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By Elie Honig

Dear Reader,

By this point, we’ve grown familiar with the main players in the ongoing trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin for the May 2020 killing of George Floyd.

There’s Judge Peter Cahill, masked and understated but firmly in control of the courtroom from behind his surreal plexiglass barrier.

The prosecutors — Jerry Blackwell, Erin Eldridge, Steve Schleicher, and Matthew Frank — have been uniformly businesslike, methodical, and crisp in their presentation of the evidence. Blackwell has stood out for his ability to make complex medical concepts understandable to a layperson, while Eldridge has shown a deft, empathetic capacity for presenting testimony from traumatized minors and eyewitnesses.

Then there’s Chauvin’s defense lawyer, Eric Nelson. Nelson has taken the most heat publicly and over social media — understandably, given that he has the unenviable task of defending the seemingly indefensible acts of his client who, as clear as the videotape itself, spent over nine minutes kneeling on the neck of a man who was handcuffed, face down, on the street. By and large, Nelson has done his job capably, and without undue dramatics.

Finally, next to Nelson at counsel table sits Chauvin himself, taking refuge behind his mask and constantly jotting notes. When the camera cuts to Chauvin, it can be jarring to remember that this person who sits quietly in court, in a suit and tie, dutifully scribbling, is the same person we see on the videos, sneering at the crowd of bystanders as he kneels on Floyd’s neck.

But the most important people in the courtroom remain unseen: the twelve men and women of the jury, who will decide Chauvin’s fate and, as they likely recognize, much more. The jury is anonymous, so we don’t see their faces or know their names (not yet, at least; count on seeing some of them go public after the verdict comes down). They are not sequestered yet, so they go home after each court day, but they will be sequestered once deliberations begin next week.

We do know some of the jury’s basic demographics. Of the twelve jurors who will decide the case, there are three Black men, one Black woman, and two women who identified themselves in court as multiracial. The jury is more racially diverse than Hennepin County itself, which has about 13.6% African-American population. Beyond that, we know a precious few tidbits — we’ve got a nurse, a banker, a “widow who rides her motorcycle in her spare time.” But by and large, this jury, like any jury, remains a mystery.

There is a natural tendency to forget about the jury entirely. When we watch the trial on television, we assess every word and every movement by every person. The jury remains unseen, however, just outside the frame. As a result, we come to think of the jury as some sort of abstraction, a monolith, a disembodied entity. But of course the jury is nothing more, or less, than a collection of human beings. As such, any jury is inherently unpredictable. Good luck guessing what any single person will do — never mind twelve strangers, thrust together by happenstance and now tasked with deciding the future of another human being.

Jurors are provided surprisingly little in the way of specific directions. Right before deliberations start, the judge will give the jury its formal legal instructions. Essentially, the judge will break down for the jury, in as close to “plain English” as possible, the basic legal parameters — proof beyond a reasonable doubt and the like — and a description of each charge, element-by-element. Beyond that, the jury is essentially left to its own devices. They’re not told how to deliberate, how to review the evidence, how to interact with one another, or how long they ought to take. Once the jurors go into the room to deliberate, they’re essentially operating on their own, in a black box.

The only communications from the jury to the outside world come in the form of notes. These are notes in the old-fashioned sense; the jury typically will hand-write its question or request on a piece of paper, fold it up, put it in an envelope, and hand it out to the courtroom deputy, who relays it to the judge.  Functionally, it reminds me of old-fashioned high-school note-passing — only with vastly higher stakes.

Jury notes come at entirely unpredictable intervals. I’ve seen juries send out notes every few minutes, and I’ve seen them go days without a peep. Some notes pose legal questions that go to the heart of the issue on trial: “How much doubt is reasonable doubt?” for example, or “Can you clarify the different intent requirements between Count One and Count Two?” Others are mundane, or bizarre. I’ve seen juries send notes asking for more office supplies, or for the thermostat to be turned up. In one of my trials, the jury sent a note asking permission for one juror to use a different bathroom than the common one adjacent to the jury room. (I had no followup questions on this particular note.)

When jury notes do come out, the tarot-card reading will begin. What does that note suggest? Is it good or bad for the prosecution, or defense? Are the jurors getting along? Are they confused? Are they close to a verdict? I’ve even asked to see the physical note itself, after the judge read it aloud, to make a (very) uninformed determination about whether the handwriting conveyed any clues. (It didn’t.)

I tell you this, in part, so you’ll know what to expect next week. Waiting on a jury can be a stressful, unsettling, and bizarre experience. Get ready for long periods of uncertainty and boredom and worry punctuated by bursts of activity offering flashes of (potentially ambiguous or even misleading) insight into the jury’s state of mind.

But there’s also something uniquely American, uniquely democractic, about the jury deliberation process.  It can be unpredictable, confusing, even infuriating. But ultimately the process, like the jury itself, is fundamentally human. For all the rules and structures and procedures we impose on our court system, the final decision — by design — comes down to the jury’s reasoning, common sense, and interpersonal dynamic.

We don’t do professional juries, or expert juries, in the United States. We go with the twelve women and men who randomly get that jury notice in the mail and make it through the selection process.  It’s messy, it’s imperfect, but generally it works — like the democratic process itself.

Stay Informed,

Elie

Elie Honig is the author of the forthcoming book, “Hatchet Man: How Bill Barr Broke the Prosecutor’s Code and Corrupted the Justice Department,” now available for pre-order.