Guest Column

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In search of the Holy Grail: The Michael Jackson Jury

By Burton S. Katz / Retired L.A. Superior Court Judge

We all have our jury perspective. The great Justice Learned Hand mused that “juries are not leaves swayed by every breath.” That’s very poetic. But then Arthur Train’s Mr. Tutt cried out “look at the jury, just look at them! Ignorant, stupid, prejudiced …” Ouch! And to pour a little acid on the wounds, H. L. Mencken sourly referred to juries as, “Twelve men of limited information and intelligence, chosen precisely because of their lack of intellectual resilience.” While, as you may have noted, I lean toward healthy cynicism, I am also a curmudgeon who favors the idealism and eloquence of Atticus Finch in Harper Lee’s “To Kill a Mockingbird:” “I’m no idealist to believe in the integrity of our courts and in the jury system-that is no ideal to me, it is living, working reality. Gentleman, a court is no better than each man of you sitting before me on this jury. A court is only as sound as its jury, and a jury is only as sound as the men who make it up…”

With all of its manifold imperfections, I will take a jury of 12 men and women of varying degrees of intelligence and socioeconomic standing over an elite jury of one possessed of uncommon intelligence. While the single juror may have wisdom and grace, he or she is still human; and is but one. As an innocent accused, I’ll take a chance that at least one in 12 will see the fragile strands of justice and grab it.

There is but one caveat to my public support of the jury system. The jury must be comprised of citizens who value justice and are committed to insuring that the defense and the prosecution receive a fair trial. Beware the juror who says that they are happy to sit on a jury for six months. Who would want to do that? What kind of life do they have? Beware the juror who tells you that family, friends, work and commitments will not significantly interfere with his life. Are they moles, living beneath the earth? What egocentricities drive the juror’s ethics? Beware the juror who says that they have no opinion of Michael Jackson or who tells the judge that he has never read or seen anything about Jackson. Beware the juror who says they have never heard of, nor read about Santa Barbara County District Attorney Thomas Snedden. Have they disengaged from public life? Are they disinterested in their fellow human beings? Have they not watched “Dangerous Housewives” or “Curb Your Enthusiasm?!” All right, I’m getting carried away.

And, I appear to be slipping into my cynical mode again. But why would anyone want to sit in on a six-month trial with a high probability that the jury will be sequestered at some point? “No problem,” says the prospective juror, “glad to do it, just doing my duty.” Well … maybe because he is going to write a book, or become famous, or otherwise exploit his insider status. Even if the juror has no present intention, there will be enormous pressures to yield to the ongoing media or reality show overtures down the road. That becomes important because the ability to skew the trial results may determine the value of what the juror has to “sell” or how “marketable” he has become. The more outrageous the result, the more compelling the story.

In most trials, one does not have to worry about jury exploitation. But this is not just any trial. These charges are emotional, explosive and accuse one of the most highly visible and famous celebrities in the world of sordid deeds. The case has broad appeal and raises questions that knife through a spectrum of social taboos: black celebrity justice, alleged child-abuse, child-victim rights, parental responsibility and the alleged perversion of “Peter Pan.” We can look to sensational cases in the past involving famous people and know that the trials were never ordinary, never easy and always skewed by misinformation and public sentiment.

In the final analysis, it is up to the judge to oversee the jury selection process and to ensure that he culls out jurors who have an agenda antithetical to the pursuit of justice; easier said than done. But if H. L. Mencken was right, namely that a jury is “a group of twelve men, who, having lied to the judge about their hearing, health and business engagements, have failed to fool him…” then there is a chance that justice may prevail in the trial of Michael Jackson. Perhaps it is our constant quest for an impartial jury that is most redeeming about our American justice system. Like the Holy Grail, we must commit to search for it, whether or not it is ultimately obtainable.