Jury Duty: Just Do It.

Judge Skye told us on the first morning of jury duty that we may find the experience of being a juror meaningful and rewarding.  I didn’t know what to make of that but when I showed up for jury duty at the Multnomah County Courthouse, I’d just come out of a week where I felt my spirit was at a low point.

 After a difficult semester of being stretched too thin between the demands of teaching in an undergraduate program and my final three classes of coursework in a PhD program, where too many due dates collided in one week, I felt burnt out.  I didn’t realize the extent to what PhD stress meant until I read several articles written about it that precisely describe the burn out, overwhelm, anxiousness, depression and feelings of imposter syndrome I’ve cycled through over the past month or so. One woman wrote a whole book titled The PhDidn’t handbook: How to quit grad school like a champ. She goes by the title Erica Davis, PhDidn’t. I get it.   In their book Surviving Your Dissertation, Rudestam and Newton have one sentence that described my week before jury duty: “It is not unusual for the dissertation process to elicit all kinds of blows to self-esteem.”  I had taken on too much in the semester and one final paper was judged to be less than satisfactory. Criticism is to be expected, however sometimes what may be intended to help, in my case, had the impact of leaving me feeling defeated, disillusioned, and ready to quit. I questioned why I had even entered this endeavor in the first place. Do I need a PhD? Why? Is it worth the humiliation? Ironically, in giving most of my energy to grading my undergraduate class The Art of the Essay, one of my own essays as a student needed additional work.

The harsh judgement I’d received triggered old feelings of academic trauma (believe me, this is a real thing) from my elementary and high schools in Jamaica where the atmosphere was punishment, shaming and to be berated for the slightest transgressions.  I remembered how I refused to go to school for a while when I was 11 years old because I was so scared and anxious in Mrs. Sasso’s class in Grade 6 at Musgrave Prep School. At the time we had to sit for what was called the Common Entrance Exam to get us into high school which started in Grade 7. Fifty years later, I was now having to take an Incomplete grade for a class where the essay I was required to write comprises one of the Comprehensive Exams to proceed forward towards candidacy in the PhD program. I literally had to consult Bessel Van Der Kolk’s classic text on trauma, The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma to give me some insight into understanding why I was so upset. The body does indeed keep the score. Such was the week of June 5.

 On June 12, I reported for Jury Duty along with 200 of my fellow Oregonians. The new Multnomah County Courthouse is a beautiful 17-floor glass tower overlooking the Willamette River and on clear days, spectacular views of Mt. Hood, Mt. St. Helens, Mt Adams and the city of Portland. The building houses a stunning collection of art from Oregon artists that reflects the diversity and beauty of the city and its citizens.  For a building that is the site of much drama in its many courtrooms, the physical building itself is calm. It exudes a peaceful atmosphere I found supportive, inviting and captivating.  Its floor to ceiling glass windows allowed for watching endless activity on the river with boats, bridge lifts, trains, planes flying by, birds and a large flock of geese that live near the marina just below the courthouse. The vistas over to Mt. Hood and Mt. St. Helens was a tonic my shattered spirit sorely needed. I drank it in each day. Here you could think like a mountain … and a river … and a whole city.  Here you could gain some perspective. I needed some fresh perspective.

The first morning I waited along with my fellow potential jurors to see if I would be called. We watched videos about jury duty and Judge Kelly Skye came and spoke to us, assuring us that despite the fact that we may have some waiting around time and may not be actually called up to sit on a jury, that our presence was very important, and we were doing a valuable service for the community by being there.  The whole staff were welcoming and the sense of appreciation for the potential jurors was warm and genuine. 

In the early afternoon, 30 of us were called up to the 10^th floor courtroom of Judge Skye.  We were told it was a civil case regarding a contract and the lawyers would ask us some questions.  After all questions were answered, we were sent out of the courtroom for the lawyers to make their selection.  12 of us would be called to be on the jury.  When we were invited to return, I was one of the 12 selected.

That afternoon we heard opening statements from both sides.  The plaintiff was suing the defendant for nonpayment of the contract.  This had to do with the wholesale wine industry in Oregon. Both plaintiff and defendant were Oregon winemakers. 

The plaintiff had a lawyer representing him.  But notably, the defendant was defending herself, acting as her own lawyer. 

The case was interesting. You could boil it down to a he said/she said thing. He said she didn’t pay on delivery of the wine, she said she couldn’t sell the wine he supplied her because the contract was bogus – it didn’t contain vital information that she needed in order for it to be legally saleable wine on the market.

This defendant was impressive.  I marveled at her courage.  Standing up in a room full of strangers on a jury, stating in clear ways why she had been put in an impossible position.  By the end of the second day, I wondered why she wasn’t suing him.

I woke up the second  day of the trial and thought to myself, I am witnessing Durga in the flesh here. Durga, the Hindu Warrior Goddess, goes to war to defend the women and children.  Vicki Noble writes about Durga in her book Shakti Woman: Feeling Our Fire, Healing Our World:

In India they say the Great Goddess Durga is a Warrior Goddess present always in the eternal but who manifests in the physical when the demons get out of hand. Today’s resurgence of interest in shamanism and a return of the Goddess is our version of Durga making her presence felt. Goddess as Shaman is manifesting to rid the planet of the evil forces, and the obvious way she can take form is through women . . . Women as a group are re-membering. It seems that because we have nothing to lose and everything to regain, we are able to open to these memories and access this available information as it arises from the center of our psyches. As we do this, if we are willing to stand our ground and refuse to have it co-opted or compromised by established values and paradigms, sooner or later men will also hunger for these changes, joining us in the creation of a world from this memory. But for a woman in our time to hold her ground is a most difficult task . . . For a woman to hold to her instincts, her gut feelings, and her inner voice is an enormous task. (p.240)

This defendant had that quality. She had stepped into the archetype of Durga in my opinion.  It was riveting to watch the back and forth and the stamina and the force of presence it took her to clearly object to statements that she felt were incomplete, to offer counter arguments to the lawyer for the plaintiff and she got the plaintiff to admit certain important facts while she questioned him on the stand. 

The third day, I knew intuitively we would never have to give a verdict, that they were going to settle this case.  Sure enough, they did settle it. Judge Skye came to us as we waited in the jury room on Thursday afternoon and said that she had asked another judge to help them negotiate the settlement and that it had been successful. All parties were satisfied. And thank you for your service as a juror ... it made a difference for you to be here, she said. 

Wow.  I got to witness Durga in the flesh.  Talk about medicine. Medicine for my shattered spirit had arrived in an unexpected place. I felt so much resonance with the circumstances that the defendant found herself in. The Universe had given me the perfect case to witness.  If this defendant could get up and take on defending herself without a lawyer, maybe I can also do the work I am to do and not feel sidelined and defeated by one critical outside voice. 

If I ever do get to finish this PhD and write my book, (and the jury is still out on that at this point- maybe I’ll join the PhDidn’t crowd and save myself the anxiety) I’ll be sending a copy to Oregon’s first African American woman winemaker. I’ll be telling her she helped me when I was down. She was the medicine and the inspiration I needed as I find myself in the midst of having to dig deep for my own inner Durga. It was an honor to witness her defend herself in that courtroom. 

And thank you to Judge Skye, to Judicial Clerk Talia Lubin, to friendly and beautiful courtroom assistant Astra who gave so much delight to us jury members over the week, and all the staff at the Multnomah County Courthouse for the outstanding work you do for us citizens. What a truly rewarding experience and privilege to spend a week witnessing the work you do. I miss you already.

Astra, the best courtroom assistant ever…