http://www.vpr.net/audio/programs/56/2013/01/Klepner-0131.mp3
(Host) For socially responsible Burlington businessman and commentator Bram Kleppner, a recent stint on jury duty ended up being more of an education than a duty.
(Kleppner) At age 46, I recently got called for jury selection for the first time. I served on two juries at the Civil Division of the Chittenden Superior Court, and I learned an awful lot.
The first thing I learned is that whenever you tell anyone you've been selected for jury draw, they tell you how to avoid getting chosen. But actually, I didn't want to avoid jury duty. I'd never served in the military, the Guard, the Peace Corps, or Americorps.So jury duty would be a rare opportunity to serve my country directly. Besides, if I were ever arrested, I sure would want a jury of my peers to judge my story, instead of relying solely on a judge to decide if I'm guilty or innocent.
The second thing I learned is why I went so long without being called. It turns out that neither cities, nor counties nor states (nor countries, for that matter), have a complete list of their citizens.
So the judicial system uses DMV records and voter registrations to create the pool they draw juries from. Anyone who doesn't have a license and isn't registered to vote, will never be called for jury duty.
Third, and here's how I went so long without being called, they don't work through the list systematically. Instead, an out-of-state computer makes a random selection each time. Given the laws of probability, this means that most people will get called a few times, some people will get called a lot, and others, at other end of the bell curve, will go their whole lives without ever being called once.
The day we did the jury draw, 120 potential jurors gathered in the courtroom, and the out-of-state computer randomly drew names from the 120 people there to compose juries for about eight upcoming trials. Sure enough, some people in the room never got called, and others got called several times.
Over the following few months, I served on two trials. One lasted one day, and the other lasted six days. It felt to me as though the process really worked. By the time we jurors were called on to decide the cases, we had the information we needed, we had discussed the facts thoughtfully, and, in both cases, reached a unanimous decision.
I'd say that the only real problem with the system is that jury duty pays $30 a day, which is about enough to cover gas, parking and lunch. But trials can go on for weeks, and for many people, the loss of income would impose a real hardship. I'm very lucky in that my company pays for two weeks of jury duty per year, and I'd encourage all employers to adopt this policy in order to enable as many people as possible to make their contribution to justice in our community.
