Juror 8 sat down to our right. She had short graying hair and looked to be in her late fifties. She was wearing a red penny coat that was once expensive. Without her addressing me, I could feel her stare linger. It was making me uncomfortable, and I reflexively ignored it.
Relenting, she addressed the room as a whole: “Does anyone know how to get a monthly MetroCard?” Only one person answered her question, but everyone noticed how peculiar a question it was in a room made up of full-time New York City residents. There was something both sympathetic and off-putting about her—an impression confirmed by the acknowledging glance I exchanged with Juror 10.
The whole experience had a “first day of school” feel to it even before the bailiff, an old-school New York Italian, wheeled in a TV-VCR combo.
“Hi,” the video began. “I’m 60 Minutes anchor Ed Bradley, and you’ve been selected to serve on a grand jury!”
“What?” Juror 10 muttered under her breath in bewilderment.
“Hi, I’m Troy McClure…” I mimicked quietly. She and the people behind us laughed. Juror 8 didn’t. Instead she attempted to write an email under the desktop, tapping away at the cracked screen of her first-generation iPhone. Her attempt at discretion was undermined by the default tic sound of each keystroke.
“What’s a grand jury?” Mr. Bradley continued. “I’m glad you asked.”
Pockets of quiet laughter cropped up around the room, along with (and partly because of) the din of tic, tic, tic, which was only interrupted by an audible “oh” and exaggerated recoil whenever Juror 8 mistyped.
“Grand jury is an important part of the judicial process. It’s the grand jury’s—your—responsibility to determine if a case has enough evidence to justify a trial, or if the case is to be dismissed.”
The video then cut to testimonials.
“I found the experience really rewarding! It was a great way to get to know my community, while giving back to it!”
There was a handful of cynical groans. I was cynical too, but mostly about wasting tax money on landing top-tier talent like Ed Bradley.
“The burden of proof is much lower in a grand jury,” Ed resumed. “It’s the petit jury that needs a unanimous vote to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. Because you aren’t convicting, you just need eleven of a possible twenty-one votes to come to a conclusion.”
I took a look at my twenty fellow jurors. A few of us—the jokers, the cynics, and the genuinely insane—had already revealed ourselves. As the month went on, so would the bleeding hearts, the authoritarians, the wealthy, and the disenfranchised. It was a true cross section and a reminder that New York is too big for any one person to see all at once. The city is a multifaceted gem with sides that are both rough and polished.
“And remember, you are not here to judge the laws. You are here to judge whether or not the laws have been broken. It’s up to you to determine what probably happened.”
And for the next month, we did. We’d take a four-hour stop in the middle of our day, pushing off the rest of life’s demands, to see a procession of cops and robbers (and lawyers). One by one, they would come and tell their conflicting stories. Once again, I found myself in the peculiar circumstance of determining what was true.
It was half past noon and I anxiously watched my files transfer to the portable hard drive. I’d been on jury duty for just over a week, and getting my work done was harder than I’d thought. I worked straight through the weekend and was coming in each day two hours early—no easy task when most nights I was working at home until past midnight.
“I wish I had half days, too,” Joe said as we crossed paths toward the exit.
“I’d love half days. But at this point, I’d settle for just full ones.”
The conversation was all in jest, but I was annoyed. I don’t know if I expected praise for working so hard around my civic obligations, but I wasn’t getting it. I tried to get it out of my mind by squeezing in some Fakebook nonsense as I walked to the 6 train.
Dave Cicirelli
These nurses aren’t as naughty as the ones I’ve seen in movies.
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The hospital story was working as planned, laying seeds for the next leg of the story without the need for heavy Photoshop work. And if I could sell it, the cult storyline I had planned—with “the Center’s” strict rules about communication—could keep Fake Dave away from his camera phone, and all the time-intensive photoshopping that being on camera requires, for almost a month.
Dave Cicirelli
There are these frighteningly polite people that keep trying to talk to me because I have no visitors.
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At this point, I was only teasing an upcoming cult storyline. I had my doubts that people would believe it…but it did make a certain sort of crazy sense. Fake Dave had a rough go of it the past four months. His decision to have a completely unstructured life had resulted in nothing but physical and emotional harm. The supreme order of a cult could, conceivably, hold certain appeal for a guy looking for meaning but worn down by the search.
I saw the appeal, anyway. I also had been living with uncertainty since Fakebook began. Juggling two lives and facing the constant risk of being exposed definitely can get to you. I’m sure it had no small part in making the institutional predictability of the Centre Street courthouse so strangely comforting.
After spending four months doing Fakebook and four years in the deadline-driven and crisis-prone world of marketing, I found that jury duty was the first commitment I’d had in a long time that was completely structured. I showed up at one; I left at five. I sat in the same seat, and I responded only to what was presented to me. There was nowhere else I legally could be, so I didn’t worry about how else I could be spending my time.
Even though losing four hours a day as Juror 9 put a lot of additional pressure on my life, that time itself was an oasis. It was an island in the middle of hellishly busy weekdays that simply was.
I never took the responsibility lightly, but if I’m being completely honest, it often felt like entertainment. We saw three to six cases a day, making it an interesting cross-section of New York’s criminal affairs. Undercover cops, surveillance, money laundering, and product drops—it was fascinating to get a real-world glimpse.
And the grand jury’s lack of a screening process made things interesting. Every time Juror 8 called the prosecutor over, it was compelling to see them try to turn her weird MetroCard fixation into a relevant line of questioning. “The jury would like to know…whether you had a monthly pass or a pay-as-you-go MetroCard…in the purse…that was stolen…”
The deliberations were interesting, too. I’ll never forget watching Juror 3 lose it when Juror 15 limply tried to explain how shooting two people was not attempted murder.
“What…in your mind…was he attempting to do?” Juror 3 reasonably asked.
“As he was shooting,” Juror 15 began in his predictably wimpy voice, “he said, ‘I’m going to F you N words up.’ He didn’t say, ‘I am going to kill you.’”
At that, Juror 3 exploded. Thankfully, they were sitting at opposite ends of the room or we would have been witnesses instead of jurors.
And as callous as getting amusement out of the spectacle surrounding real people and real crimes may seem, it’s important to remember that we sent no one to jail, just to trial. The weight of convictions didn’t fall on us. With the lower stakes and an eleven-of-a-possible-twenty-one vote system to smooth out irrational points of view, we always made the obvious verdict. (Assault with bullets is, in fact, attempted murder.) It was almost kind of fun.
It was coming home that was hard. When five o’clock came around, I’d walk to my neighborhood (with new knowledge of my neighbors) and my second workday began. I’d leave behind other people’s lives and dive back into mine, just as I left it—except with a fuller inbox and shorter dead
lines. Every night I’d work at my desk in plain sight of my bed until I’d go to bed in plain sight of my desk. The next day, I’d do it all over again.
“Dave, are you listening?”
“What? Yeah, I’m sorry. I’m just a little distracted.”
I was. I’d convinced myself that I had time to head out to Queens for Thai food with Dhara. I didn’t. I had an incomplete proposal due to the client by morning. It was ambitious, trying to get a sign-off on that superhero project—to allow me to create a custom illustration for their biggest launch of the year. It was important to me, and I wasn’t sure when I’d get to it.
“I was asking if you ever want kids one day.”
“What? That’s kind of an intense question for, what, a fifth date?”
“I’m not propositioning you, if that’s what you’re thinking.”
“Ha.”
“I’m not sure I could ever be with someone who would want kids if I didn’t.”
On some level, I picked up on her phrasing of “if I didn’t,” but I lacked the focus to pull it together. I paused for a moment and shifted in my seat. I gave what I thought was a diplomatic answer. It was something about how I’d be disappointed not to have kids, but I would compromise to live the life of…I don’t know. My response probably didn’t make sense. It was just an attempt to avoid saying anything definitive.
“I definitely want kids one day. I just wanted to see how you’d answer if I suggested I didn’t,” she said matter-of-factly.
“Hey, that’s not fair. I trekked all the way out here so you could test me? I’m missing a new episode of Lost for this!”
“You know I used to date a body double for Lost, right?”
“Please tell me it was the fat guy.”
“Haha. Maybe. I don’t think I’m going to tell you who. It’s another mystery of the island.”
I took a bite out of the vegetarian dish she’d picked for us and ran a mental slide show of all the well-toned dudes on that beach. For the first time since our first date, I was finding her intimidating.
“Have you been following Fakebook at all?”
“Yes,” she said.
“What do you think?”
“Well…it’s kind of weird.”
Dave Cicirelli
So I’m almost 100% positive that these strangely polite people that keep visiting me are a cult that is trying to recruit me! I feel like the belle of the ball. I may go with them after I’m released today. I think it’d be kind of amazing to see…Like when I used to argue with Scientologists at the subway station.
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Christine Clericuzio uh oh. please be careful
about an hour ago via mobile · Like
Dave Cicirelli I’m too mentally strong to be suckered.
about an hour ago via mobile · Like
Claire Burke mentally strong? Like the time you got out of jury duty? Oh…wait a minute…
about an hour ago via mobile · Like
Dave Cicirelli You know I can’t legally discuss that…I’m in enough trouble these days!
about an hour ago via mobile · Like
Matt Campbell Just stay away from Kool-aid.
38 minutes ago via mobile · Like
Ted Kaiser Mentally strong? Like the time you quit your job and walked around aimlessly? Or the time you willingly served as a slave for an Amish family? Or when you traveled back to the desert to find some Amish hookup who ditched you? I don’t know what to do with u anymore. Does Ralph know where you are?
34 minutes ago · Like
Dave Cicirelli
I’m sorry that I’ve been MIA on here for a few days. I’m fine and didn’t mean to concern anyone. I’m staying at the “community center” for a bit, and they have some rules about cell phones. Yes, that’s as terrifying as it sounds. It’s kind of absurd and crazy passive aggressive, haha. I’ll write more soon.
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Matt Campbell It seems kind of ironic to me that you left Amish country early largely because of your disagreements with Jonathon. You talked constantly about how he was using ‘pride’ to suppress his family. You hated how they shun fancy things like electricity. Yet, here you are joining up with a cult at a community center that “has rules about cell phones?” Dude, wasn’t this supposed to be an experience about freedom, no limits, doing what you want to do? Time for another re-evaluation perhaps.
22 minutes ago · Like
Ted Kaiser wtf are you talking about?
less than a minute ago via mobile · Like
It was Thursday, February 11, and I was exhausted. The trip for Thai food had pushed my work routine well into the early morning, and with very little sleep, I was happy to leave the office and head to court for my four-hour break. Saturday was both Toy Fair and Valentine’s Day, and I had a lot to get done before both. I walked into the court, eager to focus on other people’s problems for a few hours.
The first case we saw was the continued “Yellow Brick Road.” We assigned all cases that spanned multiple days an arbitrary code name. To keep things fun, we had a Wizard of Oz theme that week and found “Yellow Bricks” kind of clever for a graffiti case.
It was a fairly cut-and-dried case. In fact, it only had been continued because there was simply too much evidence to cover in a single session. The deliberations went quickly, with the only hiccup being crazy Juror 8 choosing to singlehandedly legislate that street art is not a crime on the grounds of her membership to the Whitney. She was easily outvoted and we took a break.
I saw Juror 10 drinking a bottle of water in the break area. We seemed pretty like-minded in all the deliberations and had bonded a little over our shared reactions to Juror 8’s weird antics.
“How often do you think they replace the burgers in there?” I asked, pointing to the White Castle vending machine.
“Oh god, I don’t want to think about that. Those things are sketchy enough when you buy them from a restaurant,” she said.
“I’ve never actually had one. I’m afraid of taking that step…buying hamburgers by the sack.”
“Wise decision.”
“So…have you heard?” she asked.
“Heard what?”
“Juror 8. She’s an art critic.”
“You don’t say.” We laughed.
“Yeah,” I continued. “I like how she wants to put herself above the entire legislative process because she found an opportunity to remind us she has a newsletter.”
“I’m sure it’s the hit of her halfway house,” she joked and we both laughed.
Juror 8 walked by and we quieted down quickly.
“Probably time to head back to the room,” I said.
We were queued up for the next case, something about an alleged gang member who was found with a gun and then fled arrest. We’d seen this prosecutor before, a young guy who was a bit on the doughy side and came across as a little mean spirited. He called in the arresting officer, also young but with a muscular build. He seemed like the kind of guy who didn’t see a lot of nuance in the world. After the initial and formal protocol questions, we got into the meat of the case.
“I was on a routine patrol when I saw the defendant, Amadi, reach under a wheel well of a parked SUV. He removed a suspicious object and proceeded to place the object into the leg of his boot.”
“Did you recognize the defendant?”
“I have not interacted with him prior, no, but I did know of him. He is known to be affiliated with NYZ, an Uptown gang.”
“Upon seeing reasonable cause, what happened next?”
“As I approached the defendant, he fled.”
The officer had a certain…I don’t know if “attitude” is the right word, but impatience. It was the tone of a guy who clearly had other things he’d rather be doing. “My partner and I pursued him, and after a few blocks’ chase,
we subdued the suspect. Upon search, we recovered an illegal handgun.”
The heavyset prosecutor submitted a photo of a handgun as evidence to the court, went through the usual legalese of confirming for the record that this was the gun in question, and read the official forensics report, where we learned the gun was loaded and its serial numbers filed off.
The police officer left the room. It seemed obvious that this was either a gun being sold or a gun about to be used, and this cop had probably stopped something nasty from happening in a nasty part of town.
The defendant’s lawyer, a middle-aged woman with red hair, walked in. She began shuffling some papers around as we waited for the defendant to enter. I can’t say what exactly our expectations were—or even if we had any—but no one was prepared to see the scared child who entered our courtroom.
He was sixteen, but he looked about twelve. He was skinny—maybe malnourished—and was wearing an old, oversized sweatshirt with a small tear at the collar.
“State your name for the court,” the prosecutor said.
“I went to the youth center with seven dollars…”
“No, I said ‘state your name.’”
This kid was overwhelmed. The prosecutor seemed…well…like an asshole.
“What?”
“I said ‘state your name,’ for the record.”
“Amadi Johnson.”
“Please recall for the court your recollections of the night of February 3.”
“I went to the youth center with seven dollars. I had two dollars for my MetroCard and five dollars to go to the dance.”
Juror 8’s ears perked up at the mention of the MetroCard.
“Then what happened?”
“I was walking to the youth center, and I saw something on the ground, next to a Dumpster. I thought to myself, ‘Whoa, I think that is a gun.’” His words were slow, deliberate. It took a lot of effort for him to get them out.
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