Susan Dodia of Plano: Serving on a jury is a duty

The experience will stay with me a long time, says SUSAN DODIA of Plano


12:00 AM CST on Sunday, February 17, 2008

I just spent two weeks serving on the jury for the murder-for-hire trial of Albert Sterling II. We found Mr. Sterling guilty on two counts and sentenced him to two 30-year prison terms, to be served concurrently.

I had never served on a jury before, although I have been summoned a few times. When you tell people that you have gotten the summons, everyone gives you their best line for how to get out of jury duty, with much levity.

It is commonly accepted that jury duty is something that you want to avoid, like chicken pox or a flat tire. It never happens at a convenient time. The courthouse is too far. The kids are sick. Something big is happening at work.

But until I served on this jury, I truly had no idea what a sobering experience jury duty can be.

It just never occurred to me exactly what jurors are asked to do: represent our community as we stand in judgment of a fellow citizen, and, if we find that person guilty, assess a punishment. And in arriving at those decisions, we have to watch people's lives come apart. We have to see evidence and hear testimony about the grievous things that people do to each other. It is gut-wrenching.

Of course, the attorneys and the court reporter and the media and everyone else who works at the courthouse has to experience this, too.

However, court reporters and attorneys understand they will be spending some of their time dealing with crime and criminals and victims.

But I am just a software geek � I have no special training for this. Everything I know about a courtroom comes from Law and Order: SVU and John Grisham books.

The jury I served on got off pretty easy. While no one was actually murdered in our case, there were still tears in the jury room, sleepless nights and abuse of antacids. Many of us felt like our real lives just went on hold � by the second week of the trial, I stopped even pretending to be keeping up with work.

We felt isolated from everyone who wasn't part of the trial, yet we weren't allowed to discuss it among ourselves until all of the evidence had been presented and the judge instructed us to begin deliberating.

What about the juries who sit on child abuse or molestation cases? How about rape and murder? How about animal cruelty? What about the jury who knows the defendant is guilty of something, but the law to convict them doesn't exist, like in cases involving cyber-stalking or other high-tech crimes?

It is just mind-boggling to me that every single weekday, around this country, thousands of men and women trudge off to courthouses to fulfill this duty. How can the world absorb this much pain? And how do you perform this service to your community and go back to your life after what you see and hear in the jury box?

As I write this, it has been eight hours since we announced the punishment. I will go back to work tomorrow. My day will start with a 6 a.m. conference call with customers in Australia, and then I will address the hundreds of e-mails that have stacked up during my 12-day absence. Things will appear to return to normal pretty quickly, but this experience will stay with me a long time. I will think about my fellow jurors and the gravity with which we approached our task. I will think about Mr. Sterling and his family and friends. I will think about the police and the witnesses and everyone else who participated in this trial.

And I will grimace along with someone the next time I'm told he or she got a jury summons in the mail, but not because it will be inconvenient. I will grimace because it may be painful for them. But I will not laugh if they are selected for jury duty. I will bring them a casserole, just like I would do if they had a death in the family. I will ask them if they want to go for a walk or go to a movie or just talk about anything but what is actually weighing on their mind. Jury duty is no laughing matter. It hurts.

Susan Dodia of Plano is a project manager for a software company.

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