Well, I’ve got a new dream job (at least for the warmer months): the guy who checks credentials at the gate to the County Criminal Courthouse parking lot. By “credentials”, I mean whatever document you’ve received telling you that you have to go to the courthouse. The gig is that you sit in a rocking chair, and rock, and wave folks through, and smile. Well, I would smile. And I’d probably be the only person in a quarter mile radius smiling, because folks down at 26th and California just hate to be there.
My ticket to the lot was my jury duty summons. I blew off my first summons, and they kindly sent me a second one, along with a letter that basically said, “Seriously, go. Go to jury duty.” They sounded like they meant business, so I showed up (on time, which was unnecessary. Feel free to stroll in there at whatever time you damn well please. It’ll be fine.)
The case I got called in on was for aggravated battery, the accusation being that in April, in that very courthouse, the defendant struck a Cook County deputy sheriff. There were at least twice as many of us as the court would need for a jury, and they promptly called my lucky ass up to try out one of those old, wooden jury recliners. I was the second person to have to respond to the judge’s questions about my character and my ability to perform my jurily duty without bias. And, I got the only big laugh of the day when I responded to the judge’s inquiry about my exam schedule with, “I should probably know this.” Despite appearing scatterbrained, I was, indeed, deemed fit to serve on a Cook County Criminal Court jury.
There are two things that are important to a group of fourteen (twelve jurors, two alternates) diverse Chicagoans forced to occupy a courthouse together for hours on end: food and justice. Three days of talking about food, thinking about justice, eating, listening to testimonies, and holding back the compulsion to discuss the trial, and the savory justice that we were all looking to dish out.
Lunch the First Day came before the jurors had been selected, before we got any kind of group dynamic going (we didn’t even know who was going to be in the group yet), and so I ate in the cafeteria, at a table with a bunch of silent people. I got a tuna salad on rye with lettuce and tomatoes, and a cranberry juice cocktail that would have been right at home drizzled over a plate of IHOP pancakes. Everyone else at the table had (a) a lot more food than I did, and (b) a grim expression, like we were all praying for the governor’s pardon with every joyless bite. This made me sad, so I tried to force a smile to distance myself from these folks. I’m sure it worked, but I probably looked more deranged than relentlessly cheery. Perhaps one is not supposed to smile in a courthouse cafeteria. The place was stiff like a hospital eatery (not bubbly like a college dorm dining hall), and I thought how it’s sad that the free citizens who have to endure the most sterile, cold, lifeless dining environments are the sick and the accused- the people who could most benefit from the belly-warming ritual of breaking bread with loved ones and well-wishers. I caught myself indulging my craving to be miserable, and resolved to avoid these types of places in the future. Then I directed my attention through the huge cafeteria windows to the skyline, and went about my business of having a good sit.
Imagine a random group of Philadelphians being forced to hang out for a few days. You wouldn’t expect them to chat endlessly about cheese steak, would you? I mean, these are actual citizens, not cartoons, right? Folks, it’s no exaggeration when I tell you that we spent most of our time in that jury room talking about pizza (this was still the part when we weren’t allowed to discuss the trial). It’s not unreasonable to say that, as a group, pizza was literally all we talked about. Every now and then, the conversation would steer towards dining in general, but we never went more than a few minutes without somebody bringing up pizza again. Chicago people love pizza and eat it all the time and have strong opinions about it and this town is truly obsessed with pizza, and I’m not excluding Citizen Steve from this culinary infatuation. (I realize I’ve used the word “pizza” a bunch of times now, and as a caring writer, I would normally splice in a synonym for “pizza” here and there, but in Chicago, we don’t call it a “pie,” or say, “Let’s grab a slice;” we call it “pizza” and nothing else.) Sure, the conversation was well-worn territory, and it didn’t expand anybody’s horizons. But our fourteen faces lit the table, exchanging thoughts with hungry eyes and eager tongues, like an extended family around a couple 18” Palermo’s Specials.
Cook County Judge Michael Brown’s courtroom is a theater, and Judge Brown is a really good narrator. He spoke with a seemingly rehearsed calm that emanated throughout the room. The proverbial and literal “order in the court” was palpable enough to keep my anxiety down to levels unheard of this time of year.
The state’s attorneys were actors; the testifying officers were real, stammering people; the defense lawyer was somewhere in between; and the defendant was a very still and very silent prop. At the beginning of each witness’ testimony, I would lower my brow and rub my beard and listen intently, evaluating the plausibility of the story, and systematically comparing the details to the other testimonies, carefully keeping a mental register of the inconsistencies between them all. And, invariably, somewhere in the middle of each retelling of this convoluted tale (whose total events clocked in at about a minute, but whose details were infinite) my mind would naturally drift to the nature of truth itself, and how I didn’t think anybody was really lying; rather, they were just painting the scene so that it made sense with their feelings and interests, the way I color my life stories so that they make sense in a bar, or on a long car ride, or in a blog, for that matter. It was at this point in the thought process that I’d start to worry that Judge Brown could read from my face that I was thinking not about the trial, but about the cosmic impossibility of knowable objective truth, and so I would direct my attention back to the witness stand.
We heard all of the testimonies on the Second Day, and Judge Brown dismissed the court for lunch halfway through. As promised, we were escorted to a private dining hall for our complimentary meals, and excited we all were for such a treat. The private hall turned out to be a closed-off wing of the previous day’s Sad Cafeteria, where we were served lukewarm mostaccioli with meat sauce and zucchini on paper plates by a tardy gentleman who kept saying, “It is what it is,” over and over. A few jurors took some good-natured cracks at the cuisine, and one guy said, “Hey, this ain’t bad!” Most of us shrugged and said, “It is what it is,” between plastic forkfuls of pasta. Then we talked about the joy of garden-fresh zucchini, and about where in the city you can get an awesome baked mostaccioli, and, “Hey, ya know, dat place has good pizza, too,” and the conversation once again came to a full, cheesy circle as we all held back our thoughts on the man whose fate we would soon collectively determine.
The guy at the gate didn’t even look for my credentials by Day Three; he just waved me on through. I whizzed through security like a pro, greeted my comrades as we assembled in our jury room, and, eventually, we were shuffled to our usual courtroom seats. The state’s attorney made his Oscar bid of a closing argument, rapidly toggling his speaking volume and exploring the space allotted to him; at one point, he got right up next to the defendant and pointed his very official looking index finger right at him in a spectacle of condemnation. The defense attorney followed this performance with a layman’s retort- a bro-ish “nuh-uh” of an argument. He was like a guy in an improv class in a scene where he gets to be a lawyer. Once his spiel was wrapped, Judge Brown capably explained the pertinent laws to us, making very clear our duties and guidelines. With that, we were escorted back into our jury room, and the deliberation began.
Lunch was served to us right in the jury room that day. A deputy sheriff knocked and entered, smilingly asked us to please not talk about the case until he left the room, and set down our buffet-style trays of chicken patties, buns, potato casserole, and, like, half a twelver of Pepsi. I stuck with my hot coffee. The only condiment they brought us was mayonnaise, which was awesome.
Our foreman suggested, and we all agreed, that we’d continue our deliberation informally amongst ourselves until we had all finished eating.
A woman who grew up in my neighborhood had waived her right to a bun, and instead was eating her chicken patty with a plastic fork and knife. “Did you make eye contact with the defendant?” she asked nobody in particular. “It was unsettling.”
Our foreman, a forty-something from Evanston, had some casserole and an empty bun on his paper plate. He was either a vegetarian, or he didn’t trust the courthouse chicken. “I think after we eat we ought to go through the events chronologically, giving everybody a chance to comment.” This is why we chose him as foreman.
The South Sider across from me, who was on his second helping of everything, was thinking aloud about the concept of reasonable doubt. The chubby girl to the right of me chewed merrily and joked about the lawyers being full of baloney. The small woman to my left ate just like she spoke: infrequently and strangely.
After everybody had had their fill, we took our first vote. It was almost unanimous. We talked for about twenty more minutes, then we took another vote. Five minutes later, Judge Brown ordered the room to their feet as we marched back into the courtroom. The Evanston foreman was holding our verdict, which Judge Brown soon read aloud.
Upon leaving the courthouse, I put my sunglasses on and took my scarf off, as it was warmer outside than it had been in that old building. In me there rose a feeling of content- a peace beyond the calmness that I had borrowed from Judge Brown. I found my car and steered towards the Stevenson, satisfied that I had had a part in securing a man’s freedom, and that I had earned $17.20 a day for doing it. That adds up to $51.60- enough to buy a pizza dinner for me and a handful of friends, if the price is fair.
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