Jury Duty

This past week I served my civic duty after being called up for Jury Duty. As in the past, the experience has brought up a lot of thoughts related to diversity, race and prejudice, city living and our justice system in general.

After much waiting my number was finally called. Once the pool of jurors was gathered we were marched up to a courtroom.

Upon entering the room and seeing the defendant, I was appauled by my first thought:
GUILTY.

If you have ever had any dealings with courtroom dramas or a jury, you know the whole idea is that you're meant to be impartial and free of prejudgement. But of course we as people are not and therefore the jury selection process began.

It turns out that the guy on trial was being charged for possessing a concealed weapon without a permit. The jaw dropping fact for me was that he was caught at the scene of a shoot out that took place ON MY STREET!

Immediately my brain started remembering what few details I knew: the 3 victims, who lived, and those suspected of the shooting, were all "familiar" to the police. My neighborhood is one that is not unfamiliar with violence, though for the past decade has been going through, for lack of better term, gentrification. The neighborhood has been on the rise, forlorn property has been rehabbed to it's former glory, violent crime has decreased and there's a general since of community. A big improvement over 15 years ago or even 10 years ago. So this crime rocked the boat. At the time, I was disturbed but tried brushing it off... "at least they were "familiar" to the police - common criminals - not "random violence" - nothing that needed to affect my personal feelings of safety." DENIAL, anyone?

So as I sat there in the courthouse, listening to the questions and thinking about how to best proceed, I decided, like most others in the room, that I wanted on that jury. NOT IN MY NEIGHBORHOOD was the message I wanted to send. Apparently most others did to and in the end, the defendant decided to go ahead, change his plea and admit his guilt.