Why you should welcome jury duty and never take a straw vote until all information is shared

Renewing my faith in the legal system and people

I have new faith in our legal system and my fellow citizens.

I just completed jury duty on a felony case.

I have never served on a jury, mostly because I never lived in a place long enough to get summoned.

When the summons arrived, I was apprehensive. When I got selected for the jury, I originally felt like the fellow in the cartoon below. And, I had finally cleared my calendar for three days of writing, so I was bummed to lose those days.

Then I was elected foreperson because I was the only one who volunteered. It turned out that my experience as a provost, dean and vpr was really helpful since a lot of my job (which I do not miss!!!!) was running meetings. What was most helpful was a leadership training I did at Rice University where we learned the hard way through doing an MBA type exercise, that it is a bad idea to take straw votes until all of the information has been discussed among the group.

I urge you to resist straw votes until everyone has shared the information they have and their reflections on it.

The jury was made up of extremely diverse people- racially, ethnically, politically, and socio-economically.

The case we had on the surface seemed like a slam dunk guilty at first.

My guess is that if we had taken a straw vote, we might have found the defendant guilty on at least one charge.

Every juror participated. We carefully read the judge's instructions. And, we worked so hard to figure out whether the prosecution had proved their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

If I had not had that discussion with my fellow jurors who were truly invested in doing the right thing, I (and several others) might have voted to find the defendant guilty on a charge that seemed obvious at first, but on deep reflection of the evidence, it became clear to all of us that the prosecution did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.

The current state of the justice system at the federal level seems so broken.

If you feel that way, I would now advise you to welcome jury duty service. Living in a country that you are presumed innocent until proven guilty is truly a gift of being American. The legal system makes so many mistakes it can feel like "due process" are meaningless words.

But being a room with 12 people that represented a cross section of America, none of them really wanting to be there, and to see the collaboration, resolutions of strong initial disagreement, with everyone truly concerned about justice and the application of the law, was totally inspiring.