So, I got called for jury duty on Monday afternoon. And much to my surprise, I was assigned to a jury. We gave our verdict yesterday afternoon, and now I can actually talk about the case freely.

The jury selection process itself was interesting. It started Tuesday morning. (On Monday afternoon, they basically assigned us to a courtroom, took roll call, had us swear an oath to tell the truth about our qualifications as a juror under penalty of perjury, and the told us to come back the first thing the next morning.)

On Tuesday morning, we came into court, and the judge read us the charge: domestic violence. (I believe the exact legal charge is "inflicting corporal injury on a spouse resulting in a traumatic condition.") He made some preliminary remarks about the importance of jury duty service as a democratic institution. He also told us that he expected the case to be over by Friday, and so we should keep in mind that this was a pretty short trial. (With the strong implication being "this is really going to be a pretty painless way to fulfill your civic duty.")

Then the clerk of the court called out 18 names at random. Mine was not among them. 12 people went into the jury box, and 6 people in a row of alternate chairs in front of the jury box. Each juror got a paper questionnaire, and the bailiff passed around a microphone. Each juror in turn answered the questionnaire out loud.

The questions on the questionnaire were pretty standard: name, occupation, marital status, previous jury service, and so on.

The most remarkable thing were the number of people there who had personal experience with domestic abuse. Just in the first row of the jury box, we had a man whose father had been abusive, a college-age woman whose grandmother had been abused by her grandfather, and two women who had been abused by ex-spouses. The man and one of the women who had been abused by an ex said they thought they could be impartial. The other two said they could probably not.

This continued throughout the jury selection: out of 30-35 potential jurors who were questioned, at least 10 said that they had been the victim of domestic abuse, had witnessed the abuse of a close family member, or (in one case) had been investigated for possibly abusing a spouse.

Anyway, the judge questioned some of the jurors further. As I recall, he excused one juror for hardship, and one juror for cause after a private discussion. I think he may have dismissed one other juror for cause. (As far as I can tell, "for cause" means that you have convinced the judge that you cannot be fair and impartial in the case.) As people were excused, people moved up into their places from the alternate seats, and the clerk called new names to fill the alternate seats.

Then the defense and prosecuting attorneys got to ask questions. The defense attorney asked some general questions like, "Would any of you be prejudiced against my client because he is African American?", "Do any of you have a problem with the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty'? Do any of you think that because my client is accused of a crime that he must be guilty of something?" Nobody was willing to admit to racial prejudice. And nobody was wiling to admit to having a problem with innocent until proven guilty, though one of the women who had been a victim of domestic violence did say something along the lines of, "I believe that you always have the choice to walk away rather than use violence, and that your client is there because he made the choice not to walk away."

The defense attorney also asked, "Do you believe that if someone has been the agressor in the past, that they could not be acting in self-defense?" Just about everyone asked that said, "Well, I would have to know the facts of the situation." He also asked, "If the law on self-defense conflicts with your personal beliefs on self-defense, would you apply the law in this case?"

The prosecuting attorney asked questions like, "Does anyone here believe that domestic violence is a family matter and that the state should not get involved?" and "Can anyone here think of some reasons why a victim of abuse might stay with her abuser?" and "If a victim of a crime did not behave in the way you would behave in that situation, would that make you less likely to believe them?" One or two people (men) did say that they had trouble understanding why a victim of repeated abuse would not leave.

And both lawyers extensively questioned the people who claimed personal experience of domestic violence.

When the lawyers were finished questioning, the judge addressed the current panel of 18: "All of you have been found to be capable of being fair and impartial." (Which surprised me, because the jury at that point still included a number of people who had expressed doubts about their impartiality. And I had severe doubts about the impartiality of some of them.)

So, then, the peremptory challenges began. Peremptory challenge means that the defense and the prosecution can take turns removing jurors from the panel without having to give a reason. It's kind of fun watching the attorneys do this: they each had Post-It notes with information about each juror written on it, and they would move the notes around to reflect the seated jurors as things changed.

Anyway, between the two of them, they dismissed everyone who had personal experience of domestic violence. Plus a couple of other people for what I suspect were "demographic" reasons. Anyway, they dismissed 7 people, which left an empty spot in the jury box and no alternates, so the clerk read out 7 more names.

And mine was the very first one. So I went straight into the jury box.

The judge had me answer the jury questionnaire, and asked me if I had any experience with domestic violence or any thoughts I wanted to share about the questions the attorneys had asked previous jurors. I really didn't have much to share. (I talked about working at the Yale Women's Center, where I probably would have provided information and resources on domestic violence to anyone who came in with a domestic violence complaint. But no one ever did while I was working there.)

Everybody else answered the questionnaire. We had more people with experiences of domestic violence, including a man who stated that he had been battered by his wife and a young woman, who, nearly in tears, described how she had recently been involved in an argument between her aunt and her uncle in which her uncle battered her aunt.

Then the attorneys got to ask questions again. Lots of questions for the people with personal experience of domestic violence. The defense attorney asked again if anyone would be prejudiced against his client because he was black. He asked us if we could think of any reasons why someone might lie about a charge of domestic violence. (That right there was probably my best chance at getting off the jury - if I'd said, "Hell, no," I probably would have been excused. But I really didn't think I could honestly claim, under oath, to be suffering from a failure of imagination.)

The prosecuting attorney asked me if I would excuse someone from responsibility for their actions because they were drunk. I said no. The other jurors agreed. She asked us again if we could imagine reasons why someone might stay with their abuser.

Then the judge told us again that we had all been found capable of being impartial, and sent us on lunch break.

We came back from lunch, and did another round of peremptory challenges. The defense attorney tried to excuse the young woman who had spoken with such intensity about the incident between her aunt and uncle, and the judge had to remind him that she was still in the alternate box, not on the jury. So, the defense attorney dismissed the guy sitting behind her, which brought her up into that seat.

The prosecuting attorney stood up and said, "Your honor, the people are satisfied with the panel." (I thought it was really cool, but weird, that the prosecuting attorney could refer to herself as "the people.") Anyway, that was when I knew I was on the jury.

The defense then excused the woman with the aunt and uncle, which brought the man who had been battered by his wife into the jury box. The prosecution promptly excused him. They went back and forth, and got through most of the row of alternates before they had picked a final juror they could both be happy with.

So, the clerk had to pick a new batch of alternates, and they had to do the questionnaires and the questions and the whole selection bit with them. It was well after two in the afternoon before we had a jury and two alternates selected.

We had a short break, and then the trial itself began. But since this is getting long, I think I'll cover that in another post.