Meyer: My time as a juror

Many of you probably would rather do anything but serve jury duty. Now this may seem strange, but I've always wanted to be on a jury.

It goes back to the start of my journalism career, when I had the courthouse beat for the Galion Inquirer, a small paper in Crawford County in central Ohio. I covered a number of felony trials, and I'd find myself trying to determine which witnesses and arguments would sway the jury.

But while I watched some people get called for jury duty time and again, somehow the summons never seemed to come my way.

Finally, though, my time came. A couple months back, I received a questionnaire for potential jury duty in federal court in downtown Akron. The summons to serve came a bit later to be part of a 300-juror pool for six weeks, starting right after the International Elastomer Conference. A detailed voir dire survey came during the IEC, gathering information to be used for jury selection. A shorter questionnaire followed, and my chance to be on a jury would be decided Nov. 2. It was for a criminal case involving a person convicted of a felony more than a dozen years ago, who now found himself facing two counts of possession of a firearm.

Because of social distancing issues, the jury pool of more than 60 was split into two groups. Half of us appeared early in the morning, with the second group facing questions shortly before noon. There was no parking allowed at the courthouse; the judge later informed us that policy dates back to the 1995 bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building by Timothy McVeigh.

I was No. 14 out of the entire group, so with 12 jurors and two alternates, I would end up on the panel unless either side wanted me removed. After we were sworn in as a group, we were called into court individually to answer follow-up questions from our surveys.

It used to be an axiom that if you were a journalist, you'd never get seated on a jury. And I was asked about my time covering court cases, what my working relationships were like with the prosecutors and attorneys on the cases. Other questions centered on my daughter being a government attorney. I thought that might be more likely to get me removed than my time covering trials, but I assured them she worked on unfair labor cases involving federal unions, nothing that would sway my opinion one way or another.

When we reported in the afternoon for final jury selection, two jurors ahead of me had been excused, either for cause or personal reasons. So I was placed in the Juror No. 3 seat. The two sides could remove a total of 16 potential jurors from the panel.

I sat there wondering if each selection would send me home, but I made the cut and was seated on the panel.

The case started the next morning, and we weren't what I'd call a close-knit jury. We'd make small talk during breaks, but that was about it. I think that may have been because we were so cautious about warnings not to discuss the case with each other. I didn't even know any of their names until we wore name tags during deliberations. I did learn that one of the jurors worked for a local plastics molder, and was a reader of our sister publication, Plastics News, showing that many people around Akron still have ties to the polymer industry.

The case itself was presented over the following two days. It wasn't the kind of trial you'd see on TV. It was very procedural in nature, with the prosecution tasked with proving four specific elements of the crime. For example, "possession" isn't as cut-and-dry as it may seem, but could be proven in a couple different ways. There was no DNA evidence, but there was no shortage of body cam videos, along with recorded jail house calls from the defendant to his girlfriend.

The defendant, as is his right, didn't put forth a defense, instead hoping we jurors would find the prosecution failed to meet its burden of proof. The third day ended with closing arguments, and the judge's final instructions.

While I had wanted to be on a jury for years, the night before deliberations it ran through my mind that, as a juror, you literally are sitting in judgment of another person's life. That gave the experience a whole different perspective, and after we had reached our verdict, I found several other jurors had similar thoughts.

When we finally started deliberations, I was glad to see everyone took the task seriously. Nobody came in immediately trying to sway other jurors one way or another to get things over quickly. We considered each piece of evidence, looked at every body cam video and listened to each of the jail house calls. As some were hard to understand, or moved quickly, we viewed or listened to many of them multiple times.

The first count was pretty clear cut and didn't take long to decide. The second count, though, was more difficult to decide. Many of us at first had doubts the prosecution had proven its case. But after going over testimony and the video footage in detail, it finally became clear that they had met their burden.

After the verdicts were read, the judge spent nearly an hour with us, answering questions, giving us inside knowledge on things not put forth before the jury and how the defense had used maneuvers to draw out the case, along with sharing some of his insight from serving 22 years on the federal bench.

So there it is. My time as a juror. Maybe the next time you get one of those summons, you won't try so hard to figure out a way to escape your civic duty.

Meyer is editor of Rubber News. Reach him at [email protected] and follow him on Twitter @bmeyerRPN.