Strangers, 12 of Them, Reach Across Gulfs of Age, Race and Experience : Community Comment: A veteran newscaster goes into the jury experience a cynic and leaves full of hope.

I groaned when the pink and gray envelope from Los Angeles Superior Court showed up in my mail. I don’t have time to do jury duty. But that’s why they call it duty.

I asked if I could serve close to my office at KNBC in Burbank, since I’d have to go to work after the court day. No, I was told, if citizens could choose their courts they could try to choose their cases. I was assigned to the courthouse in Culver City.

We jury pool members sat on straight-backed chairs in a packed waiting room, waiting. On day three, we were brought up on a case. About 50 were called and 12 were chosen. We were seven blacks, four whites and one Latino--nine women and three men of diverse education, and of ages spanning six decades. I got the feeling that as a group we probably would not be able to agree to walk out of a burning building together.

This was a civil case, an auto accident. A woman had rear-ended a man at an intersection four years ago, and he was seeking compensation for injuries physical and emotional. She said the light was green; he said it was red--the disagreement on every detail was total.

Testimony droned on, sidebars abounded and the lawyers asked and re-asked the same questions in various ways of several witnesses. I was fascinated at times, bored to distraction at others and occasionally had to fight to stay awake.

After a week that only seemed like a month, both sides rested. In the jury deliberation room, we took seats around a well-worn table. As the door clicked shut behind the bailiff, we sat for a moment looking at each other--a bunch of folks who seemed to have so little in common.

We took a poll and were split down the middle. We talked. We argued. We asked questions. Sometimes everybody talked at once. When one person would stray off course, others would say, “That’s not the issue,” or, “We’re not supposed to consider that.” By the time we went home we were 8-4 in favor of the defendant.

That night, while driving, while grabbing a bite, during commercial breaks while I was doing the news, I found myself mulling particulars of the case. I know the rest of my jury colleagues were thinking about it, too. We reconvened the next morning with new questions, different insights, fresh ideas.

We all agreed the accident was her fault. The question was, did he sustain all those long-term injuries because of it? Thelma, a retired nurse in her 70s who had never learned to drive, asked to have several points of testimony explained to her by the group, after which she changed her vote. Novella, a young woman who works in promotions for an athletic shoe company, concluded in deliberations that the plaintiff was not credible and changed her vote. For the same reasons, so did Carla, a soft-spoken 30-year-old customer service representative for a major bank. Sam, a forty-ish school custodian and the only one of us who had never been in an accident himself, said the plaintiff didn’t sit, walk or look like a man who was hurting so he switched. We were unanimous.

I cannot explain the dynamic of that particular society of 12--you had to be there. Though we were a mixed batch, race was never an issue. During deliberations it was as if nobody had a life outside that room. We were totally focused on the job we were there to do, and we did that job.

Because of the turmoil in the O.J. Simpson trial, I had gone into this situation pretty jaded. But living through that intense week with a jury that did work, did reach a verdict, my cynicism became hope that the Simpson jury still might work and that the venerable jury system is far from the verge of collapse.