Jury Duty

Tom Kando

I just completed a three-week tour of jury duty. It was a criminal case. A serious violent felony. I am not going to tell you about the case. Neither am I going to pontificate about crime, laws, justice and injustice, even though I could, since I have taught criminology at the University for several decades, and I also worked at the California State prison in Vacaville. I just want to make a few comments about our judicial system, and how I experienced it as a citizen-juror and as an observer:

The Courthouse is bustling with hundreds, maybe thousands, of citizen-jurors, lawyers, cops, clerks, judges and criminals.The amount of resources our society devotes to justice and law enforcement is staggering. I estimate the case on which I served cost up to half a million dollars. The salaries, the fees of lawyers, judges, expert witnesses, the facilities, the transportation, the feeding and housing of defendants. Hundreds of prospective jurors spend day after day milling around in the courthouse, waiting to be called for jury duty, but most of the time being dismissed by the end of the day, sent back home, after having missed days on the job.
The utter lack of productivity! After being empaneled, jurors still spend more time waiting and breaking for coffee than in the courtroom, listening to and dealing with their case.

This is no one's fault. The most striking aspect is the impressive civility and intelligence of nearly everyone. Hardly anyone is irritable or impolite. From judges to attorneys to citizen-jurors, people are friendly and well-spoken. When witnesses, cops, victims and others take the stand, their mastery of the English language is excellent. When you chat with another juror over coffee, the conversation is intelligent and the words are well chosen.

The one slightly negative "vibration" is a perhaps slightly exaggerated deference shown all around, a shyness which may betray fear. Of course, upon entering the courthouse, you are bombarded with security procedures, armed personnel giving out polite but firm orders, signs with dozens of rules. Once a case gets under way, the judge admonishes the jurors and the audience about do's and don't's - upon penalty of severe fines and incarceration.

This is not a place of jest - at least not too much of it. But that's just the point: To some degree, joking is okay! The place does definitely not remind one of Stalinist Russia. There is room for some levity. People do smile and laugh, at times.

In other words, it is not fear which one feels floating around, but respect. Citizens respecting each other, civilians respecting cops and judges, and judges and cops respecting civilians. There are strict protocols as to who may talk to whom and about what, but common-sense goes a long way towards eliminating this as a serious problem. For the rest, you see people interacting, chatting, indeed having a relatively good time with each other, while waiting in hallways and anti-chambers, eating doughnuts, and then back to work in courtrooms, where business is conducted extremely professionally, diligently and without acrimony.

What I saw was a civilized and well-intentioned society working hard at maintaining the rule of law. Everyone does his best, and everyone understands what is going on, and knows how to do things right. The system may be cumbersome and inefficient, but the people in it, at all levels, are the salt of the earth.leave comment here