At this moment, on this planet, there are only twelve people who know exactly how the decision not to indict a Missouri police officer in the death of a Missouri teenager was made. Twelve.
On a planet of billions, twelve souls is barely a Thanksgiving dinner. And we will not hear from them. We won't know their faces, their background data, their socioeconomic status, their politics, their religion. We will know nothing. They were selected months before the shooting even occurred, with no possible way to know a case of this magnitude would be placed before them to decide.
Today my mind is on these twelve.
A few months ago I was one of the twelve. A grand jury (like the one in Missouri) had already rendered a case worthy of trial. I realize that this is the point of contention in Missouri. I know the allegations of manipulation of the system, of prejudice on the part of the prosecution, the history of no indictments of police officers. An argument is also often made that grand juries are manipulated to get an indictment. For this moment I am not thinking of the possible flaws in our system. Today my mind is on the twelve.
I showed up for Warren Circuit Court jury selection smug in my ignorance--jury duty, how hard can it be? Surely I would be dismissed. I've lived here too long, know too many people, to possibly be eligible as a neutral juror. Spring break was coming--we had a trip planned--maybe there wouldn't even be a trial.
They told us it was a murder trial. They told us it could possibly last several days. They (and by "They" I mean the prosecuting attorney and the defense attorney) asked questions. I answered the questions honestly--I didn't make up excuses for why I could not serve. I was picked.
And suddenly I was nervous. Really nervous. A man had died from a knife wound on a street in my own town. His mother and family was in the court room. The mother and family of the defendant were in the court room. They could see us and I could see them. This wasn't TV. This was real.
We were given a round, red button to wear, thereby identifying us to all the world as the twelve who would decide the fate of the accused. We didn't need the button. Everyone knew who we were.
A few facts of this case. The deceased was black. The defendant was black. The unrelated individual who would seem to be the actual cause of the melee was black. He was also alive and very present. I am white. Ten of my fellow jurors were white. One lone juror was black. I only mention these skin-deep observations because we are, increasingly, a nation that is seeing more color, not less--a fact I find depressing, at best, dehumanizing at worst.
We twelve were a fairly good cross section of life here in Warren County, Kentucky. Pretty fairly split between male and female, white and blue collar, employed and not. Immediately after we were selected and plunked down in the jury box, red buttons blazing on our lapels, the brother of the deceased leapt to his feet and bolted, screaming profanity, toward the defendant. He was restrained by gun-wearing bailiffs even as we were being ushered rapidly from the courtroom to back hallway privacy by other gun-toting bailiffs.
At that moment I would wager that every one of the twelve was wishing they were anywhere but here. I certainly was. We barely made eye contact with each other. We huddled in our individual chairs in the back room and did not speak. Perhaps someone opened a stick of gum or checked their phone, but other than the collective rapidly beating pulse of twelve folks who before today had never seen each other, the room was silent.
And then the trial began. Not fifteen minutes after being selected we were back in that jury box, a court-provided steno pad and number 2 wooden pencil in hand, hearing opening remarks.
On any given day across our country such proceedings may be found. Twelve people, leaning forward, listening with every inch of their brains, trying to make sense of testimony that conflicts itself at the moment it is being delivered (a euphemism for lying under oath), of physical evidence so detailed it is easy to get lost in the science of it all, of he said/she said/they said they saw stories, of police vs citizen dynamics that belie the fact that we ALL are citizens of this town.
We leaned forward. We listened. We followed the rules (I was actually surprised by this), and NO ONE discussed that case in that jury room until after closing remarks were heard. We took page after page of notes.
We asked questions, handed to the bailiff in writing, seeking clarification, trying to understand, how these people ended up on that street corner on a hot June night engaged in battle. A gun was on the scene. A bruise was sustained by the defendant. Blood was tested. Autopsy reports were given. State lab analysis of the gun was performed. On and on and on.
It was some of the most difficult work I have ever done. The listening. At night I saw those mothers' faces. I saw the faces of the defendant and of the deceased. I heard the voices, the mumbling, the cursing, the repeated admonitions from the judge to respect the court. I saw a gun that had been on the scene, brought by a compatriot of the deceased--held it in my hand and felt its deadly weight. I saw blood splatters and a knife blade. I looked at maps, listened to 911 calls, saw my fellow jurors weep. I got a very small, very imperfect glimpse into what our police department and court system does every single day. Of what life behind the headline is really like for the people who live the lives that make up those headlines.
After several days, many hours, of listening and notetaking, we were sequestered, with our notes, with a seventeen-page document of instructions meant only for us, and with the evidence. We were given a sandwich and told not to come out until we had reached a decision.
And suddenly, so suddenly it took my breath away, I was in dire need of those eleven other people.
As we began to talk, falteringly at first, about what we had heard over those long days, it became increasingly clear that every single person there had listened, and listened hard. They, too, had been engaged in nocturnal wrestling. They, too, understood the gravity of what we were about. These things had absolutely nothing to do with their education, their religion, their politics, their socioeconomic status, or their race. They had everything to do with the fact that they were human beings engaged in living here, in Bowling Green.
It took us about five hours to decide; in full disclosure, I was the lone vote who held the decision up for that long. With shaking hands I kept going back to those seventeen pages of instructions. With a quavering voice, I turned to my fellow jurors and asked, "Will you help me? For some reason, I don't think I can read."
And they did. As did the twelve Missourians help one another through what have been, with certainty, long and difficult days.
After it was all over, after the verdict was rendered, after the mothers on both sides of that courtroom had wept, after the judge had thanked us for our service and we were ushered, one last time, into the jury room, I sat down, breathless and overcome. It was done. A decision had been made and I was one-twelfth of that decision.
No one knows what we heard and saw during all those many days of testimony and arguments unless they, too, were there for every single second of it. No one other than we twelve knows what took place in that room and how that decision was made. And the same holds true for Missouri. We don't know. We never will know. CNN and Fox can blather on for months on end, but they will never know. Even if one, lone juror breaks code, goes rogue, and blurts out his or her experience, it is still an incomplete and flawed image of that process.
Later I talked to another judge, someone I saw on a walking trail in a local park. I shared with him my experience, my conflicts with the system and with myself. I asked him what he thought about the imperfections of the jury system and he said in his experience and from where he sits, you get twelve people in a room together, they will almost always, somehow, get it right.
I think we did. I hope we did. It took all twelve of us to do it, that I know for sure. And it took all twelve Missourians to come to the decision not to indict. Let us respect them. And let us respect a system, flawed as it is, flawed as we all may be, that brings twelve random people into a room where they wrestle with information, with facts, with difficult decisions, on behalf of us all.
