Jury duty is a wonderful thing

Sorry to dump this here. It started as a comment and kept going. :ezbill:

I had my first criminal jury duty summons a few months ago. I was selected for a 2nd degree murder trial on the first day. I was only an alternate so I was excused once the deliberations began but it was a powerful experience.

Things that I came away with (yes, you "know" this stuff but experiencing it really puts things in perspective)

1. Being on a jury is a huge responsibility - you are determining guilt/innocence, an outcome that will affect the lives of many people with that decision. You must make decisions based on facts, not opinion and feelings.

2. Evidence is presented and it can be very graphic. You can be desensitized to it via TV and video games but once it's real life, it hits home.

2. Our justice system, while not perfect, is designed to be a very fair and open process. It includes regular people off of the street to participate in it. Not all countries judicial systems do this and it made me really really appreciate ours.

3. Yes, there are ways to "game the system" mentioned in the above post - i.e. not all attorneys are created equal. Jury members can lie and bs their way in and out of a cohort. You wonder what personal motivations are influencing the way some people may or may not think when making decisions.

5. Some of the better crime dramas really have the portrayal of a criminal trial down. I had weird deja vu moments throughout the whole thing.

6. I came away feeling proud to have participated in an important process, one that makes our country a decent place overall. But I also left feeling very sad. You watch the news - another New Orleans shooting, another black man gunned down, same story different day, etc. But over time you forget (at least I did) that there are people involved who care, who's lives have been changed forever, who have lost loved ones and friends, who deserve some sort of justice (if warranted). Not to get political or whatever but our murder problem is so bad. Not the so much the number, but the reasons - usually nothing important if a reason is even known at all. Trivial things and petty bickering. For this trial in particular, person A kills person B thinking he had something to do with a friend's murder. It turns out that person B actually witnessed the friend's murder and was going to testify on behalf of person A's murdered friend against the suspect. So this guy just killed a witness to his friend's murder thinking that he did it. It's so ridiculous you almost have to laugh. But it's an outcome from those who have nothing to lose and who just don't care about anything.