Duty Calls

Jury duty, that is. And it wasn't so much a call as it was a notice in the mail.

I belong to what appears to be a small cadre of individuals interested in the jury selection process, and would genuinely love to sit on a jury, but will likely never actually get the opportunity as a result of my educational and professional history. Big sighs over here.

This is supposedly the first women jury. Perhaps I was not chosen because I lacked appropriate headwear? Photo by Library of Congress on Unsplash

For those who don’t know, my first career was in forensic psychology. I guess I can’t really call it much of a career since I bounced out of the field even before I became a Licensed Professional Counselor. In most cases, when the topic arises in conversation, the other party responds with some variation of two questions:

1. Like Criminal Minds?!

2. Are you diagnosing me right now?

Respectively, the answers are “Not really, maybe a little bit, but no, not really” and “Ethically, in a singular conversation, no.”

Forensic psychology is essentially the marriage between psychology and the law. It’s a clinical field (hence the licensure), but it’s incredibly broad (hence the response to question 1). My graduate program required me to engage in field experience that they called an externship. Let it be known that I’ve got beef with this term: if you look up the difference between an externship and internship on the interwebz, you’ll find that an externship is typically a short-term observation-based experience, while an internship is more of a hands-on experiential learning opportunity. However, in each of the four primary externships I engaged in, I was thrown directly into the deep end and it was very much not an observation-based experience. I digress.

What’s the relevance here? Well, one of the externships I had was working as a research associate for the law firm Holland and Heart, in a division called Persuasion Strategies. Wealthy corporations that were being sued would hire my team at Persuasion Strategies to conduct mock trials in order to help their attorneys determine what kind of person may be most beneficial for them to have on the jury. My job was to conduct the mock jury interviews and focus groups and then analyze the data collected, so I have a pretty intimate understanding of what questions to expect and how potential jurors may react/respond. Historically, this understanding has been validated each time I’ve had the opportunity to sit through the selection process.

But after the proceedings I witnessed, we can throw it all out the window. Last Monday’s¹ jury selection process in Boulder, CO was something else.

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Introductions

Before ushering the potential jurors into the courtroom, we all gathered in a waiting area to watch an incredibly dry 30-minute video about the benefits of serving on a jury. I have no idea who edited the film, but they must have had approximately zero effective material to work with. My favorite quotation from an interview clip was, “I didn’t know what to expect” and then the film immediately cut to another person who spoke about how it “felt good to give back to my community in a meaningful way.” I expected a follow-up to the first quotation at some point, but it never came, so the other potential jurors were left with the same confusion.

When the video ended, the jury commissioner, Roxana, made three announcements to set the scene for what was to come:

1. The heightened security we experienced entering the courthouse was due to the fact that the King Soopers mass murder² trial had just begun moments before in the courtroom next door. For this reason, it was imperative that we wear our Juror stickers visibly at all times, or else risk being “taken down without question” by security. Side note: I don’t understand how they could possibly have put together an unbiased jury for that trial in the very town of that shooting.

2. Half the group of potential jurors would be assigned to courtroom J for a case they expected to last three days.

3. The other half would be heading to courtroom L for a case they expected to last five days.

What ensued felt an awful lot like The Reaping in The Hunger Games: Roxana slowly read names off of a sheet of paper, assigned each person a number, and ordered them to line up numerically to be escorted to the first courtroom. The vibe was grim at best; there were groans, there were gasps, and there was enough consistent murmuring that we were asked more than once to be silent.

I learned years ago that Monday jury duty in Boulder is typically for trials they expect to last more than a day. But for most potential jurors, they were learning in real time what kind of commitment they were about to face. Minutes after that first group left, those of us who hadn’t yet been called were informed that seven of the 50 remaining juror prospects would be selected for the 5-day trial. You could almost see the cogs turning in each of their heads, trying to come up with any excuse that may result in a swift dismissal.

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Voir Dire

The first 17 potential jurors were directed to file into the jury box, while the rest of us were instructed to “get comfortable” on the benches behind the plaintiff. The judge then entered the courtroom from a hidden door and before most of us could stand, she instructed us to be seated. Her no-nonsense attitude made this the most exciting jury selection process I’ve ever had the privilege to witness.

Pertinent Facts of the Case

• In July of 2018, the plaintiff was hit by an under-insured motorist, whose insurance paid out their maximum compensation (which was the minimum allowable coverage by Colorado law) of $25,000.

• The plaintiff claims this was not enough compensation to cover medical costs, let alone the hardship she continues to endure as a result of the accident. So she was suing State Farm, her insurance company, for a $250,000 benefit from her own plan that should cover remaining expenses, but they had refused to payout.

• The jury is tasked with determining how much, if anything, State Farm should pay her, based on the coverage of the plan she paid for and the facts presented in the case.

The Questions

Before diving into more detailed questions, the judge has to ask a handful of yes or no questions that determine eligibility to serve on a jury. Potential jurors were asked to simply raise their hand if the answer was yes, and she explained that she would return to those who raised their hands for further details. She asked about US citizenship and Boulder County residency and if anyone had a diagnosis (mental or physical health-wise) that would prevent them from being able to serve on a jury and could be corroborated by a doctor. She then dove deeper, asking if anyone would experience significant hardship if they had to serve on his jury, if anyone knew anyone else in the room, if anyone had ever worked for State Farm, and if anyone had strong feelings about State Farm in either direction that would lead to a biased decision in this case.

You would not believe how quickly hands appeared in the air as she asked the vast majority of these questions.

Potential jurors were grilled in numerical order. The first guy explained that he couldn’t be available for a five-day trial because he had been training for 10 months for a 100 mile race in Steamboat Springs that was to begin Friday morning (so he had to drive Thursday afternoon/evening). The judge asked the attorneys if they had any objections to dismissing this man, and the plaintiff’s attorney said he wanted to ask a few more questions. The conversation went a little something like:

Is this something that you’ve trained for?

Yes, as I stated, I’ve been training for 10 months. It’s near impossible to run 100 miles without training, sir.

But will this trial interfere with your training for this week?

This is a low mileage week because the race starts on Friday, so I can plan my training runs around the trial. However, the race itself will interfere with the anticipated last day of the trial.

Is this something you’ve been planning for a while?

At this point, the judge chimed in to request that the attorney stop asking questions and to explain that she is making the executive decision to thank and dismiss the juror.

Nine of the potential jurors had to explain that they were victims of the Marshall Fire (Colorado’s most destructive wildfire in state history, one that destroyed 1200 homes in Boulder County on December 30th, 2021), most of whom were still in the process of rebuilding because State Farm and other insurance companies had delayed payouts for claims. Without hesitation, the judge dismissed each of them while thanking them for acknowledging their biases against State Farm and insurance companies in general.

One potential juror explained that his wife was in a similar accident last year and they were still navigating the frustrating process of submitting claims and evidence to their insurance company, who continually pushes back. His level of animosity toward insurance companies in general rendered him too biased to serve.

Another potential juror runs a photography business and had several events scheduled for the week, including some engagement shoots. The plaintiff’s attorney had the balls courage to ask if he would be able to reschedule events that had been planned for months. The judge thanked and dismissed him when he answered the asinine questions about how he was contractually obligated to follow-through on this commitment (and failure to do so would result in financial burden). Duh.

Obviously, many jurors had legitimate reasons to be dismissed from serving on this particular jury. Others? Not so much.

One young man tried to get out of serving by claiming his ADHD made him fidget a lot and he explained that the fidgeting behavior has historically annoyed those around him. The judge assured him that they could accommodate a lack of focus, but ultimately dismissed him when he said he had a flight booked the next morning to visit his long-distance girlfriend.

One elderly woman took a different approach, one I’d seen before, but one that didn’t make any sense in the context of this particular case. When the judge asked why her hand had been raised, she proudly explained how she is biased toward individuals who don’t identify as caucasion. The kicker here is that everyone — in the jury box, the judge, the bailiff, the attorneys, the defendant — was caucasian. In other cases, proudly proclaiming how racist you are might indeed relieve you of the civil duty, but that wasn’t going to fly with this judge. The judge responded with, “That’s incredibly unfortunate, but I will not be dismissing you at this time.”

Each excused juror led to another one of us being called into the juror box, only to repeat the same lines of questioning. It was clear that nobody had anticipated the selection process going on for over three hours, and the attorneys and judge were all itching to get this thing started. By the time they had selected the six jurors and singular alternate, I was one of three remaining options left on the benches.

As I walked through the courtyard in front of the judicial building to get to the parking lot, I passed by one of the dismissed jurors who was loudly talking on her phone (a phone that was absolutely on speaker) just in time to hear her say, “I’m not even racist, but…”

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And there you have it! Was it the most productive way of spending a Monday morning at the height of my profession’s busy season? Nope, certainly not. Did I learn anything new about the legal process? Again, nope. But I sure as shit thoroughly enjoyed the people-watching!

-J

1. Per recent trends, this was written many weeks ago (over a month) but never posted.

2. You might remember it as the first mass shooting of the pandemic, on March 22, 2021 at our friendly neighborhood grocery store.