Rating: 
Summary: Avoid This Book
Review: This is a terrible book by an atrocious author. The author is not very likable; at the start he has made up his mind about the case, so he makes fun of the other jurors for being stupid, especially the ones that don't support his position. His arrogance comes through easily, making long winded speeches to his fellow jurors and "putting them in their place" when they say things he doesn't like (despite his being younger than most of them).He says early on that it was his goal to "hang the jury," and the only rationale he gives for that is that his whole experience in life has been academia, where the discussion essentially never ends, and he just doesn't have it in him to make such a final decision. How odd! There are no real insights into the criminal justice process, just lots of very high-brow language that sounds almost put-on. Also, he exerpts from his diary at one point--showing that even in his personal life, this fellow can only write pretensiously. Avoid this book!
Rating: 
Summary: A Professor in the Jury Box
Review: This tells of his experience as a jury member on a little publicized murder case. It is about people, justice, the law, and truth as a jury sees it. The jury decides the facts in the case, as presented by the prosecutor and defense attorney. Chapter 2 tells of his attempt to avoid jury duty: bring along a copy of "The NY Review of Books"; it didn't work. The Senior Court Clerk asked "anybody not understand English?", and those who understood this question were released from jury service! Page 27 tells of the standard of proof: reasonable doubt. As a student of intellectual history he knows how variable was its definition over the ages. But his knowledge seems to come from books, as on page 30 "soy tan macho ...". Chapter 3 starts by questioning the evolution of the justice system into a jury, judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney. What would he say about the alternative: one person as judge, jury, and executioner? The police searched for the attacker among patients treated by hospitals. "It is hard to stab someone many times, in haste and agitation, and avoid a slip or two" (p.38). The police found a suspicious case, searched for the bloodstained clothes, and find the evidence to make an arrest. In Chapter 4 (p.70) he says "defendants in murder trials seldom take the stand". In early 19th Century England they were NOT allowed to speak at all. He also wonders about withholding the prior history of the defendant. This is to prevent prejudice by lazy jurors, and insure they only consider the facts in this case. After the defendant testified, the prosecutor cross-examined him in a badgering and belligerent manner. The defendant answered calmly. The author "felt a deep desire to see the prosecutor lose the case" (p.73). No motive was proven, so the claim of self-defense seemed reasonable. They didn't believe the prosecutor's theory. The unexplained mystery is why this slight book of little importance was published. Read "The Juror and the General", or "The Private Diary of an O.J. Juror" for more important (and educational) cases.
Rating: 
Summary: A Trial By Jury
Review: To all the naysayers about this book, you're right: Dr. Burnett is a pedantic, condescending, and often tiresome intellectual snob. And he admits it. It's an occupational hazard for most professors: in a university setting, as Burnett himself writes, "too often, one feels compelled to affect familiarity with whatever subject comes up." But if you can get past his know-it-all tone and smug metaphysical posturing, or better yet see it as an integral part of the story, which it is, this is a fascinating and compelling book. Fast paced and occasionally lyrical, the book describes in occasionally overwhelming detail the bizarre emotional crucible that lies at the heart of our criminal justice system: the jury deliberation room. What we learn in this book is that a jury of your peers doesn't mean your family or your friends or your neighbors; it means a wildly divergent group of characters drawn randomly from society -- a group that very well may include a certain creepy professor with weird eating habits who is so closed-minded that he implicitly and unthinkingly believes that anyone who fails to see things as he does must be mental. And yet he and his jury come up with what seems to be the right answer. Inept police work, inept prosecutor, inept judge: they could do nothing but acquit. The jury system works, not just despite its flaws, but in part because of them -- including, in this case, a foreman you wouldn't want to invite to dinner, but would be lucky to have in that secret room if you were the defendant.
Rating:
Summary: Power of the State
Review: Trials are a "retelling, in a string of words . . . a distressing distortion of the cluttered thickness of things as they happen." Burnett is a Princeton history professor who writes of his experience as the foreman of a jury for a murder trial. He became foreman, when the original foreman just disappeared, just before the deliberations were to begin. Burnett considered the experience "the most intense sixty-six hours [hours of jury deliberation; the entire experience lasted seventeen days] of my life." The case itself was not famous, albeit with some sensational aspects involving rape, transvestitism, and male prostitution, but it's a fascinating story of intense clashes between personalities in the jury room and an honest recollection of how a jury came to its conclusion. The various personalities on the jury come to life, and Burnett soon realizes that his stereotypical assumptions about some of them are drastically wrong. He comes across as somewhat stuffy and aloof, making a fetish of bringing his own food to eat (apples, nuts, etc.), rather than be stuck eating the restaurant food (which he admits doesn't look too bad) and reading in a corner - "Academics cultivate a certain pomposity, most of them" - rather than socializing - something I can easily relate to. He assumed he would not be chosen for the jury: "I promised to give any healthy prosecutor hives. I brought along a copy of The New York Review of Books just in case." The jury is beset by frustration almost from the beginning. The judge's instructions are maddeningly unclear or confusing. The jurors have the choice of finding the accused guilty of first degree murder, second degree murder, or a variety of manslaughter charges, depending on their perception of his intent. And what of self-defense? Did they need to decide whether a murder had been committed first? Each time they send a question out to the judge, they learn that the entire courtroom must be reassembled, taking considerable time, and this colors their willingness to ask questions. The truth can be elusive. "We associate truth with knowledge, with seeing things fully and clearly, but it is more correct to say that access to truth always depends on a very precise admixture of knowledge and ignorance." The jury puzzles over what they might not be allowed to see. The Simpson trial is a good example of the audience knowing much more about the evidence and assorted witnesses than the jury, which was excluded from the room often. In this case, the jury is deliberately not permitted to learn about the background of the defendant or others related to the case, information the jury would have liked to have. Searching for the truth haunts Burnett. "I realize now that for me - humanist, an academic, a poetaster - the primary aim of sustained thinking and talking had always been, in a way, more thinking and talking. Cycles of reading, interpreting, and discussing were always exactly that: cycles. One never 'solved' a poem, one read it, and then read it again - each reading emerging from earlier efforts and preparing the mind for future readings." The trial, contrarily, demanded a solution and Burnett's account of the intense deliberations of the jurors recalls Twelve Angry Men. The jury, in its inability to reach a verdict, quickly begins to debate the very nature of what constitutes justice. Adelle, one of the jurors, another academic, said on the third day of deliberations, after a contentious second day, "We've been told that we have to uphold the law. But I don't understand what allegiance I should have to the law itself. Doesn't the whole authority of the law rest on its claim to be our system of justice? So, if the law isn't just, how can it have any force?" Burnett "sensed that people were starting to perceive the law as overly clumsy, somehow that it was a blunt tool - and that the higher principle, justice, had cast a kind of spell in the room." In this case, the "dictates of justice demanded that we circumvent the law." Ultimately, what the jurors came to realize was that the burden of proof for the prosecution is very high because the power of the state is so strong. The jurors themselves had been subject to this power. They had been refused the right to go home [ they were refused phone calls home, were forced to stay in a moth-eaten motel and were refused the ability to have a a prescription refilled, ultimately sending one of the jurors to a hospital], sent "men with guns to watch you take a piss, it [the state] could deny you access to a lawyer [one of the jurors wanted to know her rights as a juror], it could embarrass you in public [the judge upbraided Burnett in public for standing at slow moments to exercise a bad leg] and force you to reply meekly, it could, ultimately, send you to jail - all this without even accusing you of a crime."
Rating:
Summary: An interesting read
Review: While reading a Trial By Jury, I could not help but to get the sense that the entire legal system is nothing more than a rotting edifice, ready to fall into a million pieces at any moment. However, the only thing that seems to be preventing this fate from occurring is the jury system. It is this system, this left over from medieval England that Burnett attempts to describe, which he does with amazing clarity. Although, Burnett does come off as a snob belittling others, this should in no way be allowed to detract from his story. What Burnett describes are the inner workings of a very complicated throwback to direct democracy. Without this throwback, without these12 citizens, some of whom may be snobbish academicians, while others may be high school dropouts, the American legal system would be nothing more than a return to the non-democratic Roman system of law. For all its sophistication, and history, European justice is nothing more than a relic of Justinians code, a reminder of the type of justice many of our forefathers originally fled from. However, I must say that this book does a great job to show the non-lawyer the importance of the modern American jury system and it's relation to American Democracy.
Rating: 
Summary: Existential Autobiography
Review: While reporting jury selection, D. Graham Burnett writes: "For a while there is, among us, a woman reading a book of Camus short stories. Then she stops showing up," (p.33). _A Trial by Jury_ invokes the absurd, but it does not embrace the absurd. It would be absurd to read this text with a closed mind. D. Graham Burnett, a historian of science, delivers a text that I view as an existential autobiography. We explore Burnett's thought processes: "What I am writing is my own story of the deliberations," (p. 14), and he acknowledges that his interpretation of the trial and deliberations differs from interpretations by other jurors. Burnett guides us through the trial and deliberations concerning the killing of a transvestite. While exploring the trial and deliberations, we encounter, process, and (sometimes) abandon many judgments (only a few deal with the defendant). Burnett states about the jury: "We ran the gamut of group dynamics: a clutch of strangers yelled, cursed, rolled on the floor, vomited, whispered, embraced, sobbed, and invoked both God and necromancy," (p. 12). The reader becomes familiar with the jury dynamics and one is led to shudder at the raw power granted to 12 citizens and (an obstinate) judge. The author, at times, is obstinate, but he also appears trustworthy (tremendous memory) and dedicated. I found myself fascinated by this academically well-rounded, successful, youthful Ph.D who obsesses over food (he packed a single shirt and a bag full of food for the sequestered deliberations) and who briefly utilizes Wallace Stevens (the poet; pgs. 148 - 151) to interpret the deliberations. This text kept my mind engaged and it will become an addition to a future syllabus for a course I'll teach. Along with this book, I recommend Kafka's _The Trial_, Albert Camus' _The Stranger_, and any text by Wallace Stevens.
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