Jury Duty Is Virginians’ Power

Several years ago, did what tens of thousands of Virginians have done since colonial days: He went to court after being summoned for jury duty. The case he was picked to help try seemed simple enough: the government presented abundant evidence that the defendant, Frederick Turner, had sold drugs. St. Louis and his fellow jurors sympathized with Turner. He was struggling with addiction and had no criminal history. They saw him as a man who needed help, not a threat to the community. But the jurors also believed their job was only to deliver the obvious verdict of guilt. They did, then went home.

St. Louis later learned that Turner received a mandatory minimum sentence of 40 years in prison. Even though the judge called the sentence “excessive” and “wrong,” he said the law left him no choice. Turner died shortly into his prison term. St. Louis has said he wishes he had voted differently — he didn’t know he could.

Like most people, St. Louis was not fully informed about what jurors can, and should, do. Until recent reforms in Virginia, courts did not tell jurors what sentence a conviction would trigger, or even whether the judge would have discretion in setting it. Jurors are not told about their ability to acquit a defendant when justice and their conscience demand that they do so — even if the defendant violated the law as a factual matter. Many jurors never hear that the law has protected the freedom of their verdict since before Independence, and that their decision to acquit cannot be overturned on appeal.

Courts and lawyers have gradually chipped away at the role of jurors as the conscience of the community and at ensuring that punishments are imposed only when ordinary people are convinced of the need to do so. Maybe that’s why nearly all modern criminal convictions come from plea bargaining instead of trials — a change that’s stopped government from being run by the people and contributed to a sense that citizens are powerless over the laws.

That is not the system the Founders fought to establish. Virginian Thomas Jefferson called trial by jury “the only anchor ever yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” John Adams wrote in 1771 that a juror has a duty to vote according to “his own best Understanding, Judgment and Conscience” — even against the direction of the court.

It’s time to recover the constitutional guarantee of trial by jury. Because judges and lawyers aren’t leading the way, people called for jury duty have to. On Aug. 31, the Cato Institute is launching a nonpartisan civic education campaign called “Your Verdict Counts.” At YourVer​dict​Counts​.org, Virginians will find explainers on the history and power of the jury, plain-English guides to jury service, and the stories of real people like St. Louis.

Jurors have the right and the duty to take their role seriously — to demand real proof, ask hard questions, and treat their verdict as an act of conscience rather than mere box-checking.

Jury service is the most direct exercise of self-government most of us will ever perform. For one case, one defendant, and one moment, the power of the commonwealth rests in the hands of ordinary people. Virginians deserve to know how much their verdict counts.