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Jury duty update [1]

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Date: 2025-01-31

I guess jury duty summons really are random. I was first eligible to be on a jury in 2000, but it wasn’t until 2006 that I was called for the first time. And it wasn’t until 2024 that I was called for the second time. Last year I wrote that either I wouldn’t get called again for almost another couple of decades or I would get called every year after that. Looks like it might be the latter.

In 2006, I showed up at the courthouse, and, as I recall, the jury pool was so large that if all the initial choices got excused I would still probably not have been called to the jury box. I don’t remember which courthouse it was.

Last year, I did not actually go to any courthouse, though I do remember it was for federal court. I kept calling a phone number each night one week from Sunday to Thursday and each time the message said I did not need to go to the courthouse the next day. So I have no idea how large the jury pool was.

This time around, I was summoned to 36th District Court, very near Ford Field (where the Detroit Lions play their home games). I showed up just several minutes before the appointed time of 8:30 a.m. this past Monday. A security guard escorted a few potential jurors, including myself, to a secure room with the entrance monitored by security guards.

That makes sense, it helps make sure that potential jurors don’t randomly overhear things in the hallways about the cases they might be called upon to examine in the proper setting of the courtroom.

So in that waiting room for potential jurors, there’s a coffee pot, a water cooler, a water fountain, two or three vending machines, a couple of TV screens and a DVD player. And enough seating for maybe fifty potential jurors.

I think it was at about 9:00 a.m. that the administrator of the waiting room had us watch a video about jury duty. After that video, she explained that there were three trials going on that day that might need juries. I counted 26 other potential jurors in the room with me, which seemed insufficient for me to support three trials with juries of twelve each plus two alternates.

But the lady explained that a lot of cases get pleaded out or settled on the very day of jury selection. So if two of the three trials scheduled to start that day suddenly concluded like that, the 27 potential jurors would have been more than enough for one jury of twelve plus two alternates.

Then the administrator put on a DVD of a Hollywood movie for us to watch while we waited. The choices included Big Momma’s House and My Big Fat Greek Wedding. But I guess we were all indifferent to those choices, so she chose Big Momma’s House.

That movie got to the point where the guy uncovers thousands of dollars in cash hidden in a child’s toy trunk. Act 2 inciting incident? One of the three trials had gotten closed out, I’m not sure at what point. The administrator called fourteen of us to go to a courtroom on another floor. For this we were also escorted by a security guard.

Once in the courtroom, I was surprised to only see seven seats in the jury box. It was a criminal trial for a violent felony. After introductions, it was time for voir dire.

The defendant, a black man, seemed like an agreeable enough fellow. His lawyer, a white woman, reminded me of Joumana Kayrouz (a personal injury lawyer, you’ve seen her billboards if you live in metro Detroit). The prosecutor, a young white man, did not look like he had been out of law school for too long.

The judge’s clerk put my name and the names of the other prospective jurors into a hat and drew seven names. If I remember correctly, three black men, three black women and one white woman were chosen, I was not. The white woman was put in the alternate juror seat, Number 7.

The judge asked each of the selected seven some fairly standard questions. Have you ever been a victim of this kind of crime that the defendant is accused of? Have you previously served on a jury? Do you have any relatives in law enforcement? That kind of question. I mostly remember that two of the prospective jurors had previously served on juries and had been forepersons in their respective trials.

Next, the attorneys questioned the jurors. The prosecutor’s questions were more like what you might expect in an episode of Bull, a TV show about a jury consultant that used to air on CBS a few years ago. At one point, to explain the concept of reasonable doubt, the prosecutor drew a very confusing comparison to the Star Wars universe.

The defense attorney seemed more concerned with stressing the point that the burden of proof lay with the prosecution. There wasn’t going to be any video or photographic evidence, no documents to pore over, only the testimony of the alleged perpetrator, the alleged victim and the police officers who responded to the call.

The jurors would have to weigh the credibility of each witness, and they would have to refrain from drawing any inferences if the defendant declined to take the stand, as was his right.

The prosecutor said he was happy with the jury that had been selected. But the defense attorney wanted to dismiss one juror for cause, one of the black women, expressing doubt in that potential juror’s ability to be objective on account of some related past history with this type of crime.

But the prosecutor countered that the potential juror had declared that despite her possibly being triggered by some of the testimony she could still be objective. The judge agreed, but allowed the defense to use up one peremptory challenge to dismiss that juror.

That surprised me, because my understanding was that you’re not supposed to state the reason for a peremptory challenge. Or is it that you don’t have to? Okay, well, the defense attorney took it and used another peremptory challenge to get rid of another black woman, the one who had previously been a jury foreperson.

Two more names were drawn out of a hat. Those two other persons were found acceptable to both sides and so the jury was empaneled. I’m not proud to admit I felt relieved at that point. Though I am curious to know how the case turned out.

Not sure what happened with the third trial. I was given a letter documenting that I had fulfilled the obligation of my jury duty summons, and a voucher that I was to trade for cash at the court cashier. So I cashed my voucher and left the courthouse.

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