A poster on several CDTA buses in my area reads, “Justice starts with JURY. Jury starts with YOU.” I pondered the idea of volunteering for jury duty, which, I suppose, is weird.
A jury summons came in the mail for the October 6 session. My number was 428. When I checked in the previous weekend, they only took folks to 391, but I had to call that Monday night. Nope, I’m off the hook for another six years. Yay, I guess.
Still, I feel vaguely like I OUGHT to serve on a jury at least once. I wrote about my experience in 2007, when I had to show up but just watched, and my only voir dire in 2014. I feel that, since I’ve lived in Albany County since 1979, always been a registered voter, in the phone book when that was a thing, and a homeowner since 2000, it’s weird how infrequently I’ve been summoned.
I’m not saying that this is the issue in my county, but I am reminded of a John Oliver segment from 2020. He examined “an unjust cog in America’s criminal justice system: the unrepresentative makeup of trial juries. Serving on a ‘jury of your peers’ is an ‘essential civic duty…, one enshrined in the Sixth Amendment to the Constitution. But in practice, ‘peers’ are not chosen from a fair cross-section of society. People of color, and particularly black Americans, are chronically underrepresented in jury pools, which can have serious and devastating consequences for verdicts.”
Ah, videos!
NYjuror.gov has videos like The Jury: The Conscience of the Community. “Chief Judge Rowan D. Wilson has spoken of jury service as a cornerstone of our democracy and has underscored the importance of jury service in attaining the goal of our Founders to provide juries of we, the people. Taken together, our series of 16 new Public Service Announcements… carries the judge’s vision further by featuring individuals from diverse walks of life sharing their perspectives on the importance of the right to a trial by jury in rendering verdicts that are fair and consistent with the law. The New York State Unified Court System hopes you enjoy them.” Excitingish.
And jurors are paid $72 a day!
I’m contemplating it for 2026. It seems like something I should do, like voting at every opportunity. Hmm…