Juries

Yesterday I fulfilled my civic responsibility and reported for jury duty. It wasn’t half bad. They had a big room with comfy chairs, wireless internet, phones, coffee, tea and pastry. Who could complain? I got more work done sitting there all day than I do at my usual office.

At the beginning of the day, one of the judges came in and gave us a little pep-talk about how serving as a juror is one of the very few things you are required to do as part of living in a democracy. You know the speech, they give it every day, but this time there was something different.

The judge continued, “And now that racism is over, our system is committed to picking juries that truly represent a cross-section of our country and give the system a sense of balance and objectivity that it lacked for so many years. We no longer send black defendants to trial with all-white juries. I mean, those juries could barely tell black people apart, let alone tell which black person is innocent or guilty. Hell, one jury got so confused they tried to send the prosecuting attorney to jail. I for one sure got tired of sending innocent people to jail. It was getting hard to sleep at night. You can only take so much NyQuil in one night you know.” The judge laughed nervously, squeezed her shoulder with her mic-free hand and seemed to get lost in her thought for a moment.

She shook off her temporary demon and got back on track, “And no more white defendants with all-black…oh uh, we never really had the opposite problem, so really, what I am saying here is basically, you know, uh, ‘no more all-white juries.’ And that means no more all-white-with-one-person-of-color juries either. I’m talking actual diversity here people, you know like the country we live in? Representative democracy, Anyone? Just like the Founding Fathers intended it? Remember? It’s not that hard people.” Now she had found her stride. The judge had a bit of failed-comedian-turned-talk-show-host in her.

“Anyway, what this means for you folks is that we will be calling a selection of you forward randomly by your name on the list. If we see that the selected group is not racially balanced we will shuffle some of you in and out until we get a jury that can carry out justice without the racial imbalance that can lead to bias in our judicial process. Do you get what I am saying, people? Can I get a witness? I mean…a juror! Hah!”

The potential jurors all mumbled “yes” and went back to texting, typing and watching the new big-screen TVs that had been installed to keep us from gauging each others’ eyes out from boredom.