Jury duty

I had jury duty for the last two days. It was extremely interesting! This was the first time I've been called in Seattle, and the one time I was called in Maryland I was excused for hardship reasons because I had an infant at the time, so I didn't make it very far in to the selection process. This time, I made it all the way through the voir dire (where the attorneys and the judge ask questions about jurors' backgrounds and potential biases). I was not selected, and that fulfilled my two days of jury service, so I'm back to normal now. This is a relief, and definitely a relief to Dale, who had to cover more than usual during my commitment. But I would have been glad to serve, too. It looked like an interesting trial, and not too long.

The format for the voir dire was new to me, and I think relatively new in King County, judging by how the attorneys talked about it. They used to grill each juror individually, starting with juror #1, accepting or rejecting one person at a time until they had a complete jury. This was monumentally time-consuming, and pretty boring while you sat there waiting for your turn. Now, the attorneys ask questions of the entire room at once: we hold up big cards with our juror numbers on them to answer, and attorneys follow up with a few people for each question, delving more deeply with a few, or inviting #22 to respond to what #13 just said, or asking who agrees with juror #9. It felt almost like a community discussion of the issues pertinent to the trial. The judge and attorneys expressed repeatedly how much they prefer this system. It's more interactive, they learn more, it's more interesting for everyone, and they the quality of  the information they get is higher. Some jurors are excused during this discussion if it becomes evident to the court that they would not be able judge the case based on the evidence, perhaps because they know someone involved or have an overwhelming personal stake in the issues of the case. At the end of the discussion, the attorneys pass a clipboard back and forth, accepting and rejecting jurors one at a time. I think there is still a priority based on numerical order, because I noticed them focusing their questions on jurors #1-30, and only jurors with numbers in that range were eventually selected. I was juror #45, so although I contributed to the whole-group discussion (and I distinguished myself on one particular point), I think I was never in the running.

The charges in this case were charges that most people have strong feelings about: the defendant was accused of getting a group of kids drunk in his house and sexually assaulting them (molestation and/or rape). There were four different kids, ages 12-13 at the time. The alleged incident was four years ago and the kids were only coming out with the accusations now. The voir dire questions from the prosecution got pretty serious pretty fast, along these lines:

Have you ever had a close friend or family member report to you that they were sexually assaulted?
When did the person report the assault to you - soon after the incident, or much later?
Why do you think some people might not report such an incident immediately?
Why do you think a child, especially, might not report being sexually molested?
What difference do you think it makes if a boy is molested, versus a girl?
What evidence would you expect the state to present in cases of alleged sexual molestation?
What would constitute evidence of sexual molestation, if there were no forensic evidence (because it was a long time ago) and no witnesses?
How would you know when to trust the testimony of a child reporting abuse?

These are not easy questions! And I thought it was an excellent discussion. People were overall very sensible and thoughtful with their answers, sometimes personal, sometimes more philosophical. I thought the prosecuting attorney did a great job of listening to people's answers and selecting out the issues that he knew would be important for this trial. I was reminded of very good physics teaching, in which the teacher draws out students' (halfway decent!) ideas about a physics phenomenon and guides the class to build on the features that she knows will get them somewhere. By the end of it, I felt that I understood where the prosecution's case was headed, and what the issues would be, and how I personally would try to take them on.

The defense attorney appeared to me to be less skilled at voir dire. She was trying to get rid of people who were so freaked out by or personally involved in the charges that they couldn't judge the case fairly. But since many people are strongly biased against accused sex offenders, she had to figure out something more like who had firmly prejudged the case, and that's something people wouldn't admit to. Her questions sometimes didn't make sense to me, or felt weirdly leading, so that I felt she was trying to get me somewhere I didn't really want to go or didn't understand. It seemed to me that even when she made a good point, the jurors resisted her; they argued with her over her characterization of their answer, or told her they thought her question was inappropriate. At the end of it, I didn't feel that I had gotten a preview of what the defense's argument was going to be, the way I did with the prosecution. Now, you never know with lawyers; maybe her tone was strategic. Or maybe she just had the tough side of the argument (who wants to side with an accused sex offender?), or was having trouble pulling us out of the victim-sympathizing mood that the prosecution had successfully pulled us into (which, let it be noted, presumes that there is a victim). But I didn't think she was as good.

All that said, the defense's voir dire raised one issue that blew me away. At one point, she asked the following question:

Right now, when you have heard the charges but seen no evidence, who do you consider to be a little bit ahead - the prosecution, or the defense? Or is it an even race right now?

A large number of jurors put up their cards to say that the prosecution was ahead. Another large number put up cards to say that so far, the two sides were even. When she asked for people who think the defense is ahead so far, only two cards went up: me, and one other juror. EXCUSE ME? I was stunned. To me, this is a question with a right answer, a legal answer, an answer that is one of the foundations of our criminal justice system, for pete's sake. The attorney called on me to explain my reasoning, and I said, "I believe it is my job as a juror to presume the defendant is innocent until the state proves beyond a reasonable doubt that he is guilty. Right now, he is innocent. The defense always starts out ahead." The one other card-raiser said his reasons were the same. This caused a little shiver of side talk among the jurors -- oh, right! Innocent until proven guilty! The judge had (of COURSE!) explained this when she read the charges; she had gone on quite some time about it, in what I thought was a very helpful and informative way, including the different evidentiary standards in civil and criminal cases (preponderance of evidence vs. beyond a reasonable doubt). So it's not like people just hadn't watched enough CSI to know how the justice system works (as if that would help). They just really were not taking that principle into account.

When the judge followed up with some people to see whether hearing my answer affected their thinking at all, some of them said, "Well, that's what I meant by the race being even so far. In criminal cases, 'even' means the defense is ahead." That didn't seem like a very good answer to me, but whatever. Other people, however, explained in quite a committed way that no, they did not currently presume the defendant to be innocent, because ... drum roll please ... if he's gotten all the way to this courtroom, he must have done something. Whoever brought him here (law enforcement, or whatever other agency) must have had enough evidence to merit his being forced to show up in this room at this time, needing a lawyer and all. So he's probably guilty. "The prosecution is ahead," they said, firmly.

My dad (a longtime criminal defense attorney) was not at all surprised by this; I guess it's pretty common. He wasn't nearly as appalled as I was, either. He says at that point people are under oath to tell the truth, not under oath to be fair or legally correct, so there is no right answer, only a true answer about your own convictions. Now that I'm a little calmer, I think the whole experience is a good reminder for me of how radical, counterintuitive, and profoundly important the principle of innocent-until-proven-guilty really is.