Free at last!
It's sixteen months since I was placed on a federal grand jury which, I soon learned, is as hard to get off of as a regular jury is to get on.
And not for want of trying. But a panicked Google search after the summons arrived yielded discouraging results: "Answer the judge's questions truthfully," recommended one veteran, "and wet your pants."
While many jurors are soon released because their business is suffering or for some other hardship, stories also circulated of people who were denied exemptions even if a parent was seriously ill. One woman we heard about, who'd already served two years in another jurisdiction, told the court that she would visit her father in the hospital regardless of their policy.
"We can send the marshals after you," the court replied. She went anyway and they didn't follow through on the threat.
I had no pressing excuse and so spent one lunch hour trying to escape the afternoon session by scouring Chinatown in vain for the fruit, durian. The smell is reputed to be so repugnant that in Singapore, it's illegal to take it on the subway.
Some of us accepted our fate with the attitude that women used to be advised to adopt if they ever found themselves the victims of rape: Lie back and enjoy it.
Others expressed pride in serving their country reinforced by relief that said service didn't involve risking their lives. But to me, the grand jury seemed to have morphed into another arm of an increasingly authoritarian state.
Unlike the more familiar trial jury, a grand jury only indicts, which is to say, accuses. Our job was simply to determine whether or not the prosecutor had enough evidence, or "probable cause," to bring a case to trial.
Thus, the cliché that we served as both a sword and a shield. Sword, for obvious reasons: Without our approval, the prosecutor couldn't proceed. On the other hand, supposedly, we prevented the prosecutor from getting carried away and embarking on personal or political vendettas.
However, in a world where the state has ever bigger guns at its disposal, the shield aspect has grown rusty to the point of obsolescence.
The only reference in our handbook to this function says that the grand jury "protect[s] citizens from unwarranted or inappropriate prosecutions."
But how are we to protect our fellow citizens if the only entity providing information to us is the prosecutor?
It's true that the target of investigation is allowed to appear at grand jury proceedings unless, of course, he's considered a flight risk in which case he probably hasn't been informed of them. But no one ever did.
Into the resulting vacuum rushed a flood of damning evidence. Or a trickle; since we only heard one side of the story, it hardly mattered. In the absence of contradiction, present the account of only one government official (or even, though more rarely, one lay witness,) and tada! You have your probable cause.
For this among other reasons,
"[s]ome lower federal courts... express concern that the grand jury is used as a 'pawn' or 'mere tool' of the prosecution."
