pharmdad2007's review against another edition
3.0
An interesting look at life in the jury room of a murder trial. Very opinionated and very much one man's side of the story. Still interesting though.
faith_hirschi's review against another edition
3.0
I read this for my trial advocacy class hence why it’s the only book in the last two months without an enemies to lovers situation. I was horrified about the reverse jury nullification and wanted to punch those people. Also the author insinuating that his time as a juror was a deprivation of rights like that of someone in jail like bruh get off your high horse.
kbruneau's review against another edition
3.0
This is an account of Burnett's experience on the jury for a murder trial. It is not meant to be about the facts of the case, but about how the people on the jury came to their verdict. My curiosity left me wanting more details of the case, but I understand why the author only included what he did. Having served on a jury myself (though for a case not nearly as long or serious as this), I found that Burnett's description of the quandary of the juror (having to make a judgement without being able to ferret out the truth) quite compelling. And the phases the jurors go through as they deliberate, cut off from their families and normal life, are fascinating. This book provides a dose of courtroom reality to temper all those episodes of Law & Order I've watched over the years.
martyna16's review against another edition
3.0
The first half is just boring. Burnett uses completely unnecessary imagery and metaphors to describe something that is already complicated, what with all the names and small details. But once we get to the deliberations, that’s where it gets interesting. It almost seens like Burnett’s writing and approach to his readers improves as you read further on. Not my favorite book in the world but definitely not a bad one.
okjkay's review against another edition
3.0
The writer is super arrogant, but this was an interesting read. I really hope I get the chance to be on a jury someday.
ericwelch's review against another edition
4.0
Trials are a "retelling, in a string of words . . . a distressing distortion of the cluttered thickness of things as they happen."
Burnett is a Princeton history professor who writes of his experience as the foreman of a jury for a murder trial. He became foreman, when the original foreman just disappeared, just before the deliberations were to begin. Burnett considered the experience "the most intense sixty-six hours [hours of jury deliberation; the entire experience lasted seventeen days] of my life."
The case itself was not famous, albeit with some sensational aspects involving rape, transvestitism, and male prostitution, but it's a fascinating story of intense clashes between personalities in the jury room and an honest recollection of how a jury came to its conclusion. The various personalities on the jury come to life, and Burnett soon realizes that his stereotypical assumptions about some of them are drastically wrong. He comes across as somewhat stuffy and aloof, making a fetish of bringing his own food to eat (apples, nuts, etc.), rather than be stuck eating the restaurant food (which he admits doesn't look too bad) and reading in a corner - "Academics cultivate a certain pomposity, most of them" - rather than socializing - something I can easily relate to. He assumed he would not be chosen for the jury: "I promised to give any healthy prosecutor hives. I brought along a copy of The New York Review of Books just in case."
The jury is beset by frustration almost from the beginning. The judge's instructions are maddeningly unclear or confusing. The jurors have the choice of finding the accused guilty of first degree murder, second degree murder, or a variety of manslaughter charges, depending on their perception of his intent. And what of self-defense? Did they need to decide whether a murder had been committed first? Each time they send a question out to the judge, they learn that the entire courtroom must be reassembled, taking considerable time, and this colors their willingness to ask questions.
The truth can be elusive. "We associate truth with knowledge, with seeing things fully and clearly, but it is more correct to say that access to truth always depends on a very precise admixture of knowledge and ignorance." The jury puzzles over what they might not be allowed to see. The Simpson trial is a good example of the audience knowing much more about the evidence and assorted witnesses than the jury, which was excluded from the room often. In this case, the jury is deliberately not permitted to learn about the background of the defendant or others related to the case, information the jury would have liked to have. Searching for the truth haunts Burnett. "I realize now that for me - humanist, an academic, a poetaster - the primary aim of sustained thinking and talking had always been, in a way, more thinking and talking. Cycles of reading, interpreting, and discussing were always exactly that: cycles. One never 'solved' a poem, one read it, and then read it again - each reading emerging from earlier efforts and preparing the mind for future readings."
The trial, contrarily, demanded a solution and Burnett's account of the intense deliberations of the jurors recalls Twelve Angry Men.
The jury, in its inability to reach a verdict, quickly begins to debate the very nature of what constitutes justice. Adelle, one of the jurors, another academic, said on the third day of deliberations, after a contentious second day, "We've been told that we have to uphold the law. But I don't understand what allegiance I should have to the law itself. Doesn't the whole authority of the law rest on its claim to be our system of justice? So, if the law isn't just, how can it have any force?" Burnett "sensed that people were starting to perceive the law as overly clumsy, somehow that it was a blunt tool - and that the higher principle, justice, had cast a kind of spell in the room." In this case, the "dictates of justice demanded that we circumvent the law."
Ultimately, what the jurors came to realize was that the burden of proof for the prosecution is very high because the power of the state is so strong. The jurors themselves had been subject to this power. They had been refused the right to go home [ they were refused phone calls home, were forced to stay in a moth-eaten motel and were refused the ability to have a a prescription refilled, ultimately sending one of the jurors to a hospital], sent "men with guns to watch you take a piss, it [the state] could deny you access to a lawyer [one of the jurors wanted to know her rights as a juror], it could embarrass you in public [the judge upbraided Burnett in public for standing at slow moments to exercise a bad leg] and force you to reply meekly, it could, ultimately, send you to jail - all this without even accusing you of a crime."
Burnett is a Princeton history professor who writes of his experience as the foreman of a jury for a murder trial. He became foreman, when the original foreman just disappeared, just before the deliberations were to begin. Burnett considered the experience "the most intense sixty-six hours [hours of jury deliberation; the entire experience lasted seventeen days] of my life."
The case itself was not famous, albeit with some sensational aspects involving rape, transvestitism, and male prostitution, but it's a fascinating story of intense clashes between personalities in the jury room and an honest recollection of how a jury came to its conclusion. The various personalities on the jury come to life, and Burnett soon realizes that his stereotypical assumptions about some of them are drastically wrong. He comes across as somewhat stuffy and aloof, making a fetish of bringing his own food to eat (apples, nuts, etc.), rather than be stuck eating the restaurant food (which he admits doesn't look too bad) and reading in a corner - "Academics cultivate a certain pomposity, most of them" - rather than socializing - something I can easily relate to. He assumed he would not be chosen for the jury: "I promised to give any healthy prosecutor hives. I brought along a copy of The New York Review of Books just in case."
The jury is beset by frustration almost from the beginning. The judge's instructions are maddeningly unclear or confusing. The jurors have the choice of finding the accused guilty of first degree murder, second degree murder, or a variety of manslaughter charges, depending on their perception of his intent. And what of self-defense? Did they need to decide whether a murder had been committed first? Each time they send a question out to the judge, they learn that the entire courtroom must be reassembled, taking considerable time, and this colors their willingness to ask questions.
The truth can be elusive. "We associate truth with knowledge, with seeing things fully and clearly, but it is more correct to say that access to truth always depends on a very precise admixture of knowledge and ignorance." The jury puzzles over what they might not be allowed to see. The Simpson trial is a good example of the audience knowing much more about the evidence and assorted witnesses than the jury, which was excluded from the room often. In this case, the jury is deliberately not permitted to learn about the background of the defendant or others related to the case, information the jury would have liked to have. Searching for the truth haunts Burnett. "I realize now that for me - humanist, an academic, a poetaster - the primary aim of sustained thinking and talking had always been, in a way, more thinking and talking. Cycles of reading, interpreting, and discussing were always exactly that: cycles. One never 'solved' a poem, one read it, and then read it again - each reading emerging from earlier efforts and preparing the mind for future readings."
The trial, contrarily, demanded a solution and Burnett's account of the intense deliberations of the jurors recalls Twelve Angry Men.
The jury, in its inability to reach a verdict, quickly begins to debate the very nature of what constitutes justice. Adelle, one of the jurors, another academic, said on the third day of deliberations, after a contentious second day, "We've been told that we have to uphold the law. But I don't understand what allegiance I should have to the law itself. Doesn't the whole authority of the law rest on its claim to be our system of justice? So, if the law isn't just, how can it have any force?" Burnett "sensed that people were starting to perceive the law as overly clumsy, somehow that it was a blunt tool - and that the higher principle, justice, had cast a kind of spell in the room." In this case, the "dictates of justice demanded that we circumvent the law."
Ultimately, what the jurors came to realize was that the burden of proof for the prosecution is very high because the power of the state is so strong. The jurors themselves had been subject to this power. They had been refused the right to go home [ they were refused phone calls home, were forced to stay in a moth-eaten motel and were refused the ability to have a a prescription refilled, ultimately sending one of the jurors to a hospital], sent "men with guns to watch you take a piss, it [the state] could deny you access to a lawyer [one of the jurors wanted to know her rights as a juror], it could embarrass you in public [the judge upbraided Burnett in public for standing at slow moments to exercise a bad leg] and force you to reply meekly, it could, ultimately, send you to jail - all this without even accusing you of a crime."
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