Kimberlee K.

At the end of February, I opened my mailbox to find a jury duty summons.

It was only the second one I’d ever received, and there had been over a decade in between them, in which I’d moved four times. So I promptly texted this to my sister.

Growing up, I always got the feeling from friends and family that jury duty was something to dread. Something to avoid at all costs. Something to postpone and reschedule and relocate over and over and over in an attempt to have it cancelled all together.

The first time I called in to see if I had to report, I stood on my parents’ porch with my fingers crossed, and then pumped my first in the air when the audio recording told me day after day that I was not required to attend.

So I went into this second summons with the same attitude. But when I called in that first night and was given an address, building number, and check in time, I realized this summons was going to be a little different.

The next morning, I was given a badge and ushered into the courtroom where our group of 45 potential jurors were asked a series of questions in front of the judge, attorneys, and the defendant, in order to determine our eligibility to be an “ideal juror.”

I heard from a few other participants that this part of the process is done differently across cities and states—sometimes they bring you in one by one—but we were all together, and got to hear the answers of our fellow participants.

And while admittedly, yes, it was a long, laborious process for us to listen to people answer the same eight questions over and over, it was also fascinating to hear all the different ways they were answered. Occupation alone provided responses I’d never heard of. We represented so many different backgrounds, age ranges, and personal experiences, we all had our reasons to be curious about the case, and reasons we might not want to serve, reasons why we looked around the court room in awe and why we looked down at our shoes nervously. There was a lot of life that had been lived, it made the room feel small.

From what I could tell, most of us were eligible to be jurors on the case. And once the questions ended, I realized that, for the most part, it was completely out of our hands whether we got chosen. Some jurors were removed by the attorneys, others got excused by the judge for personal matters, while the rest of us shuffled up and down the seats until there were 12 jurors in the box—and I was one of them.

Call me crazy, but I was pumped.

Even from the afternoon spent watching the judge work and the attorneys take notes, I felt like I was getting a behind the scenes look at a piece of the justice system—one I previously relied on movies and television to stitch together for me. A justice system that, while not perfect, is designed to bring in people from all walks of life to offer their unique ears and eyes to a trial.

This particular trial was short. I was only in court for a total of three days. The evidence presented by the prosecution and the statements made by the witnesses made the case very cut and dry. Still, as we deliberated on the three counts the defendant was charged with, we replayed certain parts of the given testimony to ensure we felt comfortable with our verdict.

It wasn’t a murder trial, wasn’t something that would seemingly affect the course of history, but the group of people on the jury with me cared about getting it right.

And while yes, we were lucky that everything moved quickly, lucky that we were all able to afford to take time off work to be there, lucky we all agreed on the verdict so easily, lucky we all got a long, lucky we were all on time every day—lucky yes, as I can imagine there are so many factors that could make jury duty something worth dreading.

But, as I learned, not something to immediately dread.

Because you never know what you might bring to a jury. And when it’s so easy to sit back and complain about the justice system and its imperfections, why not step in and lend your voice? Why not see if your perspective is one that might shift the narrative? Why not see if your interpretation might cause the jury to think a little longer?

I’m not saying answering a jury duty summons rather finding a way out of it will fix everything wrong in the world, but it made me understand more about how a trial works, how my job as a juror can actually impact the course of someone’s life, and how, in sacrificing a few days of my time I was able to help that trial end, so that the next case could be brought forward.

I had fun and I learned a lot, and I think I’ll feel differently the next time a summons shows up in my mailbox. So I suppose all I’m saying is, the next time one shows up in yours, don’t immediately hang your head. Consider it as something more than a burden. And if you have the means to serve, give it a try.