Since Leaving the Jury Room

I have been thinking a lot about responsibility since my jury experience.  While I have a great deal of compassion for people’s suffering and struggles, I do believe that we are responsible for our actions.  And I think we have a responsibility as a society to the members of our society.  We are interconnected and need to support and care for one another.  It seems that many of the problems we face today arise from our ability to disconnect from each other and from the consequences of our choices.

I don’t think punishment works.  I don’t think it works with kids and I don’t think it works with adults convicted of crimes.  It doesn’t promote healing, learning, growth or transformation.  Nevermind the death penalty, which is completely horrifying.  So here I am, sitting on a bench in this courtroom thinking about my participation in this whole thing.  I’m feeling very uneasy about the fact that I could be making a decision that would at worst kill someone and at best take away a big chunk of his life in a meaningless sort of way.  What we are told is that our job is only to determine the facts of the case and whether or not the defendant is guilty of the crime.  Essentially, we are to compartmentalize our role in the process and not worry our pretty little heads about what happens after we are done.

This doesn’t feel good to me.  I have put a lot of work into getting more connected not less.  But I have this very strong undeniable sense that “getting out” of this based on these thoughts and feelings (if I could) would be exactly the same thing.  I see that not being on the jury does not disconnect me from what is happening, the same way not being the judge does not disconnect me from the sentence.  On the jury or off, I am connected to this.

Now, for the record, while I don’t know much about other countries’ judicial systems, I feel pretty sure that ours is better than most.  But it has problems.  For instance, this young man on trial had a lawyer who seemed so much less capable than the prosecuting attorney, I assume because he couldn’t afford anyone better.  That doesn’t seem fair.  I probably have fewer issues with the judicial system than "correctional" system, but I guess the point of this whole post is that it is all connected.

I don’t have an answer or any way to tie this all up.  I just looked up “responsibility” in the online Sanskrit dictionary and “no results were found.”  I’m quite sure that doesn’t mean that there was no notion of responsibility in ancient India, but that it was conceptualized differently.  For me, the whole practice of yoga leads to me taking responsibility for my own actions, my own life, to stop projecting things outward and look inward to see what is going on.  Perhaps this post is about karma, the law of action and reaction—whatever I do, there is a consequence.  I also think of avidya (ignorance), the first klesha (obstacle to happiness or cause of suffering).  Ignorance is not seeing that everything is connected in essence.  Dharma—I just thought of dharma—that is one form of responsibility.  That is the question I have been wrestling with.  What is my duty, my responsibility, the right thing to do?

I don’t know.  But coincidentally, the movie that arrived in my mailbox recently was a documentary called What I Want My Words to Do to You about Eve Ensler doing a writing group in a women’s prison.  It did reinforce for me that people are beautiful and full of potential.  Maybe I will get involved with teaching yoga in prison or something.  I just made a donation to the Washington Coalition to Abolish the Death Penalty.  I wouldn’t have thought when I went to the courthouse last Monday that it would lead me here.