The Gong Show

Jury Duty Experiences

I just finished a brief stint on Jury Duty. I was placed on a jury for a criminal trial (had to do with dealing weed and gun violence in upper Manhattan), but when the trial started, the defendent plead out and we all went home. Pretty painless in terms of time commitment.

Despite being so short, the process was very interesting. Some notable experiences:

1. Every law school in the country should require a class on cognitive psychology. During Voir Dire (the process where the lawyers ask potential jury members questions), both lawyers intentionally asked questions that they didn’t care about the answers to… the purpose of the questions was to “prime” the jury. Priming is a classic technique in psychology testing, by making people think of happy thoughts or sad thoughts before performing an unrelated task, the experimenter can affect the outcome of the task. I suspect some of the best lawyers are ones that have mastered this technique and many other techniques in a cognitive psychology playbook.

2. The first question that the Assistant District Attorney asked the jury was, “who here has seen The Wire.” She didn’t ask about any other entertainment media, not Law & Order, CSI, The Closer, etc… The ADA’s question tells me something about The Wire, but I’m not sure what it is. Perhaps the show is as realistic as it looks, perhaps the show would setup unrealistic expectations in jurors minds, or perhaps the show’s portrayal of law enforcement and/or drug trafficking is too unflattering. Whatever the reason is, The Wire was the only show that the ADA cared enough to ask about. Of course, the details of the case sounded like it could have come straight out of an episode of The Wire. I, along with only 5 other people raised my hand to that question. I guess The Wire was never all that popular.

3. I was pulled randomly from the general jury pool into the courtroom along with 50 other people. After Voir Dire ended, of those 50 people 2 were chosen to be jurors and 4 were chosen as alternate jurors (the rest of the jury had previously been selected). I have no idea how I was chosen to be one of the 2 jurors out of the 50 potential jurors. I disclosed very quickly and early in the Voir Dire process that my sister works in the DA’s office, the same office that was prosecuting the Defendant! I told the court that I thought I could be objective and unbiased despite this fact, but how could the Defense possibly want me on the jury? It seems crazy to me. Perhaps they knew all along that jury didn’t matter because they were going to plead out once the trial started.

All in all, it was an interesting (albeit brief) insight into our legal system.