Jury Duty

"Does anyone live in the neighborhood in which the alleged crime was committed?" the judge wanted to know.

I was the only one of the 50 potential jurors to stand. The defendant was accused of selling cocaine just three blocks from where I live. I am more familiar with the corner than I care to be, as Washington's one-way streets make it impossible for me to drive to my home without passing through this gauntlet of illegal drug dealers, who often wave their bags of white powder in an effort to make a sale.

After I explained my proximity to the alleged crime, the judge asked, "And would that affect your ability to be an unbiased juror in this case?"

"I don't think so," was my answer.

I took my seat and tried to think if I had really answered honestly. Just seven blocks from my home, a group of dealers known as the "A-Team" runs an 11 p.m.-to-dawn heroin market. The team's business address is a local carry-out food store, and the members protect their lucrative enterprise with bodyguards packing .38s and .357 Magnums. The discovery of the A-Team came just as D.C. police were wrapping up an investigation of a case dubbed the "pizza connection," in which large amounts of cocaine were distributed through area pizza restaurants.

A few blocks closer to home, D.C. police had set up an around-the-clock mobile police unit in front of Clifton Terrace, a large public housing project that for years housed the Sojourners child development center in its basement -- until the federal government raised the rent beyond our means and forced the center out. The tenement is now so riddled with drug dealers that the police resorted to drastic measures to try to control the illegal drug traffic.

As I thought about all the children for whom Clifton Terrace is home, the judge interrupted with another question: "Have you or any member of your family ever been a victim of, a witness to, or been arrested for, a crime?"

This question always took a long time. The potential jurors lined up and then approached the judge and attorneys at the bench one at a time, while electronic static was piped into the room to protect the privacy of the conversations.

When my turn came up, I explained that I had once been mugged and that I had had my house broken into.

"Do you think the break-in could have been drug-related?" the defense attorney wanted to know.

I reminded him that I live in the neighborhood in which the alleged crime was committed. I explained that there are lots of break-ins in the area and, because often only cash is stolen, it is generally assumed that illegal drug users are behind the crimes.

"Would that bias you against the defendant?" he wanted to know.

"I don't think so," I replied.

Then I answered the rest of the judge's question. "I have been arrested and convicted several times in the District of Columbia for acts of protest against the policies of the U.S. government, especially the nuclear arms race and the war in Central America."

The judge reminded me that the prosecutor in every criminal case is the U.S. government, a fact I was well aware of, having faced this formidable opponent in several versions of The U.S. Government v. Hollyday. Could I be unbiased? I still thought so, feeling I could judge fairly on the facts of this particular case.

"You have had a lot of experience with the criminal justice system. Do you think the system is fair?" The prosecuting attorney was speaking now. I didn't care for the condescending tone in her voice.

The speech that had been waiting for three days to be made finally came forth. I told her that it seemed ironic that I had sat for three days with a crowd of mostly professional people in the jurors' lounge, where the available reading material consists of magazines such as Computer Decisions and Infosystems, while every time I sat in jail it was with people who are mostly poor and black, many of whom seemed to have as much chance of seeing a good lawyer as a computer magazine.

After rendering several more opinions about the judicial system, I stopped speaking. She didn't ask me if I thought I could be unbiased.

I returned to my seat. When my number was called for consideration on the jury panel, with great fanfare the prosecutor made her rejection of me known.

THE JUDGE DISMISSED ME from the courtroom, and I passed by the defendant. He looked young and nervous. He was certainly no captain on the A-Team. The prosecutor had eight witnesses, including six undercover police, to testify against him.

I was back in the jurors' lounge again and was soon joined by the small handful of people from the same courtroom who were too poor or uneducated to qualify to serve on a jury of peers for a defendant who was poor and uneducated. I pondered my fourth rejection in three days. My problem seemed to be too many convictions.

I wondered what it would mean for the "good news" to come to that street corner where cocaine is hawked. What would it mean to the lives wasting away, and the families torn apart, and the young people sucked into the horror, and the victims of crimes committed by the users in need of quick cash? What difference could Jesus' bias for the poor make?

My thoughts were interrupted by a disturbance outside the window. A defendant being escorted into the courthouse from a police wagon had escaped the grasp of three police officers. After a scuffle the officers and five passers-by who joined the fray wrestled the defendant to the ground and shackled him, wrists to ankles. He rolled and yelled and cursed and tried to jump to his feet. "Drugs," one of the other jurors said as she shook her head.

When the disturbance was over, the jurors moved away from the windows. Some gathered around the lounge television to watch All My Children, while a few started on a 500-piece puzzle bearing a picture of the stern-faced couple in Grant Wood's "American Gothic." A young white woman across the room pulled out a Robert Ludlum spy thriller, while the elderly black woman sitting next to me pulled out her Bible.

"This is quite a place to spend Holy Week, isn't it?" I said to her.

She smiled, shook her head, and said, "The good Lord says both the just and the unjust have to suffer."

Joyce Holllyday was an associate editor of Sojourners when this article appeared.