Jury duty, kid edition

The boys were very interested in hearing all about my jury duty experience. Because we have lawyers in the family, they are already familiar with the basics of our justice system: the lawyers help each person tell their side of the story and the judge decides what is fair. We hadn't talked about juries before, so I said in some cases, when there is something very important that needs to be decided, they want to make sure it's not just one person doing the deciding, so they make a whole team to decide, and that is the jury. They wanted to know what my case was about. The first time they asked this, I was still in the selection process, so I explained that I am not allowed to discuss the case with anyone while I am still involved. They wanted to know why not. I said partly for the privacy of the people who have the dispute, and partly to make sure I am only judging the case on the evidence, and am not influenced by other people. They accepted this.

Yesterday, I was free to talk about whatever I wanted because I had been released from service. The boys were still very curious what the dispute had been about, so I went ahead and told them. Fellow parents, are you prepared to explain sexual assault to your kids on short notice? We all should have that vocabulary, so I just took a deep breath and said, "Some people say that this guy got some children drunk in his house, and that he touched them in ways they did not want to be touched, and scared them and hurt them." Jordan said, "Touched them how?" Gah. But this is actually important to be able to talk about, so I took another breath and said you know how there are some parts of your body that should only be touched by you, and maybe your mom and dad if they are helping you take a bath and maybe your doctor if he is checking that everything is working right? The boys were clear on this and indicated the body parts in question. I said, "Some people say that this guy touched the kids in those places in a mean way, so that he hurt them and scared them." The boys seemed like they took this seriously but were not overwhelmed. I remembered to add, "That's what someone says. The question is, did he really do it, or did he not do it. And you can see how that is a very important question to decide." Jordan said, "How are they going to decide it?" I asked what he thought would be some good ways, and we had a little discussion about witnesses and testimony and evidence. I just left it at that, without any further specifics about this case; I don't know very much, anyway, and it seemed like this was plenty.

Jordan got a little concerned about the seriousness of the decisionmaking. He said maybe he would not want to be a lawyer, because what if someone was wrongly convicted, or wrongly set free, and it was your fault? I said that would be a good thing to discuss with his grandfather. I also said maybe next time we're in San Francisco Grandpa could show them around the courthouse there, and they loved that idea.

Meanwhile, one of our breaks was in an empty courtroom, and the bailiff (and other jurors) said it was fine if I took pictures to show my kids. You can see the witness stand, the jury box, the area for the clerk and the bailiff, and so on. I even got a fellow juror to take a picture of me in the judge's seat.