:: (For part one, click here) ::
It's a strange thing, jury duty.
One minute, you're snug in your predictable suburban life, driving carpool and paying bills. The next, you're tossed into a group of twelve strangers, sitting a few feet from a man whose entire future rests in your hands. It's surreal (for us), terrifying (for him) and messy (for all of us). It's a system just unnerving enough to make you want to throw out the judicial baby with the judicial bathwater, except that the alternative is no justice at all.
So we did what free and reasonable humans do, I suppose: the best we can. We listened carefully. We held evidence in our hands. We didn't speculate when there were objections or moves to strike or your-Honor-may-I-approach-the-bench? We listened to the instructions, and then we read them, and then we read them again. We handed over our cell phones, for Pete's sake. We argued (a little) and compromised (a lot) until the wee hours. And then, our reasonable doubt easily but sadly put to rest, we did justice.
Guilty, on four counts. Four very serious counts. Even though the judge gave us clearance to discuss the trial in detail, I don't feel quite comfortable with it, and I'm not sure why. Maybe because it doesn't feel, entirely, like my story to tell?
It's probably too easy, I think, to neatly tuck an accused criminal into a safe category of Those People, the ones who walked a path I would surely never walk, who have hurt so many for so long, who must be made to pay. Take a bite out of crime. Only YOU can prevent forest fires. But when you sit a in crowded deliberation room with twelve strangers, when you turn a man's life and future over in your hands like State Exhibit 7, when the defendant's mother makes eye contact with you during closing arguments, the lines feel blurry. The humanity gets a lot more real.
We did the right thing; of that I'm sure. All the facts in the trial were crystal clear; the facts the judge could share only after the trial were even clearer. When compassion bumps up against the law, the law wins, because we shaky humans don't have a lot of wiggle room when it comes to establishing order. When we delivered our verdict and received our instructions for determining the sentence (something Oklahoma criminal juries are uncomfortably required to do), we were given our first access to the defendant's long and overwhelming previous record of convictions. It was long. LONG. As the list was read, I couldn't help but think of the One who listened to my outrageously long list of offenses, signaled the Judge, and said (not being bound, thankfully, by the Great State of Oklahoma), "I've got it covered."
The whole thing lasted until the wee hours of a chilly Friday morning. The judge dismissed us with a twenty-dollar-a-day stipend and, for dramatic effect, an armed escort to our cars. In an strange mix of exhaustion, relief, peace and sadness, I cried all the way home.
It's a strange thing, jury duty.
