Enlighten Me

Eddie Sanchez (00:07):
This is Eddie Sanchez.

Rodney Crouther (00:08):
This is Rodney Crouther.

Eddie Sanchez (00:09):
And you are now listening to Enlighten Me.

Rodney Crouther (00:12):
Hey Eddie, have you ever served on a jury?

Eddie Sanchez (00:15):
I haven't. I've had summons before, but I wasn't actually chosen.

Rodney Crouther (00:18):
OK, so you just got called in and be in the pool for a few minutes and they send you home? Yep, exactly. OK. Yeah, I was just thinking there's always some true crime show on at my house and we watch Law & Order forever. So it just hit me though, recently with all this content about not even just the entertainment stuff, but the public conversation about criminal justice, how much does the average person actually know about what goes on in a jury room?

Eddie Sanchez (00:44):
I know very little, to be honest, and it's not one of those things that we really get informed about. Nobody joins a jury and talks about their experiences. It's kind of one of those things that really is vague and nobody talks about a ton.

Rodney Crouther (00:56):
Yeah, you're right. I mean, people talk about, we all hear it's a jury of your peers, but then we watch crime stories and it's all about the defendant and the prosecutors or the police. So jurors are kind of key there. They're the ones saying guilty or innocent.

Eddie Sanchez (01:08):
So I know that during our last episode, you teased that you were going to be covering jury duty, so how did that end up going for you?

Rodney Crouther (01:14):
It was a really fascinating journey. I went on with a couple of our professors and I can't wait to really get into those interviews. They gave me some interesting perspective and some things to think about and actually blew my mind with a couple of facts about how our system really works.

Eddie Sanchez (01:30):
Who did you get a chance to speak with?

Rodney Crouther (01:31):
Well, I started off with Dr. Angela Jones from the Department of Criminal Justice.

Dr. Angela Jones (01:34):
Yeah, I am Dr. Angela Jones. I'm an associate professor in the School of Criminal Justice and Criminology. I study legal decisions. I'm a psychologist by training, so I'm really interested in decisions from the perspective of jurors in particular.

Rodney Crouther (01:48):
She actually had a couple of the biggest revelations for me, just on the nuts and bolts of how things work and how they don't necessarily work and some things that you think should be really open and obvious are kind of opaque. How did you go from psychology to criminal justice?

Dr. Angela Jones (02:15):
Well, I got my bachelor's degree in criminal justice. I initially thought I'm going to be a cop, which my mom was terrified about, but I just always loved school, so I got my master's degree in criminology. I thought I would stick with that and kind of just happened upon learning about wrongful convictions, and everything from that field of research came from psychology.

Rodney Crouther (02:35):
OK. Well, let's talk a little bit about how our justice system works, and I think every American knows, we learn early in school that you have a right to a trial by jury in our system, but why do we have a trial by jury?

Dr. Angela Jones (02:48):
I mean it pulls from English common law, it's a constitutional right. The defendant has a right to a trial by a jury of their peers, and it puts this buffer between the citizen accused and the state who's really powerful. They're so powerful, they have the right to take away your freedom, the right to take away your life even. And so this provides that buffer where the state has a very high burden of proof to be able to take away that freedom or potentially your life. It also provides an opportunity for the community to be involved in the process and making sure that they have a voice representing the value of the community, what they value, what they prioritize, and having a say in what should happen to this person that potentially did a wrong against society.

Rodney Crouther (03:29):
Have you ever served on a jury?

Dr. Angela Jones (03:31):
Oh, I wish.

Rodney Crouther (03:32):
Never?

Dr. Angela Jones (03:33):
I've been called multiple times and every case, every time either the case was resolved by plea or there was a delay or something. So no, I would love to if the opportunity ever happened, but it is getting harder because I know more and more prosecutors and judges in the county, so that might would be tough. And then obviously what I study probably would make at least the prosecutor probably be a little more suspicious.

Rodney Crouther (03:57):
The average person isn't a prosecutor or a defense attorney or hopefully the average person isn't a criminal. So jury duty is probably how most people get involved in the justice system. How does the jury selection process actually work, like the nuts and bolts of it?

Dr. Angela Jones (04:14):
Well, the judge has a lot of discretion, so the judge may be the one to ask a lot more questions of potential jurors. They may give up a lot of that to attorneys, whether it be the defense or the state to ask questions of jurors. We often actually refer to it as a process of jury deselection because it's not so much about getting the fairest jurors, the most impartial jurors, it's more about getting rid of or weeding out the ones that could be the most problematic.

Rodney Crouther (04:41):
OK, so that's the perspective that the attorneys come from?

Dr. Angela Jones (04:44):
Yeah. I mean, idealistically, we're going to get a jury impartial, people who are unbiased and there to make an objective decision based solely on the facts of the case and nothing else. But in reality, the attorneys want to get the people ideally most favorable to their side, but at the end of the day, the ones least favorable to their sides, they want to get rid of them.

Eddie Sanchez (05:04):
Did Dr. Jones describe what makes a good juror?

Rodney Crouther (05:07):
Yes. She gave a little insight into what both sides like prosecutors and defense attorneys are looking for and just overall what we would want in our criminal justice system, the kind of person we want in the jury box.

Dr. Angela Jones (05:19):
Yeah, I mean there's a lot of variation in the way attorneys approach this. They're going to try to push the judge a little bit to see how much they can talk about the case without getting in trouble to start to immediately sway the jury from the beginning before they even know who the six or 12 people are going to be. But they're looking for, again, jurors that are going to be the most amenable to their case. Actually, the case I sat in on the other day, they were actually talking about wrongful convictions, which I was really surprised about and how people felt about that, which is starting to get a little bit broad, but the judge allowed it because it gets to people's predispositions. Where are they at when they walk in the door, and how much is that going to potentially influence their ability to objectively evaluate the case?

Eddie Sanchez (06:08):
Are there any jobs that essentially bar you from being a part of a jury?

Rodney Crouther (06:12):
Yeah, I asked Dr. Jones that because I used to be a newspaper reporter, and both times I got called for jury duty, then I got struck immediately.

Dr. Angela Jones (06:22):
Because you were a reporter. OK. Yeah, so there's two ways attorneys can get rid, remove jurors from the pool. So one is called a strike for cause, and that's where if they have some explicit bias or something that would prevent them from being an impartial juror that they have expressed. For example, the case I sat in on the other day, there were going to be very few witnesses in this case, and one of the key pieces of evidence was going to come from a police officer. Someone in the jury pool is currently a police officer at Austin Police Department. So they were like, OK, we're going to strike him for cause, and the judge accepted that. But if an attorney is unable to get a juror struck for cause, then they have a limited number of what's called a peremptory challenge, and this is where they don't have to necessarily give a reason why. They can just say, "I want to get rid of this person."

Rodney Crouther (07:07):
And that's what happened to me. So I don't know if it was definitely my job. I just assumed that at the time.

Dr. Angela Jones (07:11):
Yeah, so those peremptories. Yeah. If the other side is concerned that an attorney is using that to strike someone based on say, their race or gender, that's illegal, they can't do that, and they can challenge that and the judge will have to make a decision. Is that the reason why they're trying to remove someone or is it for some other reason?

Rodney Crouther (07:29):
Do you have any ideas, statistics, how many people serve on juries in Texas in any given year?

Dr. Angela Jones (07:34):
Yeah, I don't know that information. It's really hard to even find out how many people and who exactly is even in a jury pool in any given county.

Eddie Sanchez (07:43):
So there's no way for me to look up if I'm in this pot of potential jurors?

Rodney Crouther (07:47):
No, apparently not. That's kind of amazing considering what kind of information you can look up about yourself, right?

Eddie Sanchez (07:53):
Yeah, exactly. I mean, we can find out who voted or who's registered to vote, but you can't tell me who could potentially be a juror.

Dr. Angela Jones (08:00):
You can't really do that to be like, "Hey, am I actually in the jury pool in the place where I live?" There's no way to look that up, which is incredible. Really. Yeah. Every time I tell people this, they're just shocked. They're like, "Yeah, I've never thought about that."

Rodney Crouther (08:11):
How do they construct the jury pools then? Is it based off voter registration or driver's licenses or?

Dr. Angela Jones (08:17):
Every county is slightly different. This is our whole system, right, is very decentralized. And so every jurisdiction has their own district clerk, and they may have slightly different ways they go about composing their jury pool, but yes, usually it's some combination of their driver's license, usually some kind of voter registration. Some people use even people who are on public assistance. There's some variation for sure, but you can't look up and confirm that you're actually even on a list to be chosen. There's no way to know that. So we don't even know how many people there are. So I don't know how many people actually serve on a jury at any given time. But I will say that the vast majority of cases in the United States are resolved by a plea. They don't even go to trial. About 95%, 90 to 95% of cases are resolved by plea. So the defendant never even gets to exercise their constitutional right to a trial by jury.

Eddie Sanchez (09:12):
Man, the fact that 95% of trials go to plea deals is really shocking. I would've thought that much more would involve juries.

Rodney Crouther (09:18):
Yeah, and I get the system likes plea deals. It moves the case along faster, and it's cheaper. Doesn't take as much infrastructure to wrap those up, but for a constitutional right trial by jury, the system seems really geared toward using it as little as possible.

Eddie Sanchez (09:36):
Yeah, super opaque. That kind of blew my mind right there.

Rodney Crouther (09:39):
Yeah, I said the same thing. That's wild to think about.

Dr. Angela Jones (09:44):
It's a little concerning for those of us who really believe in the importance of a trial by jury for ensuring justice.

Rodney Crouther (09:51):
Yes. I think the implication of trial by jury is that it's a very transparent and open to the community process.

Dr. Angela Jones (09:58):
And plea bargaining is the exact opposite of that.

Eddie Sanchez (10:02):
So when we started this conversation, you touched a little bit on how we see juries on TV and how they play out in shows like Law & Order and whatnot. Did you talk to Dr. Jones any about how those perceptions affect people in reality?

Rodney Crouther (10:16):
Oh, yes. I definitely ask her how entertainment impacts what she actually sees when she's researching jury behavior.

Eddie Sanchez (10:24):
Did she tell you something pretty interesting about that?

Rodney Crouther (10:28):
It was the obvious answer. TV's a lot more entertaining than reality.

Dr. Angela Jones (10:33):
Yeah, it's never as dramatic as TV, right? Real life is quite a bit more boring. If you go to the Texas Court's website where it talks about jury duty, it gives some advice to jurors out the gate before they even show up to say there's going to be a lot of downtime, prepare yourself, maybe bring a book to read. There's going to be a time where we don't want you to hear maybe some conversations that are being had between the attorneys and the judge. And then also the judge will tell them, you can't talk to other people about this case. If you're chosen to be on the jury, you can't look up information. Right. Don't go and be your own investigator sleuth online.

Rodney Crouther (11:08):
So you can't be in the jury box on your phone researching what's been in the news about the case.

Dr. Angela Jones (11:12):
Or go home at night and look it up and be like, I want to know everything about this defendant or potential victim, because if you're not hearing that at trial, there's a reason why, and you are only supposed to be making that decision based on the evidence presented at trial. And if you learn something that you've done based on your own research outside of the trial, that information could be incredibly biasing and could actually affect that defendant's right to a fair trial. So it has tremendous implications if say the defendant was found guilty, and then this later information was later uncovered that you went and investigated outside of the trial.

Rodney Crouther (11:42):
I know in some cases there's a trial phase, but then a separate sentencing hearing. Is the same jury involved in both of those? Do they recall the same jurors for sentencing?

Dr. Angela Jones (11:52):
Yeah, that's an excellent question because there's actually only, I think we're down to five or six states now that actually allow a jury to sentence in non-capital cases, and Texas is one of them. So the defendant can choose at the outset if they want a jury or a judge to sentence them if they are found guilty. And this is one of those really weird things. This is exactly what happened in this case I sat in the other day, is during jury selection, the attorneys have to ask questions of this jury pool about sentencing before the verdict has been determined because it will be the same jury. So in this case, the defendant, if he were convicted, would have been eligible for probation upwards of 20 years in prison. And so the attorneys were asking questions, if you were to find this defendant guilty, we're not saying he's guilty, but if you were to find him guilty, do you think you could give someone convicted of sexual assault probation?

(12:47):
So you imagine this can start doing things in a juror's mind like, I'm already thinking about this guy being guilty and what's next? So that is a really weird, psychologically interesting way to go about approaching it. If under the best of circumstances idealistically, you would have a different jury because you would want to have them coming in with fresh eyes as opposed to already be thinking ahead. This is the same process that we have in capital juries too. During the voir dire, or the jury selection process, they're asking, "Would you be willing to give the death penalty if this person's convicted?" So they're already thinking about that ahead of time, and it also results in a different composition of jurors than if those questions weren't asked or weren't a determining criteria for them to be on the jury.

Rodney Crouther (13:36):
If there's one thing you could say to people who get a jury summons this week, what would you tell them?

Dr. Angela Jones (13:42):
Show up. Show up. Yeah. It's hard to give advice or thinking about how to prepare to be a juror. There's not really much you could do to prepare because every case is so different and you're not going to know what case you might potentially be assigned to.

Rodney Crouther (13:58):
They don't tell you what kind of case you're going up for when you get called.

Dr. Angela Jones (14:02):
Yeah, that's right. Nothing. You don't even know what your chances of actually being on that jury are, or if you're not chosen for that jury, will you get to do another? You don't know anything. You just know I need to show up at this time and you're told to bring a book. There's going to be some downtime. That's about it. So the most redeeming quality in a juror, no matter whether you're the prosecution or the defense, is to have an open mind. So if you go in and you realize that you are not going to be able to have an open mind because of whatever reason, you have a duty and obligation to express that out loud to those attorneys so they can make the best decision for their case.

Rodney Crouther (14:40):
People need to participate for the system to work.

Dr. Angela Jones (14:42):
They need to, and it's incredibly important. I always try to encourage people to keep in mind that this defendant's most important day of their life, this will determine their future, the rest of their life and if they even live. And that's a huge obligation that any one juror has and that our government, our system of government, gives that opportunity to citizens to express their opinion and have that input on a case instead of having some very opaque system of justice that just happens behind a black curtain and you don't know anything about it, and then you don't know, is it just, is it fair? Can I trust it? Should I believe in it? So this is what helps us have a system that's more legitimate than maybe other governments that don't have this right in place for a trial by jury.

Eddie Sanchez (15:30):
I am so far removed from the juror process. That was such an interesting conversation you guys had just because there was so many facts that I wasn't even aware of, and it's really important to be aware of how the jury process can affect somebody's life permanently.

Rodney Crouther (15:45):
Yeah, you're right. And talking to her got me really thinking about the history of our system and how it's affected people over generations where we had a different understanding of everybody's rights and roles in participating in our justice system. So I went over to our history department and found Dr. Justin Randolph.

Dr. Justin Randolph (16:04):
Sure. My name's Justin Randolph. I'm an assistant professor.

Rodney Crouther (16:06):
Researches the history of criminal justice and some particular points in American history.

Dr. Justin Randolph (16:13):
I study the American South specifically, I'm writing a book on the history of policing and the civil rights movement in Mississippi.

Rodney Crouther (16:21):
Tell us a little more about you. What got you interested in your field of research?

Dr. Justin Randolph (16:27):
So I started as an oral historian in the South. I wanted to collect histories and narratives from people who for a long time and for various reasons have been typically excluded from the historical record. Everyday people, people who are not the people calling the shots, but who have lived meaningful lives and who deserve to have a record of their existence to survive for future generations to make sense of and to use and to think about. So I actually started interviewing African American farmers in and around where I grew up. Farmers in general are fewer and further between, but African American landowners in the South particularly have declined precipitously in a slow fall since 1910 and especially since the 1950s. And so I was working for some historians — I was just an undergraduate at the time actually when I started — I was working for historians who were writing a book that's about to come out 12 years later. That's how long this work, this important work takes on the history of Black land ownership in the south.

Rodney Crouther (17:54):
OK. How'd you go from that into studying the justice system?

Dr. Justin Randolph (17:58):
Yeah. Well, these stories that I had from farmers always involve law enforcement in one way or another, and in particular they involve what law enforcement, policing, the courts meant for people living on the land, people living rural existences. So many of our histories are about people living in cities. They're about street policing, so-called street crime. But actually, if you look at the countryside in rural America, you get a much different view. And so in fact, my book project that should be out in the next year, fingers crossed, grew from an interview with a family who was attacked during the Civil Rights Movement. They were very pro movement. They were housing civil rights workers from the North, across the South on their land to help fight for voting rights, civil rights, and importantly for them economic justice in the agricultural economy. And they were attacked one night and they were attacked because a white state trooper had died of a heart attack the previous day during a protest, during a civil rights protest. And so that retaliation against a family who had been a part of the freedom struggle for three generations, but that was the moment, that was the moment where they almost paid the ultimate price for their efforts. That drove the book in many ways, and it's led me down so many paths. I've been in dusty courthouse basements and attics without air conditioning, looking for these records and creating some of my own along the way by interviewing people.

Rodney Crouther (20:06):
When we talk about jury duty, I think most Americans know the words "a jury of your peers," but has that definition changed over time since 1776?

Dr. Justin Randolph (20:17):
It has changed and it will continue to change. I revisited the Declaration of Independence before coming into this room, and obviously the he/him pronouns abound in that document, and even if we do credit them with having a more universal sort of understanding or expectation of who the rights and privileges of this new American government might be secured for, it's clear from their perspective that it was men, it was white men, it was men of property, we would say.

Eddie Sanchez (20:56):
So I'm assuming that means that you had to be a property owner, right?

Dr. Justin Randolph (21:00):
Well, not necessarily.

Eddie Sanchez (21:02):
Was it also businessmen?

Rodney Crouther (21:03):
Yeah, somebody with some kind of material standing in the community.

Dr. Justin Randolph (21:08):
So from the founders' perspective, it was very abstract that they expected, especially states to sort of hash out for themselves.

Rodney Crouther (21:18):
I guess a lot of our cultural evolution as a people could be documented by looking at how juries have evolved over the last 200 plus years.

Dr. Justin Randolph (21:28):
100%. I mean, who is expected to have the right to the courts in this country and then who can serve on a jury? That has changed. I'm a historian of the Jim Crow period in the American South, and at the same time that states disfranchised Black male and then Black female voters, they also largely discluded them from the courts. They were outlawed practically. It's not to say that people didn't bring charges in courts. They certainly did. There's very important research coming out now, a new book coming out soon by Dylan Penningroth about the way that Black southerners during Jim Crow during the worst days imaginable under that regime use the courts. But by and large, I study Mississippi, the idea of having a Black juror between say 1890 and 1960 would've been largely out of the realm of the possible.

Rodney Crouther (22:35):
Yeah, somehow that is not surprising. Getting even to the idea of jury of your peers in Mississippi in pre 1960 is an easy case, even with women serving on juries in America. I mean, obviously women could go to court as a defendant, but their peers probably early on in the 1800s weren't reflected on juries in the jury box.

Dr. Justin Randolph (23:01):
Sure, yeah. And it's interesting you said they could go to court as a defendant because that's absolutely true. Now, whether or not they could go as a plaintiff say in a civil suit or something like that, that's always been something that was certainly not necessarily in the framers of the government's mind, but was taken up at local and state levels. But sure jurors would've been male almost to the T.

Eddie Sanchez (23:32):
Man. Hearing this conversation makes me realize how critical it is that we continue to learn and study our history, not only because of how it affected the previous generations, but also because these are things that continue to affect us to this day. Man, that's something that just makes me want to continue pursuing my interest in history and reading as much as I can so I can learn and ideally contribute to society in a way that helps us to avoid the issues of the past.

Rodney Crouther (24:00):
I grew up in Mississippi, and coming out of the ’70s, so a lot of what Dr. Randolph had to say really resonated with me personally. But yeah, it really gets into the fact that the issues that we still do still talk about today, like voting rights, that's all important, but we don't often dig beneath that and think about women not being able to serve on juries even though they can be judged by a jury, and that was unfair.

Eddie Sanchez (24:34):
Or even the fact that they potentially couldn't be plaintiffs. That's a big issue too. Women's rights, they're still kind of getting pushed back a bit. But yeah, that's just kind of shockingly amazing that these things were still pretty recent and affected us.

Rodney Crouther (24:53):
I think it's just important to realize that building America wasn't just the founders in the 1700s. It's every generation after that is just as important.

Eddie Sanchez (25:02):
So it seems to me as if it goes beyond just gender and race, if I'm just a regular person trying to sue a business owner and the jury is full of business owners, that's not really a jury of my peers.

Dr. Justin Randolph (25:14):
Certainly. And suits in civil cases are interesting. They were sort of split off from criminal cases from the beginning. So actually the Sixth and the Seventh Amendment handle the question of jury trials separately for criminal cases in the Sixth and civil cases in the Seventh. So that is if the state sues you, right, this is what led a lot of the founders toward this, their fear of a centralized monarchical state coming after you and you not having anyone to gainsay what the crown says,.

Rodney Crouther (25:52):
Right, that's a legitimate fear.

Dr. Justin Randolph (25:55):
But they also were curious about the way that a jury of one's peers could operate in a civil case. And so they had the Seventh Amendment, which has been perhaps more scrutinized by the Supreme Court and the judiciary more broadly because for instance, Seventh Amendment civil trial worth more than $20. They're very specific on what could sort of initiate a jury trial.

Rodney Crouther (26:25):
Wow, that is interesting. Considering how many things in the constitution are left so broad and undefined that they set a very specific $20 limit.

Dr. Justin Randolph (26:33):
$20, that was it. But your question about class and how does class sort of fit into jury of one's peers I think is equally important in terms of jury trials for criminal cases. We know, for instance, that poor and working people are more likely to have had an encounter with the criminal legal system to where they could be excluded. We know that it is harder for poor and working people to serve on juries just by virtue of having to miss work or miss other obligations that are harder to get to, even though I understand that the court pays you minimally for the time that they take from you.

Rodney Crouther (27:16):
This is probably a good reminder for all of us that all of the rights that everyone feels very passionately about were never written in stone and have been debated and reframed pretty much from the beginning,

Dr. Justin Randolph (27:30):
And it can always change. There is a baseline provided in the Sixth Amendment for criminal cases with a jury. Frankly, it's harder and harder to find a case that goes to trial.

Rodney Crouther (27:45):
I understand the vast majority get dealt with as plea deals.

Dr. Justin Randolph (27:49):
That's right. Yeah. People plea, right. People come with all sorts of pressures, not for the case to go to trial, in part because it's a logistical ordeal as you could imagine. People's lives are put on pause. I think we have this Law & Order television show image of trials and things. The courtroom drama is a genre in America.

Rodney Crouther (28:23):
On TV someone's arrested and then there's a commercial in the next scene, they're in court and there's a jury in the box.

Dr. Justin Randolph (28:30):
I mean, a very important case here in Hays County, a murder trial, one of the people charged has been in the Hays County Jail for almost five years without a trial.

Rodney Crouther (28:49):
That sounds like it's running afoul of a different amendment?

Dr. Justin Randolph (28:52):
Right, the right to a speedy trial. But it's really, like I say, when it's up for interpretation and enforcement, those two things are always going to be really important. But for sure, I'm trying to take my students now, I'm trying to find a pathway for my students in History 1320, the History of the United States from 1877 to Present, to visit a courtroom. I just want them to go through and see what the business of the courts are that's been being done in all of our name. And it's actually difficult to find a trial.

(29:32):
Because there are not that many. There are numerous plea deals that you could see taking part any day, and actually if you sit in the back of the room and just try to watch that, you have no idea what's happening. I am continually shocked at just how difficult it is to parse the legal profession when it's all done through pleas. And obviously it's not all done, but you can go a day and unless it's a trial day, you're just going to see the same thing, which is a line of lawyers doing plea deals with the prosecutors who are in the room.

Rodney Crouther (30:12):
And you mentioned some of your work involves specific issues around Hays County. What are some of the issues with jury trials in Hays County that you see?

Dr. Justin Randolph (30:20):
There are no issues particular to Hays County. This is a phenomenon, especially with the tendency for most cases to be pled out. Instead of going to trial, there are people working across the community to draw transparency into the system. And accountability. District attorney Kelly Higgins was elected on a platform that promised experimentation with ideas of restorative justice, so to de-emphasize the trial and punishment for people who accede that harm was done, and instead to think about what meaningful healing in justice might mean outside of a system that is basically premised on people rehabilitating through being caged or locked up.

Eddie Sanchez (31:21):
We'll be right back after this. That was a really great conversation. I really appreciate you being able to bring in a historical perspective to this conversation and also all the stuff that you learned from the criminal justice researcher. I'm curious, has Dr. Randolph actually ever served on a jury?

Rodney Crouther (31:46):
No. Dr. Randolph didn't have a chance to serve on a jury yet either, but he did have a grad student who has served on a jury recently right here in Hays County, and she was willing to come in and talk to us about her experience actually being a juror.

Rachel (32:01):
My name's Rachel.

Rodney Crouther (32:02):
What are you majoring in?

Rachel (32:03):
I'm going to major in public history.

Rodney Crouther (32:05):
So we heard from your professor, you recently served on a jury. Have you ever served on a jury before?

Rachel (32:11):
No, that was actually my first time being summoned and then my first time actually getting picked to be on it. So I was like really? Like wow, I guess. OK.

Rodney Crouther (32:20):
What was your first thought when you got your jury summons?

Rachel (32:22):
I don't want to go. And I was just like, I didn't want to go at first, but then I kept thinking about it, but I was like, you know what? OK, I can't skip out on it. I mean, I'll get in trouble. But I was like, I don't think it'll be a bad experience either.

Rodney Crouther (32:36):
Walk us through that day. What was it like when you got there?

Rachel (32:39):
It was very just intimidating because I walked in and I didn't know where I was going. So I think I went to the wrong place a couple of times and then I finally just got enough courage to ask somebody. So I was like, I'm supposed to be, and I think the address was this, but like I don't know where I'm supposed to go, the room. And they were like, oh, I'll just take you to the room, cause you're not the first person who's asked. So I went down the little hall and it was just very intimidating. Whenever they took me into the room, there was just so many people in there and they were like, you're just going to sit here, wait until your name is called. I just sat there for a really long time until they called my name. I think it was probably four hours later. And so they were like, you can bring a book, you can bring whatever, you're going to be sitting here for a really long time. And I'm like, OK.

Rodney Crouther (33:22):
How many other people were in the room when you got there?

Rachel (33:24):
I think probably, I don't know. It was a lot of people. It was about 60, 70 people, but I wasn't also paying attention. I was just very nervous. I dunno why I was nervous just sitting in a room with other people, but it was like I think about 60, 70 people.

Rodney Crouther (33:39):
OK. What happened next when they finally came for you?

Rachel (33:42):
So whenever they finally did call my name and I went into the room, it was just like the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and that's like, OK, just be truthful about your questions. You're going to be honest about them. And they made me swear about it. They just started asking their questions. So they were like, yeah.

Rodney Crouther (33:59):
Yeah, what did they ask you?

Rachel (34:00):
They were like, where do you get your news from? They asked me, is any of your family members or a friend a police officer or a cop? Then they asked, have you personally been a victim? Cause ours happens to be a case of domestic abuse. And they were like, have you or anybody you know been a victim or lost someone to domestic abuse? And I was like, no. And then they were just asking me other questions like that. They were like, do you think of course you can be fair? And I think it's unbiased? Yeah, unbiased. And I'm like, yeah, I believe I have been. I feel like I could.

Rodney Crouther (34:36):
And then you were selected for the jury?

Rachel (34:38):
And then I got selected and I just didn't think they were going to accept me because I was just very nonchalant with their questions. I was so tired. I was, I was been there already for four hours. I was like, I wanted to go home. But yeah, so they had called me and that's never, I was like, OK, I'll be there. I have no choice.

Rodney Crouther (34:58):
So what was it like when the trial actually started and you could focus in on the attorneys talking and presenting their cases?

Rachel (35:05):
It was, I just wasn't expecting it to be so long and just so much talking between the defense attorney and the prosecutor. It was just a lot of them doing, I guess their opening statement and stuff. And that took up a good, I think about an hour or two. And then that's whenever they started talking a lot with the judge, which is apparently very common just for them to do that. And so I thought it was just, I don't know, I just thought it was going to be them talking. The most I've seen about it, it's on TV and my mom never went to jury duty, so I couldn't ask her what actually goes on in the courtroom. Right.

Rodney Crouther (35:43):
So did the trial finish in that one day or did it go on for a couple of days?

Rachel (35:48):
I know it went, I think until Friday or that following Monday. I know I came back midweek back here, but I know it went on. I think after that I said Wednesday, yeah, about three more days. And it was just a lot of them getting witnesses. It was a domestic abuse case, so it was like the police officers who were called to the scene and then it was family members or friends or coworkers speaking on behalf of it was the husband and the wife, and it was a lot of that. I think that took up a lot of the first two days or something and it was just so much talking.

Rodney Crouther (36:28):
Was the jury able to reach a verdict?

Rachel (36:30):
Yeah, so we actually, I kind of didn't agree with it, but it was majority rules basically, but we had ended up finding them not guilty. It was kind of a tough case for me. I really believed it. And even the officers were like, no, I strongly believe it. It was just going. It was just a lot of he said, she said.

Rodney Crouther (36:51):
So was it a civil or a criminal trial?

Rachel (36:54):
It was criminal. OK. Yeah, I think this one was a felony case.

Rodney Crouther (36:57):
That's a lot of pressure on you jurors. You're deciding whether or not someone gets to go home.

Rachel (37:02):
It was, I think that was the very intimidating part, knowing, oh, I decide. I basically have a say in how their life goes from the rest of this day forward. It just felt really uneasy knowing that was our responsibility.

Rodney Crouther (37:18):
After the case, How'd you feel?

Rachel (37:20):
Personally? I just felt like there was not much I could have done, but it just felt like I let her down and I just how she felt towards us as the jury knowing that we decided to decide that what she said wasn't true. And so it just made me feel really guilty, but I'm like, at the end of the day, there's nothing I can do about it. The other people also voted because I think there was me and two other people who believed he was guilty, but it was just a lot of the, he said she said thing and they just wanted tangible proof. And so I think that's just why we decided that he wasn't guilty for it.

Rodney Crouther (37:58):
That's kind of a lot for your first time as a juror.

Rachel (38:00):
Yeah, I think after that sentence, I think I went home and cried. It was just so much going on at once. I was like, it could have been, I guess an easier case it could have been assigned to, but it was just a lot going on.

Rodney Crouther (38:14):
So now that you've done it, how do you feel about your experience of being on a jury?

Rachel (38:19):
It was very intimidating, of course, but I think it was just knowing, I guess your civic American duty is something that not a lot of people get to go through, but you get to have a say and a place and knowing that you're a part of the system and you have that responsibility of your other fellow American citizens. So it's just very patriotic.

Rodney Crouther (38:44):
Did it give you more of a sense of ownership, like you do have a stake in how things go?

Rachel (38:47):
Yeah, that's really the vibe I guess I was getting, just having more of a say in someone's life, which I didn't really like that much, but having a say in the court system, not just having it all decided on the judge, but on the jury duty, the jurors.

Rodney Crouther (39:01):
Regular people get to have a say, so next time you get a jury summons, are you going to try to get out of it?

Rachel (39:07):
I don't think I will just because knowing the first time I, knowing how much responsibility it holds, and I think even though it was a depressing case afterwards, I felt a little bit better knowing I had that experience and had a say in what was going on and what I believed in.

Rodney Crouther (39:23):
So what would you say to a friend when they get a jury summons now?

Rachel (39:26):
I would say just go. I know the thought of it might be like, oh, I don't want to go, but your being there might make a difference to whoever is on the jury or who is also being involved in the case and stuff. And you don't know if you could change somebody's life with thoughts being there. It just makes you feel a better person just in the sense of community service, but not really community service, but just giving back to your country and your community is just giving a very patriotic feeling.

Rodney Crouther (39:55):
I think you can call it community service. We're in a time where a lot of people are really upset about the way our system works, but jury duty is a way that regular people, each of us can have a direct impact on how the justice system is functioning on that day. In this case, it's our opportunity.

Rachel (40:13):
No, for sure. And I feel like a lot of people are like, oh, I wish I could do more. And I feel like this is your way of doing more is participating in this even if you don't get selected. But you can say at least I went and tried.

Eddie Sanchez (40:29):
So did you get a chance to talk to a lawyer or anybody else that's actually in the justice system?

Rodney Crouther (40:32):
No, actually I got to talk to a judge thanks to Dr. Jones. She introduced me to a Hays County judge who was happy to come in and talk to us too.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (40:41):
My name is Tanner Neidhardt, I'm a judge, Hays County.

Rodney Crouther (40:44):
And it turns out he's actually going to be teaching in our criminal justice program at Texas State.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (40:48):
I'm teaching at Texas State this semester a class on courts and criminal procedure.

Speaker (40:58):
All rise.

Rodney Crouther (41:01):
I know there are a lot of different kinds of judges. So where exactly do you serve? Are you a city judge, county judge?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (41:08):
Sure, I preside over at district court. District courts handle civil cases. They handle felony cases, felonies, criminal cases, so that's anything from state jail felonies, those can be low-level drug crimes for possession of controlled substances all the way up to murders and including capital murder. So that's primary what we do, civil, criminal, and it covers anything that happens in Hays County. It's not just San Marcos. So we've got, for instance, when we have juries, we have jurors who are coming from Dripping, Wimberley, Buda, Kyle, and even Austin. And that's one of the fun things is when those people from Austin show up oftentimes they didn't even know they were in Hays County until they got a jury summons that said, we know you have an Austin residence, but Austin is now part of Hays.

Rodney Crouther (42:05):
How important is it when we look at the makeup of our juries to really have a diverse pool of people from different social backgrounds, different economic backgrounds, different cultural backgrounds? How important is that in building confidence that our system is really working for the people?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (42:23):
You got right to the point. It's very important for people to believe in our system. They need to come, they need to see what is happening, and they need to believe that it is a system that works for them, for everyone in the community. And you're getting close to sensitive topics why certain groups aren't showing up. And a student just said to me the other day in class, a young female, she said, my roommate got a summons and she didn't go because she says, "Why am I going to go to this? They're not going to listen to me." Well, if her community, her group, if they believe that no one's going to listen to them, then I don't necessarily blame them for not. We need to do a better job reaching out, using soft power to say, look, you want to be here. And I think that the students that are listening to that message and the jurors who are coming in, they're seeing that because the importance of what we're doing and the magnitude of what we're doing is only going to show to all communities when they've seen it and they've been participants in it.

(43:36):
Because once you've been a participant in it, that's totally different than when you're from the outside and looking at it and criticizing it.

Rodney Crouther (43:44):
Did you ever serve on a jury?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (43:46):
I did not. And I've never even had the opportunity to set in jury selection. I tried over 110 cases when I was in criminal practice, and then later I've done a few civil trials, but I've never gotten to sit there in the position of the jurors. And I'd love to one day.

Rodney Crouther (44:09):
Hey, you've been an attorney and you're now a judge. You've seen the system work from both sides of the bench. In your experience over the years, have you seen a change in people's willingness to serve?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (44:20):
When I first began, I was in Bexar County, huge county that has a central jury system. And that's important to discuss because 500 people will show up every day in Bexar County and they will go into a giant room and one judge will talk to all of them, and then they will just wait. And then they have dozens of courts. And when those courts need someone, they will call down to the jury room and say, we have a case that is of this gravity, we need 50 jurors. And they take the first 50 from that room, take them upstairs. Now here, what's unique is that we have the jurors come to the courtroom and they are already assigned to a particular judge in a particular court. If the question is, is there differences in the juries and their ways of thinking on the exact same questions, you bet there is. And that's something that's really stood out to me is how much jurors' expectations and demands and attitudes have changed.

Eddie Sanchez (45:27):
Hey Rodney, so I know early on you were talking about how your wife likes to watch Law & Order and those types of shows. Did the judge talk any about how Hollywood affects the jury process in terms of people not really understanding how it functions?

Rodney Crouther (45:42):
Yeah, he did say he had to do a little bit of teaching with new jurors.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (45:46):
Right, or educate them that this is not TV. Yes, sir, we do. We immediately start telling them, this is not Hollywood. What you see on TV is not what you're going to get today, but I'm going to lay out the rules and the expectations for you. And I think they should be simple enough that you follow them. But the truth is the jury system really isn't part of, excuse me, the jury selection process isn't part of what we see on TV. They skip straight to the witness who's on the stand, and then there's the examination. This process I think is something that's been overlooked on TV for the students I'm teaching here at Texas State this semester, and the students, 20 of them already came to a jury selection and I had them journal about it afterwards, and I've read those and they just couldn't believe what they saw. They didn't know how the system works. And these are students all in criminal justice. So it's great. We need to get people to understand the way it's working. And that's part of why I wanted to be here at the university is these students are going to go out into the world all over, let's have them have the knowledge about jury selection that they can share. And I think they're going to do it by the reactions that we got. They enjoyed the system, they respect the system, they see why it matters.

Rodney Crouther (47:13):
So what's the biggest surprise for people when they get a jury summons for the first time?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (47:17):
Well, I think the first thing they say is, how do I get out of it?

Eddie Sanchez (47:22):
Yeah, I'll be a hundred percent honest with you, Rodney, and say that that's my first thought whenever I get a jury summons.

Rodney Crouther (47:28):
Yeah, I think that's pretty common. I think most of us think just the same thing. And the judge says he sees that and he's trying to shift our perspective a little bit.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (47:38):
You get something in the mail like that, and it wasn't very long ago in American history when you could get a letter in the mail from the government and it said that you have to go somewhere, but you're going away to a country far away and you're going away to war and you may not come back for six months. You may not come back for a year, you may not ever come back. They get a letter now and they say, and it says, we need you to come in for a couple of days, maybe a week. So if we compare what's being asked, I understand it's a sacrifice to maybe leave your children or leave someone for whom you're caretaking or to leave your job, but this is part of the sacrifice to have this incredible system that we have that takes care of communities.

Rodney Crouther (48:34):
I remember going to register to vote when I was 18, someone saying that if I didn't show up for jury duty after getting a summons, I could be arrested.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (48:44):
You could be held in contempt. That's true.

Rodney Crouther (48:47):
Does that often happen?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (48:49):
Well, if I tell you, then everybody might know it can happen. Let's just say that it can happen. You're subject to a $500 penalty for not coming. There has to be a process that you go through. But look, I hate using the hard power to get people there. I'd rather use soft power. And that's why that's one of my initiatives as a judge is to get people to understand why they want to come to jury duty, not why they feel forced.

Rodney Crouther (49:20):
Is there something we can do just as citizens, as regular people to make the process easier and more accessible?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (49:26):
I think that's on us. I think it's on the system. I think that goes to the soft power that I'm talking about where instead of compelling people in a lot of ways, we need to get the word out and make them understand you want to come. Then once they get there, we streamline it. Then once they're in the courtroom, we don't waste their time. We get to business. And when we are in business, I find that jurors are very engaged and even when they finish the jury selection process, if they're not selected, but especially those who are selected and serve on the jury, they have a greater appreciation. And as I ask them now, as they go out into the community afterwards, if they believe that it was worth their time, tell people about it. When your neighbor says, I just got this jury summons, how am I going to get out of jury?

(50:17):
I know you went. Don't tell 'em. Here's the trick. Tell 'em you should go because it's worth it. This system and what we do is amazing that we are able to govern ourselves, and jurors and the people of the community decide what is going to be the facts that will arise to a crime or the facts that will not. And then once, if they decide that there was a crime, what the punishment will be, once they see the importance of that, I think they'll come. Because I think a lot of these jurors, when I talk to 'em afterwards, they're going to come back.

Rodney Crouther (50:55):
What's your elevator pitch to someone about why they should be excited about jury duty?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (51:00):
Once you've done it, you're going to appreciate it. And so I think that's it, right? That's the elevator. What do I mean by that though is I find that once they come, they will realize how important it's, they'll realize we're not trying to waste their time. They will realize that this is one of the greatest things that they can do for their community. It's one of the most direct things they can do for their community. And so when they do it, they walk out of there and I think they feel a little bit prouder of being an American where we have this unique system. Not many other places do this. I've done justice reform projects all over Latin America and Mexico and Colombia. I go and teach the trial advocacy system in Peru. I enjoy those classes. They are asking us to come down there and talk about our system because they see that it works and they want to employ it. And we are lucky. Sometimes it seems like an inconvenience, but realize that people all over the world, they would really be lucky and fortunate and they desire to be inconvenienced like we are.

Rodney Crouther (52:11):
Because these stories turn up sometimes in odd news of people giving outrageous excuses for why they shouldn't be on a jury. What's the most unusual excuse someone's given you?

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (52:20):
I hear a lot of unique ones, but I think it's probably the good ones that I'd rather say. So let me give you this one.

Rodney Crouther (52:31):
And you don't have to say whether or not the excuse worked.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (52:33):
Well, you'll know by the end of this story. So a young man comes in and I had said, this jury may last into next week. I give them a heads up of how long we expect it to last. The attorneys give me notice. We think we have this many witnesses. And given the complexity of the case, it could go into next week. A young man raised his hand. He said, "I am not trying to get out of jury duty, but you said this might go into next week, and I won't be in the country next week." I said, "Interesting." I get so many that "I'm going to Hawaii" or "I'm going away on a vacation." But I said, "Well, what are you doing?" He said, "I'm being deployed."

Rodney Crouther (53:19):
OK.

Judge Tanner Neidhardt (53:20):
I said, "When are you being deployed?" He says, "I'm being deployed on Friday." Where are you going? He said, "I'm going to the Far East." Now that's a place right now that is hot. And to go over there, you could get into some bad times. And I said, "Oh my gosh. You mean you're leaving? This is a Monday. You're leaving on Friday, and you got this jury summons, and you still showed up?" And he said, yeah. I said, "Well, you could have called probably and we could have gotten it out." And he said, no. I said, "Well, why did you do it?" He said, "Because that's why I'm going away to these other countries. That's why I fight is to protect our right to do things like this at home."

(54:09):
And it just hit me really hard. He's going to go and put his life on the line, and he still shows up to jury duty. And he still does it because he believes in the system so much and what it gives to us as a community, and when we complain about what we're asked to do to show up for one morning to maybe be put on a jury, here's this guy who is going away, and yet he still comes because he knows how much it matters. And I thought that really said a lot. And it says a lot about the importance to America of having a system where we judge our peers and we decide if they've committed a crime not to have some government official make that decision, not to have judges make that decision instead to have the people. And he knew that. So I said, "Well, sir, we may go into the next week, so you'll be excused, but I want to thank you." And he got up and he walked out the courtroom and there were jurors on each side, 50, 60 on each side, and they all started clapping for him.

(55:18):
And so when you ask, Rodney, how they try to get out of jury duty, I tell stories like that, and they often don't try anymore.

Eddie Sanchez (55:40):
Man. After hearing the judge tell that story, I honestly don't even know how to react just as he was saying it. I could imagine everything in my mind going on.

Rodney Crouther (55:47):
I know, right? It was so vivid that, I mean, he really did a great job of painting the picture there, but it also really made you step back and think about what our individual role is in making sure the system is really by the people and for the people.

Eddie Sanchez (56:03):
So now that you've had a chance to talk to all these faculty members, how do you feel about the jury selection process now?

Rodney Crouther (56:08):
Actually, I think I'll feel a lot differently the next time I see a jury summons show up in my mailbox. If anything, it kind of tapped into, I dunno if it's my sense of patriotism or community service or whatever, but it really put in perspective how important each of our participation is in making sure things function the way that we imagine they should.

Eddie Sanchez (56:27):
Do you think your wife's going to enjoy this episode?

Rodney Crouther (56:30):
Yeah, I think she will. At least I'm hoping she will. And I'm not in trouble for bringing our home TV habits into it, but it was a lot of fun conversations and it was really eye-opening even for me. And I like to think I'm pretty up on how the system works. Eddie, right now what I'm really wondering is what do you have coming for us next month?

Eddie Sanchez (56:47):
So you know I'm a big supernatural horror movie fan, right?

Rodney Crouther (56:50):
Oh yeah. We talk about that a lot in the office.

Eddie Sanchez (56:52):
So of course, October's coming around. Halloween time is coming around, so we have a special ghost-esque episode.

Rodney Crouther (57:00):
Ooh, something spooky for the holidays or something scary?

Eddie Sanchez (57:04):
I think it's scary for some people, for sure.

Rodney Crouther (57:06):
OK. I can't wait to hear it. See you next month. Go Bobcats. This podcast is a production of the Division of Marketing and Communications at Texas State University. Podcasts appearing on the Texas State Podcast Network represent the views of the host and guests not of Texas State University.