Jury Duty: Jury Selection (Pre-trial Reflection)

Jury duty is one of those rare instances in life when a random group of complete strangers are forced to sit together in the same room and talk about their personal lives. The process by which jurors are selected (jury selection) is what I imagine an A.A. meeting might be like, except that half the people don't even drink. This makes for a fair share of awkward moments.

It is not my intention to talk in any way about the trial or about individuals in my jury panel. Rather, due to its surreal nature, jury duty is worth talking about in generalities.

This has been my first experience with the whole process, which might explain my curiosity, but there are a few things that have really stood out. For instance, it feels like to select a jury, there almost needs to be another impartial jury, weighing in on merits of the former. They ask highly personal questions about a broad range of topics including work life, family life, and any known biases pertaining to the charges.

My concern with the process is only the fact that selecting a jury can take in excess of an entire day. The judicial branch of our government seems nearly as inefficient as the other branches. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I'm willing to bet that 50 or 80 years ago, we didn't have such a complex jury selection process.

Why would I bet this? Well, if you put 12 people in a room (no matter how "fit for the job" they are believed to be), they are going to disagree and argue about things, but in the end it's their job to make a collective decision. The fact that a Judge (just a person) ultimately decides whether a juror (just a person) is fit to discuss, argue, and ultimately make a decision seems to blatantly undermine the whole point of the process.