Even Pregnant Women Have to Serve Jury Duty

Now that I have completed jury service, and am thus no longer under oath to not disclose any information related to the trial, I thought I would share my reflections on the experience. This was my first time serving jury duty and, what do you know, I got picked to sit on the trial. The process of selecting jurors took nearly 2 full days, and through the course of questioning, I learned a lot about what types of people get dismissed.

1. People Who Don't Speak English
In a selection of potential jurors, one may safely assume that at least 3 out of every 40 potential jurors legitimately cannot understand what is being said in court. To their credit, some of the justice system mumbo jumbo is hard for any person to follow, even when they speak slowly. But it is rather astonishing how long you can be a citizen in this country - 20 years, even 30 years - without ever really learning the language. This has never really bothered me before. I see how you can, for instance, live in Chinatown, do your business only with other Chinese Americans, and never have to learn English. I figure, no harm. But for each person in the jury selection who cannot understand the judge, the chances of landing one of the 12 coveted spots gets incrementally higher for the rest of us English-speakers.

2. People Who Talk Too Much or Ask Too Many Questions
Sometimes people, whether its out of nervousness or ignorance, feel the need to disclose very long, rambling stories in the course of the jury interviewing. They ask you if you have any family or close friends in the police force, what your feelings about drinking are, or if you've ever been in a fight. If your response begins with, "I don't know if this counts, but..." then you probably fall into this category.

3. Attorneys, Police Officers, and Those Related to Them
This may be relevant only to certain cases, but pretty much every person who mentions a significant tie to the police or court system will be dismissed once the lawyers begin striking jurors. Even if you share that your relationship does not cause you to feel biased toward other people of the same profession, no lawyer wants to take that risk. They also don't want you to judge how well they are doing their job, so prosecutors and DA's, you're out.

4. People Whose Time is More Important Than Yours
You may have a magazine deadline and the opening of school to prepare for, but there are some people in the jury selection pool who are more important than you are. They have employees! People depend on them! Their schedule is busy! These people cannot work around the court day (which, by the way, is only 10:45 a.m. to 4:15 p.m. with an hour and a half lunch) or find someone to cover for them. Of course the judge won't really allow you to skip out on your jury service these days unless you literally cannot pay your rent or mortgage if you lost wages (she is even willing to call your employer to "encourage" him to work with your schedule), so these people usually find a way to be in the fourth and final category...

5. Stupid, Unreasonable People
The judge asks a series of questions to the jury pool about bias. She asks about your career and who you live with and if you, a family member, or close friend has ever been assaulted, arrested, etc. The goal is to identify people who may be particularly sensitive to either the subject matter of the case or the witnesses they are planning to call. Sometimes a poor college student starts crying in the middle of one of these questions and has to continue answering privately with the judge in a sidebar. She should probably not be assigned to this jury. Most everyone else is simply irritable and unwilling to be here. Even when asked point blank, "Would you be willing to consciously lay aside your bias in order to consider the evidence in this particular case fairly?" they respond in the negative. Now, no one ever really says "no," point blank, but they dance around the issue with something like, "I would find it very difficult." Or perhaps even, "I could try but I wouldn't know without hearing the evidence." The best of the bunch start off with an aggressive, "What you need to understand is..." Most of them sprinkle in a healthy dose of "I'm just being honest," which is just ever so charming. Of course, these people are all eventually asked to leave, and I suppose we should be thankful because at least we don't have to deal with them in the deliberation room.

So the final 12 standing (plus 2 alternates) are average, law-abiding, honest citizens, which I guess is really the whole point. (Even then, we had one crazy man fly under the radar and wreck the entire case for us.) But overall, the system itself runs fairly well; the judge and lawyers were all very amicable. The deputy even offered to give me extra bathroom breaks considering my current state. I think I might have even enjoyed my jury service if we hadn't ended in a hung jury. I figure every reasonable, law-abiding American ought to try it sometime.

And lest you are tempted to find yourself among the category-five folks, remember this: every time you conjure some clever way to get out of jury service, an 8-month-pregnant woman takes your place.