The 13th Angry Man: A Felon in the Jury Pool

The district courthouse in Ayer, Mass., is your run-of-the-mill red brick municipal building with cracked linoleum floors and ancient plumbing. Even with its white-columned portico and limp American flag on a rusty pole, it's a nondescript building like many others on the nondescript Main Street in this nondescript town.

Being a good citizen, when I was summoned for jury duty at Ayer District Court, I drove out there in my Volvo, was waved through the airport-grade metal detector in the lobby, took the phonebooth-sized elevator to the second floor and joined 40 or so of my fellow citizens in a shabby waiting room containing a restroom with an ear-splitting flush toilet. The prospective jurors were a random bunch of professionals, twenty-somethings, retirees. No one looked too happy, the sun barely up, all of us perched in straight-backed chairs the Puritans probably used to do penance for their sins.

So I was more than a little skeptical when a bleached-blonde courthouse matron whose name was something like Lucille told us we should consider it our lucky day that we were assigned to dinky Ayer rather than Superior Court in Cambridge, Mass., which has amenities such as working heating and air conditioning. Those of us who still had our hearing looked at her expressionlessly. "You're all so quiet," she chided us. "You can talk, you know. It's OK. It can be interesting here."

After we were all checked in, some--desperate enough to pay 50 cents for a cup of charred, acrid-smelling liquid from an ancient Mr. Coffee machine-holding Dixie cups, a short man with acne scars and close-cropped gray hair wearing a black leather jacket that looked like it came from Wal-Mart walked up to the matron at the desk. "I'm not serving jury duty," he slurred. "I'm a felon. I don't need to serve. I want to get the hell out of here."

The few who who had started to chat with their neighbors fell silent.

"What is your name, sir?" the matron asked. I had to give her credit. She didn't blink. She must have seen it all, working in a courthouse. He told her his name, and after she told him to take a seat, he staggered to a chair, muttering and swearing. Lucille's half of the ensuing phone conversation was clearly audible. "Yes," she repeated his name into the phone. "I need to know the charges against him. If they're misdemeanors or felonies."

Meanwhile, another man, perhaps in his 60s, wearing a black-and-red baseball cap and sitting with his ankles crossed under the table, spoke up. "I'm a felon, too. Do I have to serve?"

"And what were you charged with?" said the woman, who was starting to look distinctly less chipper. "Manslaughter," he said. "Involuntary manslaughter. Served 18 to 20."

Meanwhile, the first self-identified felon of the morning stood up and stomped toward the door. "Where are you going?" Lucille demanded. "To have a cigarette." "You have to stay in this room." "I'm not (bleepin') staying in this room," he said and stalked off.

By now, most of us-with the exception of a twenty-something man next to me smelling like he had spent the night on a barroom floor, who was slumped in his chair and snoring loudly--were fully awake. I, for one, was nervous. I couldn't recall ever having been trapped in a small, stuffy room with two felons before. Although the courthouse surely must have armed court officers, there were none to be seen. Even Lucille seemed to have left the waiting room.

Luckily, we were soon lined up like a elementary school class and ushered into a courtroom, where we filed into wooden pews to see if we would be selected as jurors for the trial slated to begin that morning. Someone must have rounded up felon number one from his smoke because I could hear him bitching and moaning in the pew directly behind me. "All rise." We stood as the judge, a slight, mild-looking man in his early 40s who looked more like a car salesman than a judge, took his place on the bench. The clerk asked us prospective jurors raise our right hands and swear we would truthfully answer all questions put to us regarding our qualifications to sit as jurors in the case.

The defendant was charged with driving under the influence of alcohol, so the judge asked a series of questions to ascertain whether we could be fair and impartial jurors. We each had a card with a number on it, and we were to hold up our number if we wanted to answer "yes" to any of his questions. The questions went like this:

Judge: "Have you or any member of your family been a victim of a drunk driver?"

A few hands went up. The clerk reported, "Numbers 14 and 8, your honor."

A lightbulb must have gone off in felon nunber one's head, because suddenly the muttering stopped.

The judge continued. Did we have any close friends or relatives in law enforcement? Would we believe a police officer's word simply because he or she was a police officer? Felon number one's hand shot up after every question.

Judge: "Do you belong to Mothers Against Drunk Driving?"

"Number 7 again, your honor," the officer reported in a monotone.

Judge: "Do you belong to a religion that forbids consumption of alcoholic beverages?"

The felon belched, wafting boozy breath down the pew.
Court officer: "Number 7 again, your honor." The officer's voice took on a tinge of amusement or annoyance, I wasn't sure which.

Prospective jurors who had answered "yes" to any of the questions approached the bench, including felon number one. Some of them were sent home. Felon number one was not. Not dismissed or seated on that jury, I shuffled back to the waiting room with the rest.

For the next two hours, felon number one regaled anyone who would listen with the story of his life: his six children, most by different women but at least two the same age because he knocked up his girlfriend while his wife was pregnant; his many court appearances for lack of payment of child support; his multiple run-ins with the law. In the end, though, he wasn't dismissed. The judge probably didn't want to reward him for being disruptive and unruly, but those of us stuck in the waiting room with him were the ones punished. Or entertained, dependiing on your point of view. I never did get the juicy details of his felony charge or conviction, or even whether he actually had one. Maybe it was something he made up to get out of jury duty, because let's face it, upholding our constitutional right to a fair trial in Ayer is no one's first choice for a nice fall day.