jury's duty

My first day at the Brooklyn Civil Court building started innocently enough. I sat through a short, entertaining, yet informative movie in the Jury room that chronicled the history of our system of justice. Soon afterwards my name was called and I was directed to the first interview room with 8 other prospective jurors. We sat through presentations by both attorneys until finally we were allowed an hour for lunch. It was raining pretty hard so all I could do was run over to the nearest Wendy’s for a #1 value meal, which left me with the taste of onions for the rest of the day.
After lunch, the counselors informed us who must stay and who could leave. I was the third name called. I was told that I was picked for trial and needed to be back Monday morning at 10am for its start.

I thought it would be a mini-vacation but it turned out to be, for lack of a better term, death by false testimony. For the next week, I struggled to stay awake while a parade of quacks took the stand posing as specialists. Later, I would come to find out that these doctors made a living by showing up at court a few times a week and testifying for about $5000 a pop. Usually they testified in support of the defendant, which often turned out to be an insurance company. In this case, the plaintiff hired a couple of experts to offer testimony on his behalf. Unfortunately, ‘he didn’t have a chance’ because his witnesses didn’t appear to be the most credible paired with the fact that he was suing for half a million dollars for a fender bender.

Deliberations left me with one lasting impression of the justice system. And I say to you, hope and pray that your fate is never left to a jury of your peers. I have learned that most people don’t care. Some people are too much in a hurry to eat lunch, watch a TV show or get home to take a nap to actually care about someone else’s life. I had upset a juror who wanted me to ‘make up my mind’. She was in a hurry to leave and I was in the way of a unanimous vote. I held out temporarily because I wanted to discuss the evidence objectively one more time. I just wanted to give the poor guy the same fair shot I would expect him to give me. Ultimately, my vote wasn’t needed to reach a verdict. They had enough “No’s”.

On my way out of the court room, I still wondered if we had arrived at the right decision. At that moment I looked up to find the plaintiff on the street corner about 5 feet away smoking a cigarette. He looked dejected. I just kept walking without saying a word.