I Was A Nightmare Juror

In the summer of 1986, at the age of twenty-four, I convicted two young men of felony assault against a female prostitute. I passed judgment during jury selection, or voir dire.

I’d taken an immediate dislike to their defense attorney. Call him Neil. He was coarse, with his slicked-back hair and thickly pinstriped suit. He had a way of speaking that insinuated a mutuality of understanding. Shrugs and outstretched hands as if to say, “Hey, you and I, we know what’s going on here, right?”

I knew that his two clients were stock brokers. Hunched shoulders and goonish faces, they looked like junior hoodlums. Neil was probably a family friend. “Dontcha worry. If Neil says he’ll get you off, he’ll get you off.”

Neil asked my profession. When I answered investment banker, he smiled as if we were the best of friends. I was in the same industry as his clients so he assumed I’d be a sympathetic juror. He told the judge I was acceptable.

Now it was the turn of the ADA––the assistant district attorney. He was a tall, thin bundle of nerves. He asked me the question he asked every potential juror. Could I rule impartially if the victim was a prostitute? I said I could.

When the ADA told the judge he was okay with me as a juror, I was staring at Neil. I saw a smirk crawl over his face. Well then, I thought, this awful man believes there is little to nothing that separates me from his hoodlum clients.

I knew they were guilty, and their lawyer was a liar. I knew it before the trial started, even as I solemnly swore to the judge that I would decide my verdict based on the facts that were to be introduced and based on the law as the judge would instruct us.

This is the moment in my Substack career when my brother Samuel, ace public defender, unsubscribes. ¹

The Case

These are the facts of the case. On a Manhattan street not far from where I’d grown up, the two defendants exchanged words with a young female prostitute. She threw her cup of coffee at them. The words and the temperature of the coffee were in dispute. The two men chased the girl and beat her up, bruising her face and breaking her jaw. Hospital pictures and testimony confirmed the injuries.

During the trial, my hate for Neil grew. I was also frustrated with the plodding progress of the ADA whose jitters and halting manner never left him. The victim was sympathetic. In my mind the verdict was never in doubt. I rejected the notion that a thrown cup of coffee could be sufficient for a self-defense excuse.

The Jury

When we met in the jury room, I was the first juror to lay out the case as I saw it. To my surprise, not everyone saw it my way. In particular, an elderly Asian man who did not have a good command of English said he could not convict the defendants because the victim was a prostitute.

I turned on him as if he were the one on trial. “You swore under oath that you would not be influenced by her profession. You cannot break your oath.”

We continued to deliberate, but still there were holdouts. A few other jurors doubted that a prostitute’s broken jaw was worth possible prison time for two young men with clean records.

It was getting late. Someone from the court came in and told us we’d have to be sequestered overnight and share rooms. We were taken to a hotel (motel) on the West Side, and I was given a room to share with the Asian man I’d yelled at.

I don’t remember it being awkward for me. For him, it might have been very awkward. The jury had been instructed not to speak about the trial so he and I had nothing to speak about.

It figures

The next day I again took control of the jury room, laid out my case, and told my fellow jurors that the only possible verdict to deliver was guilty of felony assault.

I deflected the remaining objections of the few holdouts. My certainty, peer pressure, and the desire to be done with the process won out. I got my felony guilty verdict.

A fellow juror, an English teacher, asked if I was available for a date with her daughter. She said she’d been impressed by the way my mind worked. When I told her I was already married, she said something to the effect of “It figures.”

Post-Mortem

The judge asked to meet with us after we delivered the verdict. He seemed surprised by our decision. I don’t recall his questions but I do remember I liked him, and that he resembled the principal from the 1970’s TV Show Room 222. ²

Looking back on my behavior as a juror, I was, for lack of a better expression, an arrogant prick. It was fortunate for my conscience that the evidence and the law were consistent with my ridiculously premature conclusions about the case. That’s why the other jurors also eventually voted guilty.

If I want to be generous to myself, I can view my Javert-like insistence on a guilty verdict as motivated by chivalry for a young woman who had been savagely beaten. And it made me furious that a few of my fellow jurors believed that as a prostitute she was not entitled to the same standards of justice as any other victim.

I never found out what the sentence was and I don’t know if they appealed. I’m guessing that the two defendants, having no prior criminal record, would have received a suspended sentence. But with a felony conviction their careers on Wall Street would have been paused if not effectively ended.

It’s scary that a kid like me who had all the confidence in the world and none of its wisdom could be on a jury. I certainly wouldn’t ever want to be tried by a jury that included the twenty-four-year-old me.

An explanation rather than an excuse

The trial coincided with a brief period in my twenties when my self-esteem and thus my arrogance were at peak levels.

My days then were perfect. I spent almost all my free time with Debbie, the woman of my dreams. She said I was great, and I believed her. At work I’d been promoted to Vice-President without an MBA, which was a big deal in investment banking. I was twenty-four and was the boss of people in their thirties! The senior people at work said I was great, and I believed them.

I earned more than enough money for Debbie and me to go to as many movies as we wanted where we could buy as much candy as we wanted. I’d eat Grape Nuts for dinner and impress Debbie with my Jeopardy answers every weeknight.

The chart of my self-esteem from 1985 to 1987 is below.

It’s actually a chart of the stock NVDIA from 2022 to 2024. We’ll see if it holds up better than my self-esteem. ³

After 1987, my life became more complicated and I grew up. Children, bigger apartments, mortgages, career uncertainty, invidious comparisons with more successful peers, GI stress issues which piled stress upon stress, misadventures in brain numbing with Scotch.

My arrogance and my certainty about all things turned out to be fleeting. Self-esteem was no longer an addition equation but a calculus problem.

Put back in a jury box today, I might make similar reflexive snap judgments about the attorneys and the defendants. But then I’d keep an open mind about the correct verdict.

Man, I hope that’s true.

Question for the comments: Have you ever been a juror or been in a position where you had to render a judgment that overcame your first instincts?

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Author’s Note

Tomorrow, Sunday June 22nd at 2:00 pm EDT, I’ll be in conversation via Substack Live with

Ross Barkan

and

Sachi Takahashi-Rial

about the NYC Mayor’s race with an inside view on how to get involved in local politics.

Use this link to put it in your calendar.

1.

2. Michael Constantine.

3. I have never owned NVDIA stock or bet against it. It’s a great company but I have no basis for an opinion on the stock.