I’m glad I did it – it’s a good to see the legal system firsthand, and it’s also, I sincerely believe, a privilege as well as a duty to serve. But I don’t ever really want to do it again.

I feel good about the work we did as a jury. I think we were fair, and we were careful to keep the “innocent until proven” aspect of things as the highest priority. That part was what seems like a privilege to me – or maybe, an honor? It’s an honor to serve as the last shield between a person’s freedom and the power of the government. So all along (even though it was pretty clear he was guilty) we tried as hard as we could to imagine that he might really have been innocent, and to ask ourselves if that story was even remotely plausible. We only convicted him of half the charges, because there was only solid evidence for half. It wasn’t until after the verdict that we heard from the defendant (and his old mother, his pastor, etc) all the details of how his life has changed in the years since then, and how he’s trying to be a good father and a good son, and so on. I have to admit, it would have been hard to be the jury kind of “fair” if I’d had that in my mind. I found myself wishing hard that the judge would be lenient.

The judge gave out the strictest sentence possible, on purpose. Seems the guy had ten (!) previous convictions of the same sort (general larcenies), which we also didn’t know beforehand.

All the same, seeing the middle son slump over in his seat and just put his head down on his arms almost killed me. Every time that kid gets in a fight in school, everyone will just say, “Well, yeah. I mean, look at his father.” So yeah, I cried all the way through the sentencing.

I think we were fair. But I think the world is not as good a place as it should be.