Robin Givhan: Bless the Trump jury, not for the verdict but for their service
At a time when Americans can barely agree on whether the sky is blue or the grass is green, five women and seven men, all strangers until two months ago, agreed that former president Donald Trump was guilty on 34 counts of falsifying business records in the first degree – a felony. They rendered their verdict Thursday evening with solemnity and care after deliberating over the course of two days.
These jurors should receive the gratitude of every citizen, not because they found Trump guilty, but because they did their civic duty under extraordinary circumstances. A former president was on trial for what Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg said amounted to election fraud. Trump hid hush money payments he made to an adult-film actress to prevent damaging information from reaching voters before the 2016 election.
The jurors are a vivid reminder that in this stress-tested democracy, ordinary people still matter and still wield significant clout. They have the capacity to digest complicated documents, consider the complexity of human nature and remain unbowed by titles, bluster, trolling and grandiosity. They can be brave. And it took a level of courage to sit on this jury in these fractious times.
These men and women did all this without fanfare. They didn’t emerge from court each day, as the defendant did, and pontificate in front of cameras and microphones about any frustrations they felt or inconveniences with which they had to reckon. If they were cold and uncomfortable in that dismal courtroom as Trump proclaimed himself to be, the public didn’t know. They simply did their job and they did so swiftly. In the brief interlude between having been sworn in and rendering their verdict, they asked for little in return. Perhaps one of them will write a book or sell their story to Hollywood or otherwise claim their time in the spotlight. But in this moment, they simply did what good citizens were called to do – and that’s priceless.
Their lift was historic but also mundane. Trump was just another defendant, no matter how determined his lawyers were to remind the court that he’d once held the office of president. His lawyers wanted to confer on Trump all the respect and dignity that the office deserves, not quite understanding that the office is distinct from the man.
After the verdict, Trump emerged from the courtroom to stand where he has so many times before and during this trial, in a hallway behind metal barricades that formed his own little cell. He came out scowling and slightly hunched over. “We didn’t do a thing wrong,” he said. “I’m a very innocent man.” Except that he is not. His peers said so.
It’s always been a bit of magical thinking to refer to jurors as a defendant’s peers. All too often, they’re not. Historically, that has meant that Black people, Latinos, the poor or the uneducated have been underrepresented and disadvantaged in the judicial system. Trump has argued that the jury pool couldn’t possibly be made up of his peers mostly because so few New Yorkers voted for him. He wanted a change of venue. But Trump won 22.6% of the New York City vote in 2020. He grew up in Queens. He built his professional and celebrity reputation in New York. He launched his political career in New York. And certainly, more than a few New Yorkers know about wealth, power, hubris and tabloids – all of which were key ingredients in the caustic stew Trump was accused of cooking up.
The jury pool may not have been his peers, but they were his neighbors, his colleagues, his admirers, his antagonists. They were the passersby with whom he rubbed shoulders before he became a political glad-hander.
These men and women did not come to the jury easily. During jury selection, there was hand-wringing and tears. One person who thought they were up to the task later tearfully admitted they were not. Their concerns about a loss of privacy were real. The reality of the undertaking was made clear when they sat in a room only a few feet away from the defendant, someone who in 2017 stood in front of the Capitol and described an “American carnage,” a country filled with desperate mothers, roving gangs and hollowed-out factories scattered across the landscape like tombstones. Here was the man who promised to save America from threats real and imagined. And they were being asked to judge whether he was a crook. Twelve everyday New Yorkers.
In remarks following the verdict, Bragg described this case, and many white-collar criminal cases, as a matter of “public integrity.” These aren’t cases in which lives are directly at risk. Individuals are not in imminent danger of bodily harm. They’re cases in which the public’s trust in truth and fairness has been harmed. The victim isn’t so much an individual or a group. The harm is levied upon an idea, on an article of faith.
The idea that public integrity must be defended, can be, is fueled in large measure by idealism. Pure optimism makes one believe that 12 ordinary folks – with different levels of education and life experiences, who may have little in common – can come together and find consensus. Each juror matters equally. No one’s words inherently carry additional weight. The idea of it is breathtaking.
“The only voice that matters,” Bragg said, “is the voice of the jury.” And in the matter of People v. Donald J. Trump, the jury spoke as one.