I have been summoned for jury duty and must report in two-weeks. To prepare for this event, I filled out my jury questionnaire today. Something I probably should have done weeks ago. Anyway, this is the second summons that I have ever received. Back in 2012, I was still working, but I had already begun my own internal countdown towards retirement four years later. I was actually pleased with this opportunity. I had never been summoned before and had begun to wonder what the deal was. I arrived at the appointed hour and then proceeded to sit around all day in the jury pool, just splashing around, waiting to be called. After three days I was eventually called at the very last possible minute.

That was phase one. The rest of the day was filled by a winnowing process. Some eighty people had been pulled from the jury pool for what would be twelve jurors plus two alternates. I was the last person selected as the twelfth juror. The trial began immediately afterwards. A black man was accused of statutory rape, of raping his young niece. He was the only black man in the courtroom, in front of an all-white jury, a white judge and all-white court officers. Even the defense team was all-white. The only other black person in the courtroom was the accuser, his black niece. This situation unnerved me, but it only got worse. The prosecutor outlined a timeline that occurred sometime after the defendant reached the age of majority and before his accuser did. Fulfilling the minimum requirements for statutory rape, leaving years within which this alleged crime could have been committed. The only evidence offered was the niece’s testimony, which was so softspoken as to be unheard by me, and a four-and-a-half-hour videotape of the defendant’s interrogation. 

Introducing this video was the white-woman police officer who began the interrogation. Her testimony also elucidated the fact that this years ago incident was brought to light after the accuser, then a high school senior announced it after being placed on suspension for unrelated actions. I’ll spare you the Stockholm syndrome saga and cut to the chase. The defendant initially believed that he had been summoned to the north county Blackjack police station for unpaid traffic violations. When it finally dawned on him what this was all about a seemingly endless back-and-forth ensued. Unable to secure a confession, the female interrogator was eventually replaced by her male superior, who was quite adept at playing the bad cop, complete with shouting and pounding of tables.

One last jab at the prosecution’s shoddy case. The video quality was poor, but the sound was even worse. The audio was so bad that the prosecution supplied the jury with a printed transcript of the interrogation. Once handed this transcript the jury was instructed not to rely upon it, but to refer to the videotape, “because the videotape is the evidence not the transcript,” even though it was frequently unintelligible. This same sort of doublespeak is more recently reminiscent of last week’s fatal instructions to Renee Good, “Get out of here—Get out of the car.”

The next day the jury got the case. I was most apprehensive about this aspect of the trial, but apparently all for no reason. We were twelve good men and women true. We unanimously acquitted the defendant. This caused the prosecutor to fly into a rage. The jury was dismissed and after exiting the courtroom we were met by the defendant and his defense who thanked us profusely. I went back to work that day and six months later Fergusson erupted. The chief prosecutor declined to indite the policeman who killed Michael Brown. He was voted out of office.