Today's column: Want to clean up juries? Bring in the yuppies
The snobbish, cynical view of the Ryan trial and its aftermath is that it's perfectly appropriate that a jury of the former governor's peers would turn out to be full of liars and petty criminals.
But, tempting as it is to trot out the old saw about a jury being a collection of 12 people who aren't smart enough to get out of jury duty, it isn't fair to cast aspersions on the folks who -- whether they started out in good faith or not -- spent six months of their lives hearing testimony in a complicated, slow-moving legal matter. They were willing to show up and serve, which is more than you can say for a lot of us.
Still, it is striking -- at least from the profoundly sheltered point of view of someone who thinks getting arrested and taken to court is a very big deal -- that so many of the jurors in the Ryan case either have criminal records themselves or are closely involved with someone who does.
This made me wonder if the city's growing population of overachieving yuppies -- people who either avoided crime because it would look bad on their college transcripts or had parents capable of getting youthful indiscretions cleared from their permanent records -- were somehow underrepresented in the jury pool.
I decided to conduct a highly scientific survey of Chicago's yuppie elite to see how frequently they'd been called to serve on juries and how many times they'd actually served. My working hypothesis was that lots of them would have been summoned, but most, considering their time too valuable for an activity antithetical to both multitasking and profitability, would have found a way to get out of actually showing up. I figured that pro-jury-service cultural trends -- Oprah, wearing her cute outfits at 26th and California; big celebrity trials in which jurors get a few minutes of quoted-on-ET fame; the ubiquity of ''Law & Order'' reruns -- would not have significant influence over people who like to consider themselves trend setters, rather than followers.
Basically, I was assuming that people who buy their coffee at Dunkin' Donuts would be inclined to serve on juries, while those who prefer Starbucks would not.
Scientific method
On Thursday morning, I sought to enlist the Sun-Times' crack sociological survey team to design a study that would test both parts of my hypothesis. On Thursday afternoon, I was informed that the Sun-Times does not, in fact, have such a team. I quickly threw out all the "highly scientific" criteria, along with the Dunkin' Donuts control group, and launched a research effort of a slightly narrower scope, designed to maximize my enjoyment of a fine spring day.
I headed for several yuppie gathering points: the North Michigan Avenue corner where shoppers from Crate & Barrel, Pottery Barn and Banana Republic converge, the Oak Street boutique district, a Wicker Park coffee shop, a Bucktown outdoor cafe and a Lincoln Park playground. At each spot, I looked for people with expensive strollers, cool eyeglasses and/or well-groomed dogs. Those in possession of street maps, crew neck sweatshirts and souvenir tote bags were screened out of my sample. I also decided not to attempt to survey people talking on cell phones, which eliminated about 60 percent of my target group.
Survey says: yuppies untapped
Of six Michigan Avenue shoppers, only one had ever been called to serve. But, she said, "as soon as they found out I was in law school, they dismissed me."
The other five all said they'd willingly serve if called. Eloisa Sierra, pushing her sleeping son along in a late-model Bugaboo, seemed shocked that there was any question. "Of course I would," she declared, "it's important."
Around the corner, on Oak Street, the reaction was the same. Of the eight people I talked to, only one, Amy Buerril, of Portage, Ind., had ever been summoned to jury duty. "I just sat all day," she said, "and then they sent us home."
But Buerril, just like all of the seven men and women who'd never been called, said she'd be very happy to actually sit on a jury. "I think I would like to do it," she said, "to see things firsthand and have an influence."
And so it went. Three out of four people at the coffee shop, 12 out of 15 people at the outdoor lunch spot, and four out of six playground moms all had never been asked to show up for jury duty. Not one person had actually sat in judgment of a court case.
"I've lived here for 12 years," said Ken Angermeier, strolling down Damen Avenue in Bucktown, "and I've never even gotten called. But I'd definitely do it. It's like your duty. Like voting."
I was, I have to admit, completely surprised by the civic virtue displayed by my survey participants. I was also a little skeptical of it, since it existed in the realm of the purely hypothetical.
There's only one way to test it, though, and that's to flood the city's yuppie districts with summonses and see who actually shows up.
Then it would be up to the lawyers: Are they brave enough to invite snobs like us to sit in judgment of others?
It is, after all, what we do best.
