My 7th Career Jury Summons

This time it was a medical malpractice lawsuit likely to last 2 weeks. A baby’s birth, complications and resulting liver transplant. With full color slides of the bloated, achingly vulnerable innocent. In a jury pool of 60, with the plaintiffs wanting an all-female jury—and preferably all pregnant—and the defense hoping for all marines I managed to get dismissed after 2 days of voir dire. No determining negligence and putting a dollar value on a baby’s damaged insides for me.

Ten years ago I was less fortunate. Forced to serve 2 days a week for 2 months on the Dekalb County Grand Jury. Hearing about every felony case in the county the DA had ready for indictment. 4 murders, a couple dozen aggravated assaults, various thefts by receiving, thefts by taking, fraud, terroristic threats and the dinky little shoplifting cases that rose to felony status as a third offense. Since we weren’t determining guilt we could here an officer's testimony rather than here from victims. Sober, removed citizens hearing detached, professional civil servants reading blotter entries. One of our first cases was the sexual assault of a hearing-impaired victim. Was it the dryness of the police officer's reading that made it more tragic? The plain, un-Gothic description of “strange grunts” heard by a neighbor? Eerie, stillborn wheezes: the sounds of a deaf woman screaming.

There’s injustice in the world. Do I do my part to right it? Or do I skip out early by not looking wide-eyed at the baby?