jury duty

September 14th, 2024

This week, I reported to the Brooklyn Supreme Courthouse for my first-ever jury duty assignment. When I received my summons, my mind immediately went to Jury Duty, the TV show, and I soon realized that almost all of my understanding of civic life had come from media. Most people consider jury duty a complete hassle, but I was eager to see the details in real life.

I can’t say much about the case itself, but one unexpected aspect of the whole experience was the strange familiarity that developed among people in the same juror pool. After hours together in the waiting area, we were called into the courtroom and roughly half of the group was summoned to the jury box for questioning. The judge asked every candidate a standardized set of questions, revealing details about their lives—name, occupation, length of NYC residency, household members, any prior exposure to crime.

The answers sketch a faint silhouette of each person’s life—just enough to make it difficult to think of them as complete strangers. The process is intentional, of course: lawyers are looking to assemble a jury that appears fair and impartial. Still, there was something intrusive about knowing these details about my fellow jurors: that someone had lived in Prospect Heights for fifteen years, owned a restaurant, had two children in elementary school. In revealing my own answers, I felt oddly exposed.

I was excused by the judge on the second day. The trial was slated to last two weeks, long enough that I felt mostly relieved, but I left with a sense of having departed the party just as it was about to begin.