Have grave concerns about the prison pipeline? Serve on a jury. [View all]

As an assistant public defender in Baltimore, I am tasked with selecting a jury to decide the case against my client. For my clients, this is a terrifying leap of faith. Often, individuals with objections to the brutal and racist reality of the carceral state (a view that I happen to share) arrive at the bench and voice those objections to the court and the parties. They are then summarily and unceremoniously struck for cause by the prosecution or the court. I’m not sure why Ariel Ludwig believes an option to conscientiously object to jury service would be any more meaningful than that (”‘I will not be party to this violent system’: An abolitionist against jailing gets a jury summons in Baltimore City,” Nov. 3). It certainly does nothing at all to support my client who is pursuing the one and only avenue available to them to fight the crushing machinery of the state.

Conscientious objection to the carceral state is accomplished by participating in jury service, not by avoiding it. Jury service is a form of direct democracy. Jury nullification, though not recognized as a legal defense in Maryland, is a means through which jurors can voice their objections to the brutality of the state. Despite its lack of recognition, jury nullification has a long history in the United States for ill and for good. It is simply a tool.

Abstention, on the other hand, does nothing more than further concentrate the pool of jurors who have no such scruples regarding the carceral state. For that reason, abstention does not actually keep one’s hands clean; refusal to participate in the system is its own kind of participation. It may ease the conscience of the Florence Levy Kay Post-Doctoral Fellow in Machine Learning, Law, and Racial Justice at Brandeis University, but that’s cold comfort to my clients.

https://www.baltimoresun.com/opinion/readers-respond/bs-ed-rr-jury-duty-letter-20221107-nil5cszwjvhq7bop5delbqmyym-story.html

Against the war on (some) drugs? Serve on a jury.

Are you upset that something is now illegal because Samuel Alito had a seance with a jurist who murdered women? Serve on a jury.