential black jurors should show up for their summons.
One comment that came out of the conversations I had with other jurors, especially those who had actually gone through the process of deliberations, was "All my fellow jurors were such nice people. We argued and got angry, but they were nice people." And maybe that's another problem with the jury system. Only nice people show up; responsible people, people who feel the need to perform their civic duties as required by law and custom. This was rarely a "jury of one's peers," since a lot of defendants were neither white nor particularly nice (in one case, I thought the defendent was an asshole, but by six to zero we found him not guilty of the crime of which he was accused), yet in many cases their fates were being decided by nice, white people.
There was an essay on the noteboard in the jury pool room. The essay was about FIJA, the Fully Informed Jury Act, which requires all jurors' handbooks to contain information regarding a jury's right to nullification. Here, in the back room of a JURY POOL was an article that would scare the eyeballs out of every prosecutor who knew about it. It informs jurors of their right to nullification; that is, of their right to decide that, regardless of the evidence or the letter of the law, a jury has the right to decide that compassion and reason require that they find the defendant not guilty. The Supreme Court has ruled time and again that jury nullification is an absolute right at the very heart of our judicial system-- that the unanimous decision of a jury of one's peers cannot be questioned once it is entered into the record.
I wasn't in the Jury Pool room the whole time. But while I was there I did note that I was the ONLY person who read the essay. That, too, was sad.
But Jury Duty... I won't say it was fun. Educational, yeah, I now know what the bargain basement of justice looks like.
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Date: 2007-02-02 01:54 am (UTC)The right of juries to judge both fact and law was stated by US Supreme Court Chief Justice John Jay, in Georgia v. Brailsford, 1794 ("It is presumed, that juries are the best judges of facts; it is, on the other hand, presumed that courts are the best judges of law. But still both objects are within your power of decision.....you have a right to take it upon yourselves to judge of both, and to determine the law as well as the fact in controversy."), and by US Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in Horning v. District of Columbia, 1920 (The jury has the power to bring a verdict in the teeth of both the law and the facts.). The 4th Circuit Court of Appeals, in United States v. Moylan, 1969, even more clearly acknowledged a jury's right to return any verdict it wants to: "If the jury feels the law is unjust, we recognize the undisputed power of the jury to acquit, even if its verdict is contrary to the law as given by a judge, and contrary to the evidence...If the jury feels that the law under which the defendant is accused is unjust, or that exigent circumstances justified the actions of the accused, or for any reason which appeals to their logic or passion, the jury has the power to acquit, and the courts must abide by that decision."
And it's explicitly written into the constitution of both Maryland (Article XXIII: "In the trial of all criminal cases, the Jury shall be the Judges of Law, as well as of fact, except that the Court may pass upon the sufficiency of the evidence to sustain a conviction") and Indiana (Article I, ยง19: "In all criminal cases whatsoever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.").