I, The Jury

This August, just when I began to think the U.S. Postal Service had stopped menacing Americans—no one had received anthrax-laced mail in months, and I hadn’t had to worry about college rejection letters for more than a year—our mailwoman deposited an envelope in our mailbox that shattered my complacency.

“Official Government Business,” the envelope read, in white block letters on a blue field. And under that: “Jury Duty: Your Civic Obligation.”

Upon opening the envelope, I discovered that the Massachusetts Office of Jury Commissioner desperately needed to replace whoever was currently in charge of public relations. In addition to the stern “Jury duty: Your civic obligation,” jury duty has at least two other uninspiring mottos, curiously at odds with each other: for altruists, “Jury Duty: You Make the Difference,” and, for the self-interested, “Jury Service...It’s For You.” I also learned that I had been assigned to jury duty in district court in my home county in October.

While I resented the inconvenience of a bus ride home in the middle of midterms, and was appalled by the 8:30 a.m. check-in time at the district courthouse, I secretly looked forward to fulfilling my civic obligation. My enthusiasm was fueled by a pamphlet, the “Trial Juror’s Handbook,” that explained the importance of jury service. “As a juror, you will have to make difficult judgements [sic] involving all of the human passions—love, hate, greed, anger, etc.,” the Handbook promised, and accordingly I imagined a courtroom drama with the pageantry and carefully enumerated sins of a medieval morality play. “Remember that the function of a jury is to find the truth,” the Handbook remonstrated, and I imagined myself a female, chin-deficient version of the young Fonda who in 12 Angry Men dissuades his 11 fellow jurors from making an unfair murder conviction. Like a young Fonda, I would weigh the evidence with a care that would make up for inadequate public defenders. Like a young Henry Fonda I would stalk over to fellow jurors playing tic-tac-toe, roar “This isn’t a game,” and stalk back to my chair while crumpling the tic-tac-toe board in one noble hand.

So when I drove up to the courthouse in a gusting October rain, I was a little disappointed. There weren’t any ionic columns, severe and symbolic, as in the long opening shot of 12 Angry Men. Instead, the district courthouse was a National Guard armory modified for civilian use by the addition of low suspended ceilings and indoor/outdoor carpeting.

My actual jury experience was more disappointing still: I checked in and was directed to the jury pool room, where I sat with a couple dozen other people, most of them elderly. We watched television for a while, and then a movie about being a juror, which had poor production values and featured Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court Chief Justice Margaret Marshall. Then we watched television for another hour, my fellow jurors cackling disturbingly at Regis and Kelly’s repartee, before the judge came in and told us that since both cases on the docket had been settled, we might go home. I hadn’t made a single impassioned speech to my fellow jurors. I hadn’t even been impaneled.

Intermittently watching the rain and reading the Handbook on the bus ride back to Harvard, though, I realized I shouldn’t have been disappointed. “Through fate, you and your co-jurors have been brought together in a search for justice,” my Handbook continues mystically. And then didactically: “Justice means truth and fairness.”

It was for truth and fairness, although not in the grand, Fonda-esque scale I once imagined, that I spent four hours one rainy Wednesday morning in an old National Guard armory in Falmouth. Serving jury duty did not transform me into Henry Fonda; neither has a year at Harvard, mercifully, made me into Love Story’s Ali McGraw. Ultimately, I think, ours is a justice system that does not rely on a citizenry of Henry Fondas. It is enough for us to gather in a shabby room and watch television. The Constitution guarantees citizens an impartial jury of their peers, and while it’s a little troubling to learn that our peers find Regis Philbin really funny (something the Framers can’t have anticipated), and disappointing to learn just how far district court is removed from celluloid courtroom drama, it is also reassuring to learn that the justice system requires us to spend a morning in a narrow room stocked with old magazines more frequently than it requires us to be moral giants.

Phoebe M. W. Kosman ’05 is a history and literature concentrator in Winthrop House. Her column appears on alternate Tuesdays.