Democracy in Action
Rosen, Ruth
YEARS LATER, I would tell my friends never to shirk their jury summonses. This is the most democratic experience you'll ever have, I'd insist. But when I first arrived at the Alameda County...
...I gave the four who wanted to vote not guilty all the time they needed to express their anguish...
...others seemed well versed in California law...
...Together we had wrestled with tough moral and legal decisions, and when we parted, it was with genuine affection and respect...
...I hesitated, thought about it for a long moment, answered truthfully, and said, "Yes, I would do that...
...But I knew I had been profoundly transformed by this experience...
...No," I said...
...But when I first arrived at the Alameda County Superior Courthouse, located in what was the gritty area of downtown Oakland in the late 1980s, I had little desire to serve on a criminal trial...
...After living with each other for two days, we returned to the jury box with the invisible bonds we had forged inside the jury room...
...We took straw votes...
...We established an easy intimacy...
...The break worked...
...Some had dropped out of high school...
...True, I had marched in endless protests for civil rights and against the Vietnam War and cast votes every year...
...I asked her...
...The rest immediately agreed...
...Then, she looked me straight in the eye and asked, "If I can convince you that a person recklessly endangered people driving under the influence of alcohol, would you be willing to convict such a defendant...
...Suddenly, I was serving on my first trial...
...We all knew this was the defendant's third conviction for drunk driving and that he'd likely go to prison...
...Still, I insisted that the four be given plenty of time to convince the rest of us that he was not guilty...
...A third were African Americans...
...owner, and a Wal-Mart saleswoman...
...Four members of the jury concluded that we should tell the judge we were a hung jury...
...But the judge, a warm, compassionate, Mexican American, had repeatedly instructed us, "You must not take into consideration the possible nature of the sentence, only the evidence that has been presented...
...One man immediately pointed at me and said I should be the forelady because I was a professor and probably knew how to do these things...
...we asked the judge to repeat his instructions...
...The young assistant D.A., impeccably dressed for success, immediately established that I was a professor of American history at the University of California, as well as a liberal who had lived in Berkeley for decades...
...I stood up, looked at the rheumy eyes of the defendant, and reluctantly told the judge that we had indeed reached a unanimous decision...
...As we listened to the witnesses' testimonies, the evidence was overwhelming...
...As tensions grew, I suggested we take a break and just get to know each other...
...But we were not twelve white men...
...I was sure I would be home within the hour...
...Half of us were women...
...the food inedible...
...She smiled...
...we asked the bailiff for transcriptions of certain testimonies...
...We took yet another vote, and this time we reached a unanimous verdict—"guilty...
...I had sat with eleven other citizens for two days...
...they just didn't want him to go to prison...
...I understood and shared the moral anguish of the four...
...The judge thanked us with considerable graciousness and, before he dismissed us, he acknowledged how hard this case must have been for all of us...
...Half were either immigrants or the children of immigrants...
...the rest earned varying degrees of middle-class salaries...
...The breathalyzer test made them wonder how he was able to stand upright...
...As we filed into a stuffy, dim room to discuss the evidence, we sat around a long table that reminded me of the film Twelve Angry Men...
...When the police arrived, he could not walk a straight line...
...would accept me as a member of a jury because I was a professor, a Berkeley resident, and a lifelong liberal activist...
...DISSENT / Winter 2008 n 27...
...We met for two full days because four members of the jury wanted to return a vote of "not guilty...
...But then I thought of the kids who had been playing on that street and how his truck might have hit one of them instead of a pole...
...Several neighbors had witnessed the spectacle...
...We were a diverse group...
...What we all wanted was for him to get help and become sober...
...He was stone drunk...
...I simply assumed that no sane assistant D.A...
...Why did you risk putting me on a jury...
...Neither did I. Gradually, the rest of the jury convinced them that they had to evaluate the evidence, and not consider the possible sentence...
...People dug into their purses and wallets to show off pictures of their kids and grandchildren...
...An updated and revised edition of her most recent book, The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America was recently published by Penguin...
...The whitehaired, elderly African-American man who now sat in the courtroom casually dressed in mismatched pants and jacket had left a party, driven his truck down a hill, careened across the street, and smashed into a telephone pole...
...As I walked down the stairs of the courthouse, the assistant D.A caught up with me...
...I had a queasy feeling as I left the courthouse...
...I gently used skills that I had learned from teaching so many seminars...
...He desperately needs help...
...We talked about our lives, our families, and our work...
...The judge asked if we had reached a verdict...
...He wasn't just driving under the influence...
...By noon, we were hungry, tired, and exhausted...
...The jury included ten individuals from ethnic and racial minorities...
...Turns out I was wrong...
...You feel strongly that he is not guilty and we owe you the time to convince us of your thinking and feelings...
...He shouldn't go to prison," I muttered to myself...
...Nobody was even remotely wealthy...
...Among us were a waitress, an engineer, a domestic house worker, a city construction worker, a retired trucker, a retired grocery store 26 n DISSENT / Winter 2008 "WE, THE JURY...
...But I had never experienced democracy in such a direct and profound way...
...RUTH ROSEN is a historian and journalist and teaches history and public policy at the University of California-Berkeley...
...I had missed a lecture and a seminar that week...
...The room was still stuffy...
...You must only decide whether the defendant is guilty of the crime...
...That meant we'd have to meet a second day...
...None of them argued that the man on trial was innocent...
...Because I believed you and, the truth is, it was my first trial...
...Some labored for a minimum wage...
...I was the only professor...
...I accepted, not sure I really knew "how to do these things...
...the coffee acidic...
...Then, when the tension had eased, we got back to the hard work of dealing with a man none of us wanted to send to prison...
Vol. 55 • January 2008 • No. 1
