12 Angry Men We're Not

A jury of your peers. My wife was telling me she was doing a project with her students asking them to figure out how to select a jury of peers. So I jokingly told her that I would just select 12 white guys. The idea of "a jury of your peers" is almost as ridiculous as "innocent until proven guilty". Her class, in their 40 minute session, put more effort in figuring out a jury of peers than the actual judicial system.

A couple of years ago, I got this little letter in the mail summoning me to Jury Duty. I went to serve my one day in a room of strangers waiting to be called on to do their civic duty. Unfortunately for me, I was actually called and was selected to be on a jury of a case of a man suing his bank (the actual amount of money was about $15k, and the poor man was representing himself). The biggest thing I remember is being inconvenienced and annoyed for three days having to listen to someone struggle through presenting his case, and the loser lawyer for the bank stinking at his job. I wanted them both to lose. Not because of the facts of the case, but that their little dispute about a closed or open account was inconveniencing my life.

But during the proceedings I was thinking about how I am this guys peer. The only thing we may have had in common is that we both paid our taxes. He was representing himself, spoke with a heavy accent and mumbled. So the fact that I had to strain to hear what he was saying made me dislike him. The lawyer for the Bank seemed like an arrogant jerk. But he was a mumbling jerk who thought he was the smartest guy in the room. When we were finally deliberating the case in the Jury Room, I looked around at the rest of the jury. We were a good mix of people; a microcosm of the area we were from. But what happens when a black man is accused of a crime in a very white area. Where are his peers? How can they relate to him, or understand what he has gone through. Do they understand his culture, his words, or the meaning of his actions?

Obviously the answer is they can't, because they are really not "a jury of peers", they are just tax payers doing a civic duty. Now, let's add another layer to this. If someone is arrested, do we really view them as innocent until a jury of their peers finds them guilty? The answer is that it is very difficult to assume someone is innocent until proven guilty within the justice system. If someone was truly innocent until proven guilty would they be detained in police custody through their trial?

Now, I know the practical matters of why the police do this, however it leads to other rights being given up. There are American citizens who are in custody today without charge. No date for a trial coming up. Nothing. They are just gone, disappeared off the face of the Earth. I am pretty sure this is not what the Founding Fathers had in mind when they wrote this and this.