I imagine most people felt the same dread that I did when they received their Jury Summons: that unwanted burden of responsibility that encourages even the most civic minded of us to malinger.
The essential randomness of the process also makes it seem the most punitive. It is like receiving a summons to the principal's office -- which may not be an unfair simile as idling in the jury selection room certainly feels like being in detention.
As we waited - and waited and waited - to be selected to a trial, a few people flipped through the channels on the court television, eventually settling on Judge Mathis. Suddenly TV Judges seemed like an appealing option: quick and capricious. Why not just outsource our civic duties to media personalities?
That cynicism immediately evaporated when we were brought to court to begin the jury selection process. Our circuit judge took the time to thank us for our participation and explain the importance of the jury process in the judicial system. It was a small, intimate moment that perfectly set the tone for the importance of our duty at hand. [Later, the judge even made everybody in the courtroom rise for the jury: a wonderful reversal in deference.]
The jury selection process was surprisingly involved. I never anticipated being interrogated for 3 hours on my opinions on tort reform. I assume trial lawyers are taught to weed out any potential members of the jury that might be unsympathetic to personal injury claims. That is the only possible explanation of how I snuck into the actual jury -- I was 22 of 26, but multiple people in front of me expressed extreme incredulity at the infamous McDonald's coffee case.
The experience of sitting through a trial was also curious. Culturally, I think we are all used to being able to access any information whenever we want. In a trial, however, there are specific rules as to what is admissible as evidence in court. Deliberate myopia. It was hard to let go. I think the question we all wanted to hear as a jury, relevant or not, was why the plaintiff even brought the case to court in the first place.
[Entirely irrelevant: both the plaintiff and defendant were particular dislikable.]
In case you are wondering the results of the trial:
When we convened in the jury room, we went around the table one by one and each presented our opinion of the case and our initial estimate of the liability.
The information deprivation was difficult in this deliberation process -- particularly because the nature of the case was so subjective. As Sam commented: how do you put a price on leisure?
By the time it came to me, most of the jurors had settled in the $5000 - $15,000 range with a couple of people offering numbers in the $20,000 - $40,000 range.
I completely torpedoed the consensus with a figure of $1200 (my estimate was based off of valuing leisure time at $10 a hour, multipled by 20 hours a week over 6 weeks) -- which was surprisingly difficult to stand by. When one of the jurors offered an initial estimate of $35,000, I had a hard time gauging whether I was the "unreasonable" one. It was like a psychology experiment, in which a group is purposefully trying to convince the participant that white is black. More than anything, I wanted to use a lifeline and contact a friend to discuss the trial with somebody whose opinion I trusted.
As one of the outliers in the jury (the mean was $12,000), I immediately began to negotiate with some of the jurors who had lower initial estimates. In Oregon, you need 9 of the 12 jurors to agree on a verdict. I was afraid of the middle-ground shifting to a higher number, especially since the presiding juror was a Professor of Law at Lewis & Clark who was arguing for $12,000.
Through some pragmatic maneuvering, a fellow juror and I were able to round up the necessary jurors with the magic number $6000 (people like tidy sums and $1000 x 6 weeks seemed to catch peoples' ears). I would say that was a fair representation of the collective will of the jury, even if that number might have been higher given different negotiations.
The deliberation process was surprisingly calm and organized. If you had told me that I was going to sit a room with complete strangers and rationally discuss and come to a consensus based of the evidence presented in a court case, I would have been skeptical. But amazingly, every single member of the jury was courteous and thoughtful. It gave me entirely new respect for the basic tenets of the Enlightenment.
In the end, I think everybody in the jury left the process extremely positive about our judicial system, even if the county could no longer afford to buy us lunch afterwards.
