Eight things I learned from my month at Grand Jury Duty
So, in mid August I got a jury duty notice in the mail. Not just a regular jury duty notice. This one scolded me, shouting at me in all caps. Apparently I had completely ignored a summons I received last spring. This new one said:
“POSTPONEMENT OPTIONS: NONE. PREVIOUSLY MISSED. YOU MUST SERVE.”
And it wasn’t regular jury duty. It was Grand Jury (which I assumed was a punishment for being a delinquent citizen.)
I didn’t know much about Grand Jury duty, except that it usually went on for a long time. I panicked. My very smart friends said they were sure I could claim financial hardship (since I run a small business) and get out of it. Just plead your case, they told me, and if necessary, cry! (One thing I’m quite good at!) And so I headed to Brooklyn Supreme Court, armed with a folder full of documents - my tax returns, bank statements, my business’s articles of incorporation, my class schedule, website - all the info that I was hoping I could use to plead my case and get out of jury duty.
We sat in a big room and the court warden, and then a judge talked to us about what it would mean to serve on a grand jury. They started selecting people who could commit to the 23-member grand jury for four weeks. I’m not exactly sure what happened, but my irritation about sitting in a windowless room (on a day when I was supposed to be picking up my daughter from camp in the Catskills), my frustration that I had missed that first notice, my anxiety about whether I could get out of this, my panic about how I could continue to run my business if I couldn’t get out of it .. . . all gradually morphed into another emotion: FOMO.
Seriously. I was getting major FOMO about jury duty.
I suddenly didn’t want to miss out on this mysterious civic adventure. When I asked the warden if I was crazy for wanting to do it, he said, “No — I think you’ll be glad you did.”
He was right. Grand jury duty turned out to be fascinating, frustrating, sad, sometimes tedious — but never boring. It was eye-opening, educational, and weirdly fun.
Here are 8 things I learned about myself (and a little bit about the world) from this experience:
I am more of an optimist than I thought. I usually describe myself as a pessimist. I’m certainly a worrier. But I realized that I firmly believe in the good of people. While I do think our criminal justice system is flawed, I also think it’s rooted in sound and just principles. For the most part, I believed that everyone involved in the process we saw – the police officers and detectives, attorneys, and even all of us jurors— were all working hard and trying to do the right thing. Maybe that’s naive, but that’s where I landed. I have a positive outlook on the world and I think I may even be an optimist.
I really like people. And I am extremely nosy. Our jury was 23 people from many walks of life in Brooklyn. I hated having to refer to people by their juror number (I was juror #8.) I wanted to know everything about them – their age and background and jobs and opinions. Did they want to do jury duty? Did they try to get out of it? As the days passed, we slowly got to know each other, and even learned each other’s names. But that first week, it took all my restraint not to lead any get-to-know you ice breakers or questions of the day. 😜
It’s hard for me to keep secrets. New York's grand jury secrecy rules are strict, mandating that nothing about the proceedings, can be disclosed to anyone outside the process. I didn’t break the rules, I promise! But it was extremely hard for me to NOT talk about it. 🤐
Young people are smart. And my note-taking skills are rusty. Testimony and legal charges were all presented to us orally, and often we would hear from witnesses from the same case on different days, even weeks. I was very impressed with my Gen Z and millennial co-jurors, who took great notes, asked great questions, while mine were a bit all over the place. Perhaps it’s my menopausal brain fog, or that college was a more recent experience for them, or that this particular group of young people took the process very seriously and worked hard. Either way, I was impressed.
There are so many cool jobs out there. Detectives, forensic scientists, court reporters, medical examiners — I met people doing fascinating work I never even think about. I don’t want their jobs, but I’m glad they exist.
I love being a part of a team. We were a random group of 23 strangers who gradually got to know each other. We had some inside jokes, learned a shared legalese lingo, bonded over the different personalities and quirks of the various prosecutors, some of whom we decided didn’t appreciate how long we deliberated on some cases. When the attorneys explained “circumstantial evidence” with the dripping umbrella (one of the few legal concepts that we all clearly understood, yet they repeated the same analogy to us again and again and again .. . . “you arrive at court on a sunny day.. an hour later, someone walks in with a dripping umbrella. . . “), it became our running joke. (Now I think about the I think about it whenever it rains). ☔️
It feels really good to learning something new. It’s been a while since I used my brain like I did for many hours a day — listening, analyzing, connecting dots, putting puzzle pieces together. I learned a lot about criminal law, and it was a treat to have the opportunity to spend so much time just learning something new.
Disruption in routine can be good. Going from a flexible schedule to 8+ hour days in a windowless room was a shock. I had way less time to myself, less time available to go outside, work out, get any work done aside from teaching classes (which I did manage to still do in the mornings and evenings before and after jury duty days). It gave me perspective on how busy most of YOU are, and how hard it is to prioritize self care. It made me appreciate my mornings in the park so much more. It made me hone in on what is essential, as I had to be purposeful about building in time for myself. It forced me to be more efficient, and to get more done in less time. I enjoyed being busy, even when it was exhausting. (I certainly enjoyed having jury duty as an excuse for not being able to do things . .. oh I’m so sorry I wish I could have joined you . . but I’ve been SO busy with grand jury duty!)
Grand jury duty wasn’t what I expected. I learned a lot, it wore me out. I’m grateful to be back as a layperson with my time and freedom back. But I would do it again in a heartbeat. What about you? Would you have tried harder than I did to get out of it? Have you ever done jury duty, or even grand jury duty? Did you have a similar experience to me? Would love to hear about your experiences!