I opened my mailbox the other day and found, among the two weeks worth of unpaid bills and junk mail, a yellow card that was very familiar to me. I had to examine it no closer to know that it was a jury summons. First I felt that usual feeling of "oh, no...why me?" Do you feel that way when you first see that little yellow card in the mail assortment? I have to say that by the time I had walked back to my humble abode, I already looked forward to jury service. Really, you ask?? Yes, that is what I said. I looked forward to my day in court...as a juror.
There was a time in our collective past that a summons to court was nigh unto a death warrant. A person so summoned was actually going to the King's (or Queen's) court to answer to some charge or another. By the way, the summons in those days was not the yellow card with which you and I are so familiar. No, class, the "summons" was generally several of the King's soldiers breaking into one's home and bodily carrying the "summoned" person back to the castle. The person was not necessarily taken to the King right away, my friends. He or she might be placed in a dungeon and allowed to remain there several days, weeks, months...whatever...before getting his or her "day in Court." Unfortunately, by the time the accused actually got his day in Court, the King's Court, the verdict was pretty much assured. Also, there was no need for evidence in those days. Evidence was often enough simply the King's "verdict" that the accused was guilty and needed to be locked away.
Luckily for us, citizens over the years got fed up with the above practice. The Crown's powers were restrained to great extent by documents such as the Magna Carta and similar lesser documents. Some citizens of England, not satisfied with even these changes in the law, eventually rebelled against the Crown in what became known as the American Revolution. One of the most important fruits of that successful rebellion was the document that eventually was ratified and adopted as our Constitution. The very first amendments of the Constitution were those amendments now known as The Bill of Rights. These amendments enumerate (but do not grant; that was done by the one known as The Creator) those rights that are inalienable to man. One of those rights was Trial By Jury. That brings me back to the little yellow card I found in my mailbox.
Yes, I admit that for a few minutes after I found my jury summons I had some negative thoughts. My first thought of course was of the income I would lose should I miss work to serve on a jury. I thought of having to go through the line at the courthouse metal detector. I knew I would have to take off my belt, maybe even my shoes. I knew it would be a crowded and miserable process. Then there was the interminable hours (okay, only about two) I would spend listening to the judge explain the importance of jury service. Then there would be the hours of sitting through the voir dire examinations, listening to both the prosecutor and the defense attorney ask questions of potential jurors. And there was the knowledge that all these lost hours were an exercise in futility for me.
You see, a former police officer has little to no chance of being picked to sit on a jury, particularly a criminal jury. The defense attorney, in most cases, does not want a law enforcement officer on his client's jury. After all, it was a "brother officer" that arrested the lawyer's client in the first place. There is the assumption, possibly grounded in some cases, that a police officer...even a "former" one, could not be fair and impartial to a defendant. It would be assumed that a police officer would take the word of another police officer over a felon ANY day. But really, would not even the "average person" take the word of a police officer over a felon most of the time? But police officers are assumed by the defense to be automatically prejudiced toward the defendant. Like I said, sitting through the long process of jury selection was very frustrating knowing that I was most likely wasting those precious hours of my life.
Maybe you would be happy knowing you had a nearly zero chance of serving on a jury. Not me. From the age of eighteen I have received several jury summonses over the years. I have to admit that when I was younger, I really did not want to serve on a jury for the same reasons most people do not want to. But through the years I served as a peace officer, I learned the importance of juries. I learned that the justice system of this nation would not work without juries. And I learned that judges tended to hand down very hard sentences when a defendant chose to bypass the jury. I learned that the power to both judge a person and sentence a person was very awesome indeed. One man or woman having this power was not necessarily a good thing for all the people all the time. And I learned that, as a policeman, I had virtually forfeited my opportunity to ever sit on a jury.
Flash forward again to 2012. By this point in my life, I had received several more jury summonses, only to be excluded from even the possibility of service simply because I had been a police officer. So I received the summons mentioned at the opening of this blog. On the appointed day I appeared at the courthouse and spent the obligatory hours going through the jury selection process. Here I would like to note that the time spent in jury selection should have been significantly longer. Over half of those summoned did not bother to show up. On this particular day four different courts needed a total of five juries. As I expected, eventually I was questioned about my past as a police officer and whether that would effect my ability to be fair and impartial to the defendant if picked to sit on the jury. I saw the defense attorney's eyes shift a little as I spoke of my law enforcement career. Coincidentally the person seated next to me was also a former police officer. In a truly shocking turn of events, both of us were selected to serve on the jury. The case was a criminal case, a felony. And I was finally being allowed to exercise both my privilege and my duty to serve on a jury.
My privilege? My duty? Yes to both. Once again, the American system of justice could not function without American citizens serving as jurors, as the triers of fact. I have no idea what the outcome of this trial will be. What I do know is that in two days, a man unknown to me will walk into the court room an innocent man. True, he is charged with a crime, but also it is true that the State must prove he committed the crime. In only a few nations around the world do the people have the right to walk into trial PRESUMED TO BE INNOCENT. And only in the United States is the justice system weighted so much in favor of the defendant. It is the juror's job to first presume that the defendant is innocent. Second, it is the juror's responsibility to demand that the State prove its case. Those two responsibilities ensure that a person charged with an offense gets a fair trial, based only on the evidence produced by the state. Then, and only then, can the accused be found guilty of any crime.
It is my privilege to have the opportunity to be a part of the American justice system, to allow a person to be tried truly by his peers, not by practicing policemen, not by prosecutors or judges, but by ordinary people, ordinary citizens. If no citizen were willing to serve on the jury, if every citizen either found an excuse, or simply ignored the jury summons, the accused person could not be tried, and justice would not be served. I hope that the next time you get one of those annoying jury summonses you will remember that it is a privilege to be a part of the justice system of this nation, and it is a duty to answer the summons, so that every citizen who is charged with a crime can indeed appear before a jury of his peers, and depend on his peers to provide a level field, a fair trial....no matter the outcome.
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