The Perfect Juror

I would have been the perfect juror for the Peterson trial.

As it turns out, I was not called and have not been called for jury service in a very long time, something I am actually grateful for and hope does not change anytime soon.

I have been called to jury duty before, both here in Will County and when I was a resident of Chicago, to Cook County. I never served on a jury, and I have no real desire to do so either.

It’s not because I don’t believe in our system of jurisprudence, because I most certainly do. I am just too cynical to believe anything resembling the truth, nothing but the truth and all the truth ever makes it in front of a jury. Still, for all my misgivings, I think our’s is the best system out there. Given that human nature is what it is, there will be flaws.

Defense attorneys twist the system looking for loopholes to get their client off, with little or no regard for the guilt or innocence of their client. Prosecutors are elected officials and in order to keep their jobs, need to win cases.

For both sides, winning the case is more important than uncovering the truth and providing justice. As a result, the true victims are all of us in society who by necessity rely on this system to balance the scales, protect us from the bad people and exonerate the innocent.

Perhaps this attitude is one of the reasons I’ve never been picked to be on a jury.

I have been asked, and answered truthfully, that yes, I would be able to set aside any prejudices or preconceived notions about the participants in a case and make a judgment based solely on the evidence presented. However, I would never believe that the evidence presented was all the evidence. So, here’s a tip, if you are called to jury duty and don’t want to serve, say just that. Neither side will want you because they won’t be able to predict how to sway you to their cause.

Had I been called for jury duty for the Peterson case, I know I would never have been selected, because of the above reasons. However, I may also be the only person in Will County who has never read Joe Hosey’s book, has intentionally not seen the movie based on the book, has willfully avoided news, commentary, TV appearances by any of the participants and in general have just ignored the whole damn thing. In this sense, I would be the perfect juror. I really don’t have any opinions or biases based on the nearly wall to wall media coverage that has blanketed our area for months on end. My prejudices and biases are all based on my opinions of how justice is too often decided on less than the full and complete facts.

I am aware that one woman is dead and a second is presumed dead. I am aware that a former policeman is charged in the death of the first and suspected to be involved in the second, and that there are two more wives of this man in his past. I am aware there are children involved, some young and innocent and at least one who is an adult and having legal and professional problems of his own due to entaglements in his father’s charges and prosecution. But, with a gun to my head, I could not come up with the names of any of the children, even the adult one(s), nor state how many children all together are involved.

It has taken considerable effort to remain this unaware. But you’d have to be continuously and heavily medicated or living under a rock for some of it to not seep in. I choose not to read the articles on the ongoing trial, just as I was in the habit of either changing the channel or ignoring the TV at the first mention of his name. I am aware of it all as much as I am primarily because my husband has been following the case from the beginning. We talk about it, though saying he tells me things he has read and his opinions while I listen with little or no comment is a more accurate description of these conversations.

For the record, I do hold the opinion that all those who are commenting here on the Patch and elsewhere do not and cannot know all the facts of either the prosecution's or the defense's case. Unequivocal statements of guilt or innocence are at best premature. If those making these pronouncements are doing so out of some knowledge of evidence the rest of us don't have, they should be charged for witholding evidence.

It’s not that I don’t care or am incapable of understanding the issues surrounding much of the controversy, particularly that which involves the question of hearsay evidence. On that topic, I did take the time to research Illinois statute. I’m sorry I did because it just depressed me. To me, it should be common sense that if someone is accused of killing a person to keep them from revealing evidence of a crime, whatever the deceased had said to reputable witnesses should be allowed as testimony.

This is the crux of my problem, and the reason I have so assiduously avoided the entire debacle. All too often, common sense and justice have nothing to do with one another, and that offends me. All that matters is what can be proven in a court of law, and while I agree with that in principle, how that is played out in the modern courtroom is as divorced from justice as justice is from common sense.