All Rise for the Jury. Serving as a juror was an unexpected duty during my year as ABA president

• Author: Patricia Lee Refo
• Pages: 6-6

All rise for the jury” is some-

thing I have heard scores of

times as a trial lawyer. But

this time, and for the rst

time, I heard them as a part of a jury.

As the ABA president, and in the

middle of the pandemic, I got a sum-

mons from the U.S. District Court in

Phoenix to appear for jury duty in May.

When I called the recorded line the

night before, I was instructed to appear

in person at 8 a.m. the following day.

When I arrived in the jury assembly

room, with the chairs all in socially

distanced rows, there were 28 of us. All

were there for one civil case.

The court had sent us a question-

naire in advance asking about schedul-

ing challenges, basic personal informa-

tion and COVID-19 concerns, plus a

few case-specic questions. Presumably,

those responses were used to excuse in

advance those who were unable to serve

for this three-day trial.

After watching a well-done orienta-

tion video, we were escorted upstairs to

the ceremonial courtroom—the largest

in our courthouse. We sat in socially

distanced and designated seats, answer-

ing questions from the court and a few

follow-up questions from each side.

After a recess during which they sorted

out challenges to the venire, eight were

called forward to take seats inside the

jury box. I was the last one called up. I

was now juror No. 8. For the rst time,

I was serving on a jury.

Pandemic safety procedures made

the experience different from “normal”

jury service. The jury rooms were not

large enough to safely hold all eight of

us, so there was one jury room for the

four of us who sat in the front row of

the jury box and a different room for

the back-row jurors. For the two days

we heard evidence, we front-row jurors

got to know one another in our jury

room, but we did not interact with the

back-row jurors beyond the occasional

“Good morning.” We also ate better

than nonpandemic juries because the

court provided lunch for us every day,

not just the day we were deliberating.

Of course, pandemic safety contin-

ued inside the courtroom. Everyone was

spread out. Everyone wore masks all

the time, except witnesses, who could

remove their masks at the start of their

testimony (from behind plexiglass) but

had to put masks on after 15 minutes.

Even with strong microphones,

the masks meant that more than a

few questions and answers had to be

repeated. When closing arguments and

instructions were nished, the judge

cleared the courtroom and turned it

over to us to for our deliberations.

‘Heart and lungs of liberty’

Our founders believed so strongly in

the right to a jury trial that they wrote

it into our Constitution. John Adams

said: “Representative government and

trial by jury are the heart and lungs of

liberty.” They were so right.

Everything about my experience

bore witness to the majesty that is the

American jury system, even with the

challenges of a pandemic. Eight citizens

with nothing in common came together

and worked together to deliver justice

to the parties. Each listened carefully

and respectfully to the views of others,

willing to reassess his or her own views

when appropriate. We each brought

to the deliberations our own disparate

life experiences in assessing the credi-

bility of others, and yet those different

experiences often got us to the same

conclusions.

When there was a question about

a fact, we would review our notes and

the exhibits and discuss our recollec-

tions of the testimony. When there was

a question about the law, someone

would go back to the language in the

instructions—we each had a copy—and

nd an answer. The discussion was

thoughtful, lled with give and take,

and driven ultimately by the desire to

do justice based upon the law we had

been instructed to apply. We moved,

during those deliberations, from being

eight jurors into being one jury.

It is the jury, not the jurors, for

whom we rise in respect. Q

All Rise

for the

Jury

Serving as a juror was

an unexpected duty during

my year as ABA president

BY PATRICIA LEE REFO

President’s Letter Follow President Refo on

Twitter @ABAPresident or email

abapresident@americanbar.org.

“Everything about my

experience bore witness to the

majesty that is the American

jury system, even with the

challenges of a pandemic.”

Photo courtesy of ABA Media Relations

ABA JOURNAL | JUNE–JULY 2021

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ABAJ J E-J Y Pr s r PM