Jury Duty For (Anti-Racist) Dummies

I knew it was coming. Every time I checked the mail I feared the inevitable: my jury duty summons. Having spent the entirety of a Monday afternoon at court for an open container summons (for a hard cider consumed on the Fourth of July, I mean come on), and witnessing the painfully slow methods by which they process even minor offenses, I can’t say I blame myself. A day in court is a day spent in the ugliest building ever built, which smells like pee, and within which you are treated like a hardened criminal even if you’re wearing a really cute pencil skirt and you actually washed your hair that day.

Court sucks, and I imagined jury duty would suck too, especially when you have a fervent distrust of the racist, oppressive police force and judicial system of This Great Nation. I can’t claim that I am a prison abolitionist, a prison reformer, or that I have ever actively done anything to subversively affect change within said system. However, if anything good is going to come out of this jury duty business, maybe it’s that I’m about to kick my ass into gear. I thought there might be some of you who are in my boat: the “I hate the Prison Industrial Complex but don’t know what to do about it” boat. So, I did a little research and spoke to some real live prison abolitionists about what to expect on our respective days of reckoning. The first thing I heard was that some people believe participating in jury duty is tantamount to complicity in the system and gives it validity, and so choose not to participate. One can imagine these same people are then charged with failure to appear and, if they eventually face their day in court, probably wish there were more anti-racists and skeptics of the judicial system on their jury. Though the punishment for this crime is relatively minor, let’s assume for now we are all pro-attending mandatory Jury Duty.

Your Greatest Most Secretest Weapon: Jury Nullification

The first most interesting tactic I learned was a little (big) something called the right to nullify. Jury nullification is when a jury votes “not guilty,” even if the law has been broken, either because they believe the defendant has been charged with the wrong crime, or because they believe the law is unjust. Jury Duty enthusiast J.F., wrote about this little known right in The Economist :

Juries do not only decide guilt or innocence; they can also serve as checks on unjust laws. Judges will not tell you about your right to nullify — to vote not guilty regardless of whether the prosecution has proven its case if you believe the law at issue is unjust. They may tell you that you may only judge the facts of the case put to you and not the law. They may strike you from a jury if you do not agree under oath to do so, but the right to nullify exists.

So, if you manage to make your way onto a Jury, you can then inform your other jurors of this right, and you can exercise it like the badass you truly are. If that fails, and you’re okay with being the most hated person in the room (in the name of justice, mind you!), you can always vote “not guilty” no matter what, resulting in a hung jury and impeding the efficiency of the courts. Okay, so that’s a tactic to use once you’re on the jury, but how do you find yourself there in the first place?

Be A Jury Selection Ninja

This can be difficult, especially if you’re a person of color. See, considering we are incarcerated at extraordinarily higher rates than white people, we’re seen as being distrustful of the government, and thus are often excluded from juries. A 2010 report entitled “Illegal Racial Discrimination In Jury Selection: A Continuing Legacy” by the Equal Justice Initiative highlights this trend:

Today, peremptory strikes are used to exclude African Americans and other racial minorities from jury service at high rates in many jurisdictions, particularly in the South. In courtrooms across the United States, people of color are dramatically underrepresented on juries as a result of racially biased use of peremptory strikes. This phenomenon is especially prevalent in capital cases and other serious felony cases.

So, the odds are stacked against you if you’re African American, Hispanic, Queer or Trans. The jury is out on whether there is significant discrimination against Asians, however there is apparently a prevalent stereotype that Asian Americans are conservative and law-abiding. What you may be wondering is if, during the selection process, you should lie and say you’re totally neutral on the topic, or play by the rules and tell them how you really feel.

To get an idea of what to expect and how to respond, I spoke with Olivia Nicole, a one-time student of law enforcement turned prison-reform activist who currently volunteers for Picture the Homeless, and works as a Program Fellow at Color of Change, an organization that focuses on changing the way Black and brown folks are depicted in the media. Olivia wants to make it abundantly clear that “whatever face you do decide to present as a [potential] juror, you decide that from the moment you get that screening questionnaire, because I think that face (one of “fuck this system,” one of “I’m prepared to participate civilly at most costs,” one of “let me see how far I can take this,” etc.) will absolutely determine how you address jury nullification if you ever experience it in the future.” Even asking Olivia about civil disobedience within the court had me dreaming up nightmare scenarios in which I was the angry black woman being dragged from the courtroom screaming “FUCK THE MAN!” or worse, clamming up entirely and simply doing what I am told. So, having a solid understanding of where your beliefs lie is important moving forward. In short: don’t whip up an outrageous lie about what a dedicated American you are, but maybe don’t tell them you think cops are dirty pigs. Use your best judgement. There are ways to express your gratitude about the rights you are afforded now, instead of expressing distaste for the rights you know you deserve.

This is not a manual on how to turn the system on its head. One is not always going to run into a situation where jury nullification is possible, necessary, or reasonable. Most importantly, we just want more people like us on juries: people who are skeptical of the efficacy of prisons and who see racism as a living, breathing problem. Fortunately for us, there are plenty of people trying to get out of jury duty.

What To Expect When You’re Expecting (to wait around for 8 hours under florescent lights)

Make sure you dress comfortably and bring snacks. Bring a cellphone charger. You are going to be doing an extraordinary amount of sitting around, waiting. The less irritable you are, the less prone you might be to inciting a race riot before you even get to the questionnaire.

You might be asked any number of questions ranging from your physical ability to attend the court proceedings, to your relationship with any of the participants, to your feelings about the American Justice System. You might be asked if you have ever been the victim of a crime, what newspapers you read, your ethnic background, your union status, your education level and area of study, what you watch on television, whether you or anybody you know is publicly affiliated with organizations that deal with criminal justice issues, if you know any criminals, if you or anyone you know works in law enforcement, if you own a gun, and according to Olivia, “whether you or your family has ever practiced martial arts and to what extent”… no, I’m not joking, and the list goes on.

Olivia warns that the most important questions to answer carefully are “those that pertain to your personal feelings about law enforcement agents, medical professionals, basically anyone who is part of a larger institution that the government holds as credible.” Ultimately, your answers should be weighed on a case-by-case basis. “I feel like I can only say you should be careful, and not that you should be totally honest or tell bold-faced lies about your opinions, because all this depends heavily on how you feel about the case in question… I can say that while you never want to betray your instinct or experience, this would be a space in which your ability to be ‘politically correct’ so much that you pass the muster to be a juror, is going to be tested.” These questions might be more difficult for somebody like Olivia to answer, given her very public affiliation with prison reform organizations, especially in the age of the Internet. She adds, “Beware! I’ve heard that in this great age of social media, lawyers have been known to check the Facebook and Twitter accounts of potential jurors to get a feel for their political opinions.” So, I should probably take down the Facebook status where I made a public call for “Prison Abolition friends” to weigh in on an article I’m writing about how to pass the jury screening process. I should also probably not be writing this article while in the juror waiting room, but hell, I live life on the edge.

And All For The Low, Low Price of $40!

If you’re worried about being compensated for your jury service because you have to miss work, you should be. According to the New York State Unified Court System Jury Information For Employers pamphlet:

Employers are encouraged but not required to pay an employee’s full daily wage while the employee is reporting to serve as a juror. Employers of more than 10 employees must pay jurors the jury fee of $40 or the employee’s wage (whichever is lower) each day for the first three days of jury service. If the juror’s daily wage is less than the jury fee, then the State makes up the difference. The State will pay the jury fee of jurors who work for employers of 10 or fewer employees if the jurors are not paid at least the jury fee by their employers. After three days, the State pays the jury fee to jurors who are not paid at least the jury fee.

As cryptic as that sounds, what I’m basically understanding here is that I get paid a measly $40 a day to sit in court all day doing my civic “duty” to a system I don’t believe in while I could be getting paid more to do my job that I actually really enjoy and that doesn’t endanger the lives of Black and brown people. The payment also differs from state to state. I’m not trying to discourage you from attending jury duty, but I am agitating your rage against the system. If I have to sit here all day for little to no money, I might as well have fun doing it. And I can think of nothing more fun than giving the courts a little dose of civil disobedience.

A Nap And A Sushi Snack

Unfortunately my day in court was entirely uneventful. I arrived at the courthouse at 8:30 am, and walked into a massive room of potential jurors watching the screens located throughout, lauding us for our profound patriotism simply for showing up to Jury Duty. A judge (I’m pretty sure he was a judge?) then spoke to us over a microphone, explaining in detail how to fill out the various forms and identification cards we had been given. He then announced that if anybody felt as though they didn’t have “a basic understanding of the English language” they should “line up and head to the room next door. He repeated this maybe five times while approximately 50% of the room filed into the room next door. As soon as the final juror trickled out, he shouted “That means if you could understand what I just said to you, you probably have a pretty basic grasp of the English language. Get back in here!” Who knew the judge would be so full of LOLz? Funnier (and scarier) still, the judge warned us against tweeting or posting on Facebook about any of the court proceedings, because that is super illegal. “We have an app for that, actually” which we all thought was hilarious until he proceeded to read two tweets that had already been sent from the courtroom, pointing out the section in which the offending tweeters were seated, one of which read, “Oh hell naw I ain’t stayin here until 5 oclock. #catchmeifyoucan.” This was also funny, I guess, but in case you weren’t sure about government surveillance, Big Brother is really watching y’all. I was called in for screening on one case, but it was settled out of court before they could even question the potential jurors. I spent the rest of the day in a heavy slumber, shifting from one impossible position to another, until the clock struck 4:30 and the judge told us we could all go home and don’t come back for another eight years.

If anything, I’m now better informed, and hopefully you are too. If you do find yourself in a position to sit on a jury for an important case, you have some tools to help you exercise your rights in a meaningful way. Plus, you can spend that $40 on some really good sushi during your lunch break.

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Hannah Hodson

Hannah Hodson is a 22-year old Brooklyn-bred writer and actor. She graduated Hampshire College with a very valuable BA in Theatre and Black Studies. She currently resides in DUMBO, Brooklyn, where she admires the view while writing poetry about gentrification, climate change, race, class and other heavy stuff, but tries to keep a positive outlook on it all. She recently met Abbi and Ilana from Broad City (IRL), and has photos to prove it. Follow her on Instagram and Twitter, for her thoughts on Beyonce.

Hannah has written 36 articles for us.

25 Comments

  1. This is a really important guide, Hannah. Thank you. And, to prove your point further, I couldn’t find a single stock photo of a jury that included a person of color. :/

  2. My mom told me I got my jury duty summons yesterday but I don’t live there anymore so wee!! I don’t have to go! Buutttt this was very helpful information that I can use for when the time comes. It was also fun reading about your own experience!

  3. Wow! Interesting experiences and insights there.

    Myself, I’ve never been summoned (dunno why, maybe not registering, but I’ve read they pull from DMV records too), which I’m pretty glad for: my boss isn’t crazy about people missing work, for one thing. Other reasons too, but that’s the most immediate one for me.

  4. The worst thing about going to law school, passing the bar and becoming a lawyer? The fact that I will never be allowed to sit on a jury :(

    All ya’ll who have the opportunity, make the most of it!

    (And bring a few books with you for the day! Being paid $40.00 to read all day sounds like not a bad deal to me.)

    • You could be called to serve in DC–the judge at one of the trials I served on had been called, which he told us in the context of explaining how unlikely it was that we would get out of jury service, since he hadn’t been able to! I think rules vary widely from state to state as far as whether judges, lawyers, doctors, etc can serve on a jury.

      • Ahhh I didn’t know the US rules. I’m Canadian, and in Canada, if you’ve attended law school, you can’t sit on a jury, period.

  5. Good article! First a disclosure that I work within the system. Second a statement that I am not trying to be an apologist for a system that does in fact incacerate people too often and incarcerates persons of color at higher rates than whites. But I did want to address your point about jury nullification. Jurors are asked under oath if they will follow the law even if they disagree with it. They are also asked, under oath of they will base their verdict only on the facts and evidence before them. A juror who votes for jury nullification has therefore then perjured themselves. Twice. There are lots of ways within and without to work to improve the system. I would not advocate perjury as one of them.

    • Thanks for the information, as I wondered about this as well, and thank you Hannah for writing this! I have always worried about having jury duty in a case where the law was extremely immoral (particularly a death penalty case), and this article at least reminds me that other people are worrying about the same things.

      • I think you would almost definitely be screened for moral objections that might impair your ability or willingness to “fairly” judge the evidence. I was the last time I was called.

        • I know they would probably ask about that, but by expressing my moral objection and disqualifying myself, I would be contributing to an immoral process.

  6. “A judge (I’m pretty sure he was a judge?) then spoke to us over a microphone”

    In New York City, not a judge unless you were in the actual courtoom. It was a court clerk, who may or may not have been a lawyer.

  7. $40?! I had jury duty once in Philadelphia and was paid $8. It wasn’t even enough to buy a sandwich at the place they recommended to us. `

  8. I recently got a summons for Dec 9th, so this post is both timely and informative for me! I’m lucky that I’m salaried and won’t miss out on any income (wasn’t the case until recently). I was summoned a couple of years ago and pretty much just sat around for 3 hours, then they sent us all home. I got a check for $6. Yay?

    Anyway. Lots to think on. Will be re-reading this in a couple of weeks to be sure.

  9. Interesting article–really food for thought here, thanks.

    As a resident of DC and now Baltimore, I’ve been called for jury duty every two years for the last 12 years, so I’ve done a lot of jury duty, though only one trial. Since I’m a salaried employee, it’s basically a day off work to read quietly, really pretty nice all things considered. In fact, the Baltimore city jury waiting rooms are decorated with posters extolling their ‘Best of City Paper’ title as ‘the best place for free air-conditioning and a movie.’ Jury duty stinks and is really expensive for people who are hourly workers, self-employed, or are stay at home parents. I had very mixed feelings about the trial I served on (weapons and drug possession charges) but felt obligated to follow the law as written, since that was what I’d sworn an oath to do.

  10. “The first thing I heard was that some people believe participating in jury duty is tantamount to complicity in the system and gives it validity, and so choose not to participate.”

    I am truly confounded by that logic, criminal defendants do not waltz into courtrooms saying ‘hell yes, I absolutely want to get my liberty taken away and have a criminal record preventing me from attaining employment once I am released for this non-violent drug offense!” They don’t get to choose whether or not they participate in the system. The system is going to exist and targets POC and hurts vulnerable populations whether someone gives it validity or not. Having jury members aware of racism and these issues is infinitely more helpful than abstaining out of principle.

  11. Very informative. I’ve never been summoned for jury duty, so it’s something I know little about. I especially liked that last section about the judge and the FB app.

    I found the whole part about pay really disconcerting and unfair, especially for low-income people. “Employers are encouraged but not required to pay an employee’s full daily wage while the employee is reporting to serve as a juror” …So if your employer doesn’t decide to pay you for the hours missed, you’re stuck with a $40 work day? That’s well below minimum wage. It seems like you could really be hung out to dry if you’re being paid hourly at your job and living on a paycheck-to-paycheck basis. :/

    • Yep! The first time I got a summons I was an hourly worker. And my place of employment at the time did not care, as I was a temp.

      I kind of want to do some digging and find out why it’s not required, at the very least, to pay hourly workers minimum wage for the hours they’ve lost.

    • 10-ish years ago, when I was last summoned for duty in CA, they had a time in the day where people could say that they wanted to be excused because it’d be a big financial hardship (everyone got it that day, but it def. wasn’t a guarantee to get you dismissed).

      I was thankful that they had that in there, but frustrated as hell that it’s a) set up to pay so little as to make that the reality for a lot of people (we got ~$15 for the day, so that’s not going to make a dent in most people’s budgets), and b) that you could only do that after missing a day of work to come down in the first place. I really don’t understand why it’s not mandated to pay at least minimum wage for the time people spend there.

      Juries are so non-representative because of this, and the preemptory challenge issues, that I’m pretty amazed that things aren’t worse than they already are. Thank god for jury nullification, but EESH to all of the bullshit around it. (Judges are legally in the clear when they lie about it to a jury. Lots of bullshit can happen in a trial, but legally sanctioning lies in the structure of things is beyond the pale, to me.)

  12. This was both informative and amusing. Bravo, Hannah.

    I got my first jury duty summons last week, but for a state where I no longer live. I was all worried that they’d charge me for not showing up (they wanted me to be there from December 12-26, of all times!) but when I filled out the online form with my address, they processed it and sent me an email dismissal within ~12 hours. So it seems the bureaucracy can move quickly when it so chooses…

  13. Interesting perspective.

    Actual criminals deserve to go to actual prison. The judicial system might be fucked up, but if the prosecuting attorneys actually prove *beyond a reasonable doubt* that the defendant committed a crime, you’re doing the VICTIM a disservice by voting not guilty just because of your political beliefs.

    Sincerely,
    Someone who has been the victim of a crime.

    • Dear Mac,
      I am sincerely sorry about your experience. However, as was mentioned in the piece, jury nullification is not always a viable option. Furthermore, it should only be used in cases when the juror/jury believes the law is unjust. If the nature of your crime was violent, I don’t believe anybody would argue that the perpetrator didn’t deserved to be punished, and at the moment the only viable form of punishment we have is prison. If the nature of the crime was non-violent, however, I think there are many people who would disagree with you. Prisons are horrible, dangerous places for people to be, especially black and brown, queer or trans people (our people). Even people who would like to see prisons abolished entirely understand the need for some forms of punishment and lots of forms of rehabilitation for both violent and non-violent offenders.

      Nonetheless, I should have made it abundantly clear that nullification should only be used when you believe the law at issue is unjust. Given our community here at Autostraddle, I trust you and our readers to know when this is the case.

      Sincerely,
      H

      • Don’t get me wrong, we would probably agree on a lot of points (i.e. mandatory minimum sentences are complete bullshit, etc). I still think that crimes that aren’t necessarily “violent” but still hurt another person in some way (theft, for instance) should have consequences for the perpetrator. There’s a difference between someone who steals money because their kids are starving and someone who steals money because they’re just a piece of shit human being. In theory, that’s why judges and jurors are humans and not robots, to be able to take mitigating circumstances into account.

        In a completely unrelated situation, I actually served on a jury for a case of assault with a deadly weapon. It was a really tragic situation … some people were drunk, one had a gun, and he accidentally shot his friend, paralyzing him from the waist down. Does the guy with the gun deserve to be treated the same as someone who shot someone else on purpose with malicious intent? No. But at the same time, the guy who may never walk again because of someone else’s recklessness deserves justice. Btw the defendant was a white male, the victim was a man of color, and there was at least one woman of color on the jury (there might have been two POC, I can’t remember).

  14. Thank you Hannah! This is the article I never knew I needed. I have actually been waiting since childhood to be asked for jury duty in case I have an occasion to tip the scale in situations where the outcome is routinely biased by the system.

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