Hank Kalet

Back to blogging after spending the day in the jury room at the Middlesex County Courthouse, waiting, waiting, waiting.

I had jury duty — the fifth time, I believe, in about 12 years — and spent the day reading Taylor Branch’s “At Canaan’s Edge,” the third part of his biography of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the civil rights movement. Except, of course, when I was called for jury selection for an armed robbery trial.

I am in many ways the ideal juror: I am open minded and believe to my core in the notion that defendants are innocent until proven guilty, that it is the job of the prosecutor to prove his case and not the defendant’s. I also have a healthy respect for police officers and the job they do, built upon years of dealing with departments in Middlesex, Mercer and Somerset counties. From me, at least, both sides would get a fair hearing.

I escaped, but not without some trepidation over whether my reason for being excused was legitimate or not. I’m the first to admit that I did not relish the notion of serving for two weeks on a trial was far from appealing. Nor, I suspect, am I the only one who feels this way.

That didn’t stop me from feeling a bit guilty as I walked out of the court room. (My guilt grew a bit later, when I overheard two guys in front of me talking about a criminal defendant as if they were officers on a TV cop show, their patter underscoring their presumption of guilt.)

But I do think my concerns about serving on this particular case were legitimate — asking reporters and editors to serve on juries within the jurisdictions they cover could compromise their ability to do the job they are paid to do. Should a jury on which they serve hand down a not-guilty verdict, there remains a chance — a remote one, I admit — that later dealings with the prosecutor could become dicey. There are a lot of ifs here, I know, but it’s a scenario that is not outside the bounds of possibility.

I don’t want to imply that the prosecutor on yesterday’s case would have been anything less than professional, or that he even would remember my name. I had never met him or dealt with him before. But I have run into police officers, lawyers and various elected officials who carried sleights (both professional and personal) and bad publicity into all future dealings with me and with the papers for whom I was writing.

It’s a chance that I don’t want to take because of the impact it could have on the way we do our jobs and the kind of product we can provide to our readers.

South Brunswick Post, The Cranbury Press
The Blog of South Brunswick
The Cranbury Press Blog

E-mail me by clicking here