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 in the mail, I immediately thought of Jury Duty, the TV show, and I soon realized that my entire understanding of judicial service had come from TV and movies. Jury duty has a reputation of being a complete hassle, but I was eager to see the how it worked in real life.

I can’t say much about the case itself, but one unexpected aspect of the experience was the strange familiarity that developed among people in my 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, and it’s just enough information to make it difficult to think of them as complete strangers. The process is intentional, as I learned: lawyers are looking to assemble a jury that appears fair and impartial. I felt that 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. I felt oddly exposed after revealing my own answers.

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