Off the Campus
Recent grads look at life outside Princeton's gates...
Voir dire
The joy of jury duty
by Matt Boyle '97
"Is this what they meant when they talked about Princeton in the nation's service?"I mused, as the crowded number 4 train, laden with pinstriped Wall Streeters, brawny blue-collar types, somnolent students, and sundry other surly-looking New Yorkers, careened downtown from Grand Central Station to City Hall.
What brought me to the cradle of old New York, you might ask? What convinced me to venture into the maze that is Lower Manhattan, the financial, political and judicial heart of the city? A new job at JP Morgan, perhaps? An internship with the mayor's office? A clerkship with a noted federal judge? Nay, to all three--I was there to fulfill a civic obligation, to take part in a high duty of citizenship, to protect the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of my fellow man--you guessed it, I had been chosen with jury duty at the United States District Court, 500 Pearl St., Foley Square. And I couldn't get out of it. Princeton in the nation's service, indeed.
The handbook for trial jurors serving in the U.S. District Courts reads, in part, " There is no more valuable work that the average citizen can perform in support of our Government than the full and honest discharge of jury duty."As I entered the massive jury assembly room, after convincing the overzealous security guards that the gun-shaped item in my backpack was actually a ripe banana, I said to myself, "If this is such valuable work, why does nobody want to be here?"The expressions on the faces of my fellow jurors-to-be ranged from anger to exasperation to quiet resignation. Several made vain pleas to the clerk at the front of the room, saying they were needed at work, at home, in Peru--it didn't make a whit of difference to the stone-faced clerk, who answered every complaint with the words, "Just take a seat."So I did, for what else could I do? I had exhausted my three postponements over the past year, so I had to serve (or fake my death). I must have been on some all-star recruiting list, for I seem to remember getting my first jury summons about seven hours after Hal conferred my degree. "Why me?" I lamented, as I scoured the room for other young faces. Maybe I could find another recent grad to commiserate with, and maybe she'd be cute, and maybe.... but no such luck. I seemed to be the only representative of Generation X in the room, to my dismay. So, I opened up my novel and read until the clerk started calling off names for the first case.
Almost everyone was chosen for the first panel, and we trudged up to the 15th floor in a double file line (why did this remind me of third grade?) and filtered into the courtroom. We were immediately given questionnaires asking for our opinion on breast implants. Not something I normally think about at ten in the morning (unless Baywatch is on the tube), but I tried to answer as truthfully as possible, for the process of voir dire had begun. For those of you unfamiliar with jury duty (and I hope you all get it soon), the voir dire examination tests whether potential jurors have any personal interest in the case or know of any reason why they cannot render an impartial verdict. The trick here, according to Homer Simpson, is to say you're prejudiced against all races. But I decided against that course, since I have this funny habit of telling the truth when I am sworn to do so. Perhaps it was my upbringing; perhaps the honor code had something to do with it. It mattered not, however, since my name was never called from the pool of over 70 jurors. But the image of the clerk spinning that diabolical wheel full of names, quite literally deciding our futures like the mythical sisters of Fate, remains indelibly etched in my mind. The rest of us went happily back downstairs and off to lunch. Upon returning from lunch and successfully navigating the maze of construction barriers and police vans that made Foley Square look like a demilitarized zone, I discovered that my services were no longer needed that day, but I had to return the next day and repeat the process all over again.
When I entered the assembly room for Day Two of my civics lesson, I quickly realized that my chances of escaping jury duty had slimmed considerably. The group of us that went up to the 12th floor numbered only around 25, and this case would require a jury of 12 plus two alternates. On the bright side, however, the case would not begin until the following week, which would allow me, if chosen, to go to a rather important job interview the next day. And it's not like I had anything better to do, since I had just quit my mind-numbing job the week before. Forty dollars a day was a princely sum compared to the nothing I was currently bringing in.
As expected, I was called to sit on the panel go through voir dire again. The case was one of criminal fraud, and there were audible groans when the judge announced that it would last two weeks. Most of the panel made it through the early stages of voir dire, but when the judge asked if anyone had vacation plans that would take them out of the state on the Friday before Labor Day weekend, several hands went up. Guess what happened when the judge started excusing everyone who had vacation plans? I could have sworn I heard several frantic calls made on cell phones to travel agents. All of a sudden, two-thirds of the panel had vacation plans, including one guy who had to go to Washington, D.C., to give President Clinton some humanitarian award. He was immediately excused, since given the President's current crisis, no one could have made that story up.
On the other hand, the judge without remorse shot down any and all work-related excuses. Scheduled to perform open-heart surgery? Too bad. Need to fly to Japan to address shareholders? Too bad. Slated to give a State of the Union address? Too bad. One of the panel members, whose rather valid excuse had been denied by the judge, proceeded to rail against the inequity of holding vacation plans in higher regard than the exigencies of employment. I don't remember the judge's exact response to that complaint, but the gist of her curt reply was "This is my court. Sit down and shut up." Needless to say, that man didn't make it through the lawyers' challenges. But guess who did? Yours truly, Mr. All-American juror. I was on the case.
In the interests of brevity I won't get into the specifics of the case, but suffice it to say that we were presented with a mountain of evidence against the defendant. The assistant U.S. attorney--a pale, skinny, overeager fellow who probably hadn't been on a date since the Bush administration--constructed a virtual roadmap for us to follow, aided in no small part by the three voluminous binders full of phony checks, invoices, and cover-up material, which even included a memo written by the defendant where he all but admitted his guilt to his business partners. The defense attorney, whose suits probably cost more than the U.S. attorney made in a year, tried to chip away at the aforementioned mountain of evidence and argued that the defendant's two business partners had set him up. However, that scenario would have called for a conspiracy so vast that it would have included Chase Manhattan Bank. The fact that the defense only called one witness, the defendant's weeping, sickly mother, no less, didn't exactly improve his chances of acquittal. Johnnie Cochran couldn't get this guy off with the Chewbacca defense.
When we retired to deliberate, I though we would return a guilty verdict within an hour. But justice is seldom so swift, especially when you're dealing with people who know how to play the system. One woman insisted upon the defendant's innocence, and no amount of logic or reason, it seemed, could sway her. She was an employee of the state and a veteran of several juries, and hadn't spoken a single word to anyone throughout the entire trial. Now she wouldn't shut up, asking inane questions and interrupting our explanations with cries of "Reasonable doubt!" Due to her intractability, we could not reach a verdict on the first day and decided to adjourn and pick it up again after the holiday weekend. When we returned, several other jurors and I were ready to take the gloves off and battle this seemingly clueless person toe-to-toe. But lo and behold, she was now leaning towards guilty. What could have brought on such a miraculous change in opinion? At the time, we could care less; we quickly notified the judge, and, as foreman, I delivered the verdict while averting my gaze from the defendant and his pathetic mother. It was only when we returned to the jury room to gather our things that we learned the secret of our incorrigible Juror #5. She was scheduled for vacation that week and wanted to make sure that the clerk knew that she was to receive her jury pay plus her vacation pay via some loophole she figured out. She wasn't naive or ignorant, and the defense attorney hadn't pulled the wool over her eyes; rather, she had milked the system for a measly 40 bucks.
So, what did I learn during my two-week stint of jury duty? Well, I received the obvious civics lesson, but I also received, gratis, an introductory course in human behavior, a quick primer on how not to commit white-collar crime, and most important, a more intimate knowledge of the streets of Lower Manhattan, an area that I plan to return to soon. But not for jury duty. At least for another four years, when my number will undoubtedly come up again.
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