The System Works

* Until recently, I considered myself to be one of the many who lost faith, at least temporarily, in our country’s judicial system after the recent Simpson verdict. Then I served on jury duty.

Having just completed one week as a jurist in the Superior Court, Department 15, I’d like to voice my personal reconciliation with the American judicial system and share my reasons with my fellow citizens. What I now know is that the “system” does work!

One of the obvious signs of its health was the fact that the courtroom was busier than any front office I’ve ever seen during my 20-year career in business management. At any time during each month, the judge and his staff deal with some 600 to 800 cases in different stages of litigation. Couriers and attorneys with their clients constantly appear to deliver documents or argue an important point in their upcoming legal case while the jury takes lunch or a longer than usual break. The bailiff’s and clerk’s phones ring more often than those in some of the most active sales offices I’ve visited lately.

These are not signs of a languishing or archaic judicial system. Rather, the courtroom was a place of respect and honesty, a place where the truth was valued more than ethnic, religious, economic or social influence.

What was particularly noticeable to all the jurors was how the truth of the matter before us had a way of “seeping” into the courtroom atmosphere, whether through a witness’s testimony, cross-examination, or in the eyes and attitudes of the defendant and plaintiff. It was this truth that the jury relied on to deliberate the facts presented and to decide whose explanation of the events in question most likely took place.

I learned from my experience in court not to judge a person until I am able to look them in the eyes and listen to their side of a story--the truth seems to just come out that way. I’ll keep this in mind whenever I hear the results of a decision made by a jury in our country from now on.

MARTIN HARDSTARK

Irvine