Risky business

Judge offers compassionate advice for jurors

J ails are pretty simple operations. Undoubtedly, there’s a lot at stake in what jails do. The job of housing people who would rather be anywhere else is serious business that’s more complicated internally than many people realize. But fundamentally, the mission is straightforward: deprive them of their liberty, feed them, ensure they’re safe within the taxpayer-supported bed-andbreakfast that anyone with any sense should want to avoid, and get them to court when the judge requires their presence.

The system that puts people in jail, well, that’s more complex, with a lot of moving parts. Beyond the front-line work of law enforcement, the judicial system involves victims, defendants, judges, prosecutors, public defenders and private defense attorneys, probation officers, court clerks, social service agencies, bailiffs, court reporters, paralegals, diversionary programs.

Why so complicated? Consider what’s at stake. The U.S. Constitution defines a national ideal in which innocence is assumed until the proof demonstrates otherwise “beyond a reasonable doubt.” That presumption, as our U.S. Supreme Court has said, is based on the liberty-focused concept that “it is better to let the crime of a guilty person go unpunished than to condemn the innocent.” In other words, individual rights are paramount. Government faces limits when it wants to deprive anyone of freedom. The entire judicial system is designed to marry the need for law and order with a process that protects fundamental individual rights.

A vital part of that process not yet mentioned is the jury. This collection of an accused person’s “peers,” usually plucked from the community where the crime occurred, sits in judgment, given the job of determining guilt or innocent. It may be a relatively simple breaking or entering or it might be a murder. It could be someone perpetrating a fraud or an individual accused of trafficking human beings for sex. But ask anyone who has served on a jury and no matter how intense the alleged crime, they’ll probably tell you determining whether someone should be incarcerated for months or years is a heavy burden.

Reporter Tracy Neal last week delivered to Democrat-Gazette readers a glimpse into an often-overlooked element of jury service: mental health. The story related an interesting comment by Benton County Circuit Judge Brad Karren as he concluded the trail of a father accused and convicted in the brutal abuse and murder of his 6-year-old son.

Go seek mental health guidance, Karren told the jurors, if the awful details of that case or the process of sending a man to prison with no chance of parole weighed on their minds after they were dismissed and sent back to their regular, day-to-day lives. Up until that point, jurors have been under orders from the court not to discuss the case with anyone, even their fellow panelists. In cases in which jurors must hear about and sometimes see for themselves the results of violence, the evidence can be intense at a moment jurors have to hold all their emotions inside.

But, Karren advised them, there are no state resources for help for any mental health struggles they might experience as a result of their jury duty. Still, he encouraged them to seek out trusted advisers, including professional counselors or perhaps a pastor, if their service to the community turned into a personal demon.

“Jurors should not be ashamed to have open and honest conversations with family members and friends after their service is concluded,” Karren said. The judge knows what he’s talking about.

The story featured the recollection of jurors who relied on friends or family to hear them out and help them work themselves out of the emotional trauma experienced in trial.

Until this story, we’d never considered the toll some trials take on the members of the community asked to do their public service. And while we can’t say the issue requires some elaborate new system of mental health follow-up, we appreciate Karren’s compassionate words of wisdom to jurors who may not recognize the impact the trial may have on their emotional well-being.

We know this: The same concerns extend to the judges, prosecutors, public defenders and, certainly, the detectives who investigate some terrible situations. The jobs they do to help investigate criminal behaviors and adjudicate the cases are costly to their souls. But their work is vital to public safety, to preserving the kinds of communities we all want.

We can remember a prosecutor who, in prosecuting a particularly heinous crime, impressed upon jurors that parents, out of a sense of love and compassion, lie to their children when they tell them monsters don’t exist. They do, and the courts are where they face up to their crimes.

But the good news is the system also involves people in heroic roles, from jurors to detectives to judges and others, who put their emotional health at risk. Most of us do not fully appreciate the price that’s paid.

It’s a thankless job, but not today. We say “thank you” to them all.