Jury Duty Part II: The decision making process

And what a process it was. It is an awesome responsibility to take a set of evidence, along with your own assessment of witness credibility, and sit in a room with 11 other people who have done the same. Everywhere we turned, there were fine lines. Words that most of us use in everyday language such as "intent", "display", "substantial", suddenly took on new significance.

A link to a newspaper article is here.

When choosing the jury, the prosecutor had used an example of fighting children in order to both illustrate and ascertain our own thinking about how to arrive at a conclusion about the sequence or even likelihood of the events. And I think about how in my own life, I make these assessments every day. It goes without saying that I will be doing so more carefully in the future, for although these decisions may not have the potential impact that today's assessment did, I have seen the value of weighing the evidence and coming to a conclusion.

Another layer of the human experience that surprised me somewhat was how bonded you can feel to others in such a short period of time. I've known my fellow jurors for all of 3 days, and yet the connection I feel to some of them far surpasses the duration of our relationship. Throughout this process, you really get to see who these people are. And what I saw were kind, compassionate, and caring people who wanted to be sure that the evidence was fairly evaluated.

After the trial concluded, the juror I had come to respect and care for very much, Maggie, and I asked to speak to the judge. We were both quite emotional, and told him how much respect we had for the process and how much more difficult it had been to make a decision with such great potential impact than we had anticipated. He was very gracious and empathic, even telling us that he and the attorneys had never been in our shoes and that he can only imagine the weight of the task for us.

He chuckled about how the detailed questions we kept asking annoyed him and impressed him at the same time. What was meant by display, did it mean that the victim had to have seen the evidence with her eyes or could she have heard it? If he had menaced her, had he also committed criminal intent?

Many times throughout the jury selection process and the deliberations, we were reminded (by the lawyers and the judge in the former case and ourselves in the latter), that we were not to consider the impact of our decisions on the parties. While I can certainly appreciate the reasoning behind this, it is exceedingly difficult to do. One elderly juror in particular continually raised questions to this effect. And we had to keep reminding him that it was not up to us to consider the impact of our decisions.

So here we are, wanting to consider the human beings that our decisions will affect, all the while it seems that obstetricians have successfully built a wall to prevent themselves from considering the impact of their actions on others. I don't think they are aware of this wall, nor that they intentionally built it, but nor do I negate its existence.

Similarly, I don't know that the defendant intended to injure the victim, but there was never any doubt in my mind as to the existence of injury to her.