jury

Read-ing the Room

/ lewisdesimone / 1 Comment

Since my own jury experience, more than 10 years ago now, I’ve found myself drawn to the high-profile trials that increasingly litter my newsfeed. In 2021 I was riveted to the Derek Chauvin trial, watching from gavel to gavel when I was supposed to be “working from home” (to be honest, it was a slow period at the office). I dabbled in the Alex Murdaugh trial, as well as Gwyneth Paltrow’s lawsuit (that one could have been mistaken for a sitcom), and even—ever so briefly—the train wreck of Johnny Depp v. Amber Heard.

Most recently, my obsession drifted toward Karen Read, whom I’d first heard about in an Atlantic article about Turtleboy, her most ardent and somewhat ridiculous fan. I watched the one-sided Max documentary, and wondered if it was a PR stunt for the retrial or a pilot for Read’s second career as yet another narcissistic reality-TV star. Once the new trial was under way, I grabbed pieces of it off youtube, having little patience for the daily grind. What I saw threw me back to my initial jury experience, which had set the stage for the fictional trial in my novel Exit Wounds.

My first thought, in the aftermath of Read’s acquittal, was that yet again, a jury had had a hard time trusting circumstantial evidence. If no witness saw the crime with their own eyes—or documented it on social media—many juries seem to struggle against even a mountain of evidence.

My second thought was, This all sounds too familiar. Watching scenes from the trial, I was reminded of other criminal cases that got caught up in conspiracy theories:

  • Russia, Russia, Russia: Read’s defense attorney, Alan Jackson, began his closing argument with a simple phrase (repeated): “No collision. No collision. No collision.” Change one vowel and we’re back in the Mueller investigation. I don’t know about you, but if I were on trial in bright blue Massachusetts, the last thing I’d want to do is associate myself with Donald Trump.
  • If the glove don’t fit: Despite a mound of evidence and the defendant’s own words, her defense relied on seeding doubt by casting blame elsewhere. Apparently they thought it was easier to believe that evidence was planted by Canton’s version of Mark Fuhrman. And they tied it all up with a bow by having a victorious Read state on the courthouse steps, “No one has fought harder for justice for John O’Keefe than I have.” If O.J. were still alive, he might join with her to find “the real killers.”

Maybe I’m old-fashioned, but my gut rebels against conspiracy theories; as a rule, they don’t pass the logic test.

Sherlock the Cat inspecting pawprints in the snow

First of all, the idea of all that digital evidence—notably, the black box in Read’s car and the health app on O’Keefe’s phone—lining up by chance is a bit of a stretch. My favorite piece of evidence, though, is one statement Read made in a Dateline interview: “He didn’t look mortally wounded as far as I could see.” (Excuse me, what?)

Second, I wonder how many people would have to be involved in order for Jackson’s theory to be true. The more conspirators there are, the more fragile the bond. I wasn’t on the Read jury. I didn’t see or hear all the evidence, so I’m not arguing that Read was guilty. In fact, as I listened to Jackson’s closing, I found myself struck by many points (pardon the pun). It wasn’t that I believed the conspiracy per se, but he did plant enough doubt in my mind that I imagine, as a juror, I would have had to think long and hard about conviction. From my distant perspective, I think the most likely answer is that Read backed her car up in a huff, accidentally hit him, and had no idea that she had. That’s not exactly “not guilty” of manslaughter, but it skates the line.

All that said, I’m not ready to reject the verdict. But it still makes me a bit queasy.

I have to wonder what this verdict, like the 1995 O.J. abomination, suggests in a broader sense about celebrity, confirmation bias, and the human struggle between reason and emotion. It seems obvious now that the O.J. jury wanted to believe he’d been framed. The race card worked. In Read’s case, the defense took the strategy even further: not only did the police plant evidence; they actually committed the murder.

Studies have shown that, despite conventional thinking, circumstantial evidence is more reliable than direct (i.e., eyewitness) evidence. People don’t see everything clearly. People don’t remember very well. Data, on the other hand, doesn’t change its mind. It can be interpreted differently, but the data, for lack of a better word, is the data.

One of my co-jurors in that long-ago case was obsessed with the concept of reasonable doubt. The only problem was that he had no idea what it meant. He would bark the phrase out like a mantra to support his obstinance, but his arguments proved time and again that he was confusing it with “shadow of a doubt.” The rest of us were unable to disabuse him of this notion. And, like Auntie Mame the morning after a raucous party, the jury was hung.

We live in a time of conspiracy theories and willful ignorance. Democratic pedophiles in a pizza parlor. Microchips in vaccines programmed to cause autism. A stolen election. A love-in at the Capitol that just happened to include a noose for the vice president. A crowd of 700 protesters in the nation’s second largest city who need the Marines to keep them in check.

I spoke with a family member recently who tried to convince me that Nancy Pelosi orchestrated January 6 to make Trump “look bad.” When I pressed him, he fell back on the idea that “we don’t know everything,” essentially arguing that objective reality is a myth. Maybe Pelosi spearheaded the whole thing. Maybe Marjorie Taylor Greene is a genius. Maybe there’s a leprechaun on the dark side of the moon. Nobody knows for sure.

And the mountain of evidence to the contrary? Maybe that’s just a buffalo on the prairie.

The Jury Has Spoken

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When the verdict came down for a certain felon in New York on Thursday, I found myself instantly thinking less about the defendant, the lawyers, or the witnesses, than about the 12 women and men who had the heavy task of making the historic decision to convict.

Serving as a juror is an awesome responsibility. Until I got selected for a case in California several years ago, I felt no different than the mass of people who dread the task as much as death and taxes. But once the trial got under way, I was riveted. The technical testimony brought out the nerd in me (I learned more than I’d ever wanted to know about gunshot wounds and powder residue), and the witness testimony was as intriguing as a soap opera. But what I found most interesting was the judicial process—how evidence was introduced, how the prosecution constructed a narrative, how the defense tried to poke holes in it.

My jury experience inspired the court case at the center of my new novel, Exit Wounds, but the freedom of fiction enabled me to add some drama here and there, and put it all into a larger context.

As fascinating as a trial can be—particularly for jurors, who must pay careful attention to everything—deliberation is somewhat terrifying. As I waited for the Trump jury to deliver their verdict this week, I imagined them having the same types of arguments my own jury had had: questions about the credibility of witnesses, the definition of reasonable doubt, and how much evidence is enough. The weight of a decision that affects another person’s life causes a surprising amount of stress. In the current case, I would say it also required a substantial amount of courage. Those 12 people made a difficult decision under unprecedented circumstances, and we should be deeply grateful for their perseverance and sense of civic duty.

Telling Stories

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As I watched the Derek Chauvin trial, almost gavel-to-gavel (another advantage to working from home), I couldn’t help thinking back to my own experience as a juror. I haven’t paid this much attention to a trial since sitting in a jury box at the federal courthouse in San Francisco. And now, in my new hometown of Minneapolis, I’m completely obsessed with a legal ritual going on just a few miles from my house.

Whether in the courtroom or watching on my laptop monitor, I was completely absorbed—oddly compelled by the most technical details. I loved seeing how the lawyers crafted a narrative out of disparate bits of information. It’s the novelist in me, I suppose. My life is all about telling stories.

Stories became a dirty word during closing arguments yesterday, with the defense objecting that the prosecution was accusing them of fabrication. And I found myself wondering about the nature of story, its complicated relationship with truth. I cringe at most memoirs, with their assertion of truth merely because the broad events of the book actually happened. Memories are so easily corrupted by interpretation: we make things better than they were to calm ourselves, we make things worse than they were to punish ourselves. I’ve always preferred novels, where there’s no expectation of verisimilitude, where you’re not limited by facts in your pursuit of truth. To me, novels are more honest.

But this isn’t a novel. This is real life. And real life comes down to facts, not stories.

The defense told its stories—the drugs killed him, his enlarged heart killed him, carbon monoxide killed him, the bystanders distracted the cops—to draw attention away from the obvious, from the knee that sat on George Floyd’s neck for 9 minutes and 29 seconds, even after he’d stopped resisting, after he’d stopped breathing, when there was no longer a pulse.

A better story would be Occam’s razor: the simplest explanation is the right one.

But all the defense needs to do is convince one juror, to give one juror a reason to support their side of things.

In my trial in San Francisco, the defense succeeded: our final vote was 10-2, and those two were immovable. Well, one might have come around, but it was quickly evident that the other never would. He was in love with the concept of reasonable doubt, though he had a hard time understanding the word reasonable. As a prosecutor in the Chauvin trial pointed out, you don’t leave common sense at the door when you enter the jury room. Jurors are laypeople specifically because they’re expected to use common sense rather than specific expertise.

At the end of our trial, the attorneys asked to speak with the jury to get our perspective on what aspects of their presentations were most successful. I used the opportunity to corner the defense attorney, telling him that the prosecution had used facts to provide a solid narrative that made sense. By contrast, all he’d done was try to punch holes in theirs. In so many words, he replied, “That was all I had.”

I won’t bother you here with the details of my experience as a juror. It inspired a major plotline in my next novel, so I’ll save it for that. But now, as I watch my city and my country sit in anxiety over the outcome of this case, I feel a bit of PTSD.

I visited 38th and Chicago this weekend, the corner where George Floyd died under Derek Chauvin’s knee. The street outside Cup Foods has been turned into a living memorial—flowers and notes to Mr. Floyd, the names of other victims of police violence written on the pavement. The area was surprisingly quiet, despite the helicopter circling overhead—police or media, I couldn’t be sure. White and black people walked peacefully through the space, and the mood was one of mourning and determination.

Twelve people will make a decision this week. But change is a social imperative. The next story is up to us.