DISSENT / Winter 2008
“WE, THE JURY...”

Years later, I would tell my friends never
to shirk their jury summonses. This is
the most democratic experience you’ll
ever have, I’d insist.

But when I first arrived at the Alameda
County Superior Courthouse, located in what
was the gritty area of downtown Oakland in
the late 1980s, I had little desire to serve on a
criminal trial. I simply assumed that no sane
assistant D.A. would accept me as a member
of a jury because I was a professor, a Berkeley
resident, and a lifelong liberal activist.

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