Cloyce Certainty

I have a good friend, I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name, who had fretted to the point of insanity over a recent jury summons. His instructions were to call jury service after 5 PM the afternoon before the scheduled service date to find out if he actually had to report.

Now, Cloyce is just a bit paranoid. He never feels certain about certainty even when it's perfectly obvious what a given situation means. Duly calling the phone number on the summons the night before, he was told he didn't have to report. Yet he nonetheless checked online, where it showed his service was cancelled. Cloyce even scanned the QR Code on the summons, and was informed he could stay home. Still, Cloyce expressed fear over the matter. "I hope I don't actually have jury duty after all," he remarked to me.

"Well," I replied, "Maybe send them a telegram. What about a carrier pigeon? Have you tried smoke signals? Semaphore? An aldis lamp? Drum messaging like the ancients used? It doesn't seem that you've employed all your options."

Cloyce just stared at me. Yet I think he was simply processing the information, although I did see a Western Union van outside of his home later than night.

The Jury's Out

Me Pops had an old friend - I'll call him Cloyce just to give him a name - who happened to be a prison guard at one point in his life. He used his position to get out of jury duty once. In fact, he used it so well that he got a whole bunch of folks off that day.

Dad couldn't recall the details of the trial, but it was an important one and the judge and the lawyers were having a very difficult time empaneling twelve hopefully open minded and rational people. When they were up to 11 jurors which everyone agreed upon, Cloyce's name was pulled. He took a seat among those the group.

The judge's very first question to Cloyce was typical. "Do you know anyone in this courtroom?"

"Well," Cloyce began, "I know the defendant from his being an inmate when I was a jail guard."

The judge's shoulders slumped as his chin hit his chest. He would have to dismiss the entire jury because they were all potentially biased against the defendant as they then knew he'd been imprisoned. Quickly enough the defense attorney moved for exactly that; the entire process would have to begin anew.

"I guess I mighta said too much," Cloyce allowed. "But those other jurors didn't seem to mind at all."

Hangin' Marty

Jury duty is a drag. Yes, yes, yes, I know how important of a right trial by jury is, although I'm not that sure how many of the people I sat with in the jury room yesterday I would want on a panel where I was in the dock. But so it goes...

The coffee was free but weaker than a skip's sweeping. The magazines were about what you'd find in a doctor's office: I read a Golf Digest article about whether Rory McIlroy would win the Masters...in 2014. And as if jury service wasn't tedious enough, the movie they had us watch was Maid in Manhattan. I tried to doze, but that's difficult in a room with the least comfortable chairs imaginable. It was a long six (or so) hours.

Still, they paid us cash as we left, so that's something. We were given vouchers as we left the jury room, presented them to a cashier down the hall, and got forty bucks cash money on the spot. I never imagined that. Sure, that forty is already long gone. But at least I didn't have to wait eight weeks for it. And I didn't have to hang anybody for it either.

Solitaire-y confinement

I was stuck on a jury last week. Yes, I know that jury duty is an important function of the citizenry. I also know that it can be tedious.
To be fair, the court allowed certain diversions in the jury room for the (many) times we were left there to stew as finer legal points were hammered out between judge, prosecutor, and defense counsel. There were crossword and sudoku books, magazines, and decks of cards. Once as I sat impatient and bored, I grabbed a deck and began playing solitaire. Almost as soon as I began the face of the young woman sitting across from me lit up. "Wow. I used to watch my grandfather play that!"
Why, no, that didn't make me feel old at all. But the truth is I learned solitaire sitting at my own grandfather's kitchen table watching him play, so I actually could appreciate her sentiment.
When I had finished she took the cards and played a few hands of her own. Soon enough four guys - that translated into all of us grandfathers in the room - were watching her play and giving her tips when she thought she was beaten. 'Play the red 6 on the black 7' or, 'Move that stack to the other row' and such as that. She was quickly expert at the game and set the cards down, vowing to keep up her new tradition.
The passing on of customs from the old to the curious young. I guess jury duty can serve a higher purpose.

The Importance of Jury Duty

The Detroit Free Press reports this morning that many people are not showing up for jury duty in and around Detroit. Indeed, only around 68% of jury duty questionnaires are filled out and returned to local courts. Within the City of Detroit, almost 32% of questionnaires are not mailed back.

What does that all mean? The main problem which many in the judicial system have with it is the practical result which goes along with the ignoring of jury questionnaires and jury summons: a lack of a diverse jury pool. Minorities tend to be underrepresented on juries. Jury pools in southeast Michigan tend to be overwhelmingly white.

There are two things wrong with this. The underlying presumption is that whites are not necessarily capable of serving as impartial jurors on cases involving minorities. That is simply insulting; one can be quite sure that if the implication were turned upside down, there would be all sorts of objections raised, undoubtedly leading up to a visit to Michigan by Al Sharpton.

But more than that. This is an example of yet another issue being painted with the brush of diversity where diversity, particularly the shallow diversity of mere skin color or ethnicity, is being forced into a question where it ought not be applied. If we have the right to a jury of our peers, and we are all fellow citizens, then the diversity of the jury pool should not matter. If we really trust the system and our neighbors.

When we start to view juries in terms of their diversity, we begin to forget (if not outright ignore) the purpose of juries and the right to trial by jury. That right is perhaps the most important right we have which is little thought about and little promoted. Juries can decide a case however they want. They can let circumstance enter into their decision despite the law. To be sure, they are instructed to follow the law in their deliberations. But once inside that jury room, they are really free to decide as they wish. As such, jury duty should be encouraged as the supreme forum through which our rights are protected.

Enter the judges of Michigan, who assert that their attempts at diverse pools of juries are constitutional (so says federal Judge Gerald Rosen of the Eastern District of Michigan District Courts). But that isn't the real point of jury service, nor should it be. When the courts and court officials themselves are fretting over what are at best minor points involved in the process (and at worst, ugly visages of a shallow view of juries), it is easy to wonder how much respect they themselves have for the right to a jury trial.

If any given group or individual elects to not participate in the system, then same on them. If as a result the system doesn't work for them, if they don't receive a just verdict for whatever reason, then that's on them. If jury service is to become just another political and social football, if justice is to be nothing more than a game matching my wits against yours, for whatever reason but all the worse if jury selection simply means being able to select people who will side with me (for that is essentially what is being asked of juries these days and with worries over such as the diversity of the selection pool), then we will have no justice. And if you don't show up for jury duty, then your opinion on the question is irrelevant.