Losing Sleep
Cheever, Susan
ALEXIS DE TOCQUEVILLE was so impressed with American jurisprudence that he called jury duty a free school for learning personal rights and practical law. But for decades being summoned to jury...
...In the end, the officer had abruptly turned the case over to another cop...
...I changed, too...
...of my fellow jurors, "I feel as if I'll never be able to sleep again...
...Jury duty is too important to leave to those not smart enough to avoid it...
...Her American Bloomsbury: Louisa May Alcott, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Margaret Fuller, Nathaniel Hawthorne, and Henry David Thoreau was published last year...
...Were all these contradictions evidence that the police were telling the unrehearsed truth...
...I got a lesson in practical law—a harder lesson than I had bargained for...
...Faced with a big decision, I like to compromise...
...Justice may be blind, but how can a mother ignore the suffering of another mother...
...many cars had responded...
...We split into discussion groups...
...At night when I went to bed, my mind reeled with visions of innocence, visions of evil, recapitulations of the events in front of the fish market in the dawn light...
...The officer testified that he had looked through the tinted windows of his Crown Vic and seen the drug sale, but he was hard to believe...
...Jury duty wasn't just annoying and time consuming, it was haunting and heartbreaking...
...But for decades being summoned to jury duty taught me different lessons—how to game the system and how to avoid serving...
...The officer was asked to go over his testimony again and again, and late-afternoon drowsiness settled on the courtroom...
...What was the officer's previous record...
...that cop hadn't seen the arrest, but he wanted the overtime...
...We bullied and coaxed...
...The judge declared a mistrial...
...The officer got out of the car, and his encounter with the defendant resulted in a handcuffed defendant bleeding on the ground...
...When the United States District Court finally caught up with me five DISSENT / Winter 2008 n 2 1 "WE, THE JURY...
...As a juror at the United States District Courthouse in Manhattan I was asked to make a decision that could either send an innocent man to prison or let a guilty predator back out on the streets...
...For four days we twelve jurors—schoolteachers, performers, retirees, a photographer's representative—considered and reconsidered an ugly fifteen-minute encounter on the corner of Seymour Avenue and Boston Road in the Bronx on a September Sunday...
...easier said than done...
...Some of the jurors had served many times, but those of us who were new to the process were stunned by its seriousness...
...The officer said one police van responded...
...I agreed...
...The officer would testify that he had fished a bag of crack out of the back of the defendant's pants...
...IN A NORMAL WEEK as a writer and a teacher my big decisions are small: sushi or salad, jeans or a suit, adverb or no adverb...
...In a room of suits, he wore an unraveling sweater, and his story began to fray under pressure...
...years ago and I went downtown to serve like everyone else, I learned more about personal rights and practical law than I ever wanted to know...
...Testimony by his sergeant, who arrived during the arrest, and more testimony from another policeman just made things worse...
...I was the Queen of Deferments: I was self-employed, I was a single mother, I moved and left no forwarding address...
...I learned that the majority does not rule in criminal juries—verdicts must be unanimous...
...Both of these seemed like bad choices...
...The policeman had no memory of the rubber glove...
...I learned that reasonable doubt comes naturally to me...
...The prosecutor said that the defendant had sold the drugs...
...The judge alertly fielded objections, but some of us began to fade...
...The officer said he was in uniform, but his sergeant said he wasn't...
...Making a big decision on the basis of so little information was frustrating...
...What was the defendant's previous record...
...To keep myself awake I began comparing the participants to animals: the tall prosecutor was a graceful crane with folded wings, the judge a wise lion, and the defense lawyer a gray fox...
...On the first day, we all filed into the jury box to hear the prosecutors and the defense lawyer make opening statements...
...Back in the jury room, our first vote was eleven to one in favor of acquittal...
...Or did they show that someone was embellishing the story or omitting important facts...
...Often, a juror just put a weary head down on the table in despair...
...I knew enough practical law to know that jurors should not be influenced by the presence of a mother in the courtroom...
...Many complained of sleeplessness...
...I learned that having to decide a man's fate can ruin your sleep...
...The next time I am summoned I will go without hesitation...
...We reread the officer's entire transcript...
...Innocent or guilty...
...The defense lawyer told us to focus on the credibility of the witnesses...
...The defendant and the officer were both bulldogs...
...The phrase innocent until proven guilty became our mantra...
...When you go to court you are putting your life in the hands of twelve people who aren't smart enough to avoid jury duty," someone once told me...
...The man in question, a burly young guy, wearing a drab, longsleeved T-shirt and baggy pants, sat in court in front of his pretty, intermittently weeping mother...
...DISSENT / Winter 2008 • 23...
...There was no compromise...
...I thought serving on a jury would be annoying and time-consuming...
...Where had the woman buyer gone...
...So Tocqueville was right...
...SUSAN CHEEVER has written twelve books...
...There, in front of a closed fish market at about 5:30 A.M, a veteran police officer, whose normal job was policing quality of life violations, pulled his unmarked maroon Crown Victoria to a stop across the street from what looked to him like a crack cocaine sale...
...The minutes between 5:30 and 5:45 on the morning of September 22 obsessed us...
...But as the memory of the officer's testimony faded, his credibility seemed to increase...
...Our last vote, three days later was almost perfectly reversed—ten to two against acquittal...
...We read over the judge's Instructions of Law to the Jury again and again...
...The officer said he used a rubber glove provided by his fellow policeman to reach into the defendant's pants...
...Later I heard that the defendant was retried and that he did ultimately go to jail...
...I was one of the jurors whose doubts about the police testimony made it impossible for me to vote to convict...
...We took the frustration out on each other...
...Either way," said one 22 n DISSENT / Winter 2008 "WE, THE JURY...
Vol. 55 • January 2008 • No. 1
