Not willing to decide if he's guilty beyond a reasonable doubt

I've been registered to vote ever since I was 18 (although my votes in the 2000 and the 2004 elections didn't help my presidential candidate win at all).

And ever since then, I've been secretly hoping to be chosen for jury duty.

I've always had a fascination with the legal system, and even tossed around the idea of possibly becoming a lawyer ever since I elected to appear in front of a judge to dispute a speeding ticket, lack of auto insurance, and failure to wear a seat belt stemming from an incident in which I was pulled over by a police officer when I was 17 years old. (I won the latter two charges using the officers' testimony against him... plus proof that I actually did have auto insurance. Erika: 2; Officer: 1.)

So imagine my surprise at never being called for jury duty when I lived in a city of 300,000 for nearly 4 years, but being called to serve as a juror not even two years after moving to a city of 8 million.

But I was actually excited to take the day off of work (even though it didn't really look good at already needing a day off after not even being at my current job for two months yet) and check out the big, six-column judicial building adjacent to (weirdly enough) Chinatown.

As I mentioned before, I've been in court before. Not counting all the times I was there as a spectator while a reporter at The Blade, I've been involved in courtroom proceedings just twice. The first time was to dispute the speeding ticket and other charges, and the second time was two years later while testifying against a man who robbed me outside my then-boyfriend's apartment building.

Both of the times I was involved in court proceedings, I expected to be questioned, and - although terrifying in the latter case, as I was mere feet away from the man who robbed me, and my testimony ultimately sent him to jail for five years - was somewhat prepared for it.

Nothing, however, prepared me for the proverbial bright light I sat under while being grilled as a potential juror. They wanted to know my full name, where I lived in the city, how long I'd lived there, where I lived before moving to the city, what I did for a living, if I was married or had children, what my husband did for a living, my religious views, the types of shows I watched on TV (seriously), whether I'd been the victim of a crime, if I personally knew anyone in law enforcement, and whether I'd served on a jury before.

And I was answering those questions mere feet away from a man accused of first-degree murder.

Talk about nerve-wracking.

I was one of 80 potential jurors whose name was chosen lottery-style out of a group of 160 to be questioned for this case, which the judge said one the actual trial began, would most likely be over in about three weeks. Luckily, I was in the second group of jurors to be questioned, so I had two hours' worth of time - plus an hour lunch break - to think about how I would answer all of the lawyers' questions. Don't get me wrong - I was going to answer every single one truthfully, but there were some questions that some jurors were asked that made me think twice about what I would say if I were asked the same one. Like what would I say if one of the lawyers asked me if I could set aside my feelings for someone accused of wrongdoing having been the victim of a crime myself when I was just a teenager? (My answer? I honestly don't know. And I said as much to the lawyer who asked me that who thanked me for my honesty, as they did for everyone who found it difficult to admit situations in their past that might affect the way they'd view the case.)

Though I was uncomfortable answering these questions, I felt worse for the people who had children who had to disclose their ages and area of the city in which they attended school. Not only was this in front of the man on trial, but this was also in front of three of his friends/family members, who sat whispering in the last row of the courtroom. (Before I was called to sit in the jury box for questioning, I was sitting directly in front of them and heard everything they had to say about the potential jurors who were questioned before me. It was mostly about whether they thought each person would get him off the hook or not.)

Also, some people were victims of a crime, like domestic violence or rape, and had to admit that in front of a courtroom of strangers. Though I was visibly nervous - and my shaky voice into the microphone no doubt gave that away - I was lucky that most of my answers turned out to be relatively straightforward. Except when I started rattling off my jobs and work schedule and the judge had to interrupt me saying I was a coffee shop supervisor, an editor at a magazine, and a freelance writer to say, "Wait, wait a minute. You have THREE jobs?" to which my reply was a shrug and a lame, "Manhattan's expensive."


After my questioning was over, and I was half-listening to the other jurors give the answers to the questions I'd spent more than four hours hearing answers to, I found myself more fervently silently wishing over and over that my name not be called to serve - not because I wasn't willing to fulfill my call to duty nor because it would last an exhausting three weeks, but because I found myself simply not willing to hold the future of another human being's life in my hand on the basis of one or two words: guilty or not guilty. I may have been uneasy answering some of those tough questions, but my unease was heightened tenfold when it became closer and closer to the moment where I would hear whether or not I'd be one of 12 who could potentially ruin this young man's life (he looked to be about 20 years old) by putting him behind bars for God knows how long.


And I'm not God. And I wasn't there on Broadway Street when another young man was gunned down by the person who may or may not have been sitting right in front of my face. The lawyers could have shown me the gun, the fingerprints, blood spatter, and other evidence, but would I REALLY have known whether this man did it beyond reasonable doubt? It's a responsibility - a control - I was absolutely not willing to be forced to hold.

So needless to say, I was more than a little relieved when my name was not called to serve as a juror - a relief that was short-lived when shortly thereafter, I was told I would have to return to the courtroom to serve again the very next day. Thankfully, due to a lack of cases requiring jurors, I was quickly dismissed with a piece of paper stating that I had fulfilled my duty for at least eight years.

Eight blissful years. Jury duty may have seemed glamorous, but now that I've gone through it, the responsibility is anything but alluring.