Howard Brown

A year ago in February, I served on a jury that convicted a man of second degree murder for beating his grandfather to death. We spent several days listening to the gory and heart-wrenching details that not only described a murder, but that also described a very broken home. As each person took the stand, their words were their truth, and their truths wrestled my brain to the ground day after day. Their personalities were animated and strong, and their faces hung in my memory long after the trial, like distant relatives I had just met at a family reunion. Each time someone took the stand, I would retrace the details as to where I had heard mention of them in earlier testimonies and how they fit into the complicated puzzle.

Thank goodness for my co-jurors, all great people faced with the same complicated obligation. Such an interesting experience to be thrown into a group of people of all different backgrounds, ages and ethnicity, all charged with deciding the fate of a man. Not your typical group project in college. As a group, I felt we were quite lucky to have the personalities we had - we all got along for the most part, and we had a good time over drinks (hard not to do). I have a feeling that were we not in a government building and someone would have passed a joint around, we may have all stayed friends for life. They made as great an impact on me as the witnesses and the accused (and the dead). I looked forward everyday to hearing about the previous nights of my co-jurors, catching-up over coffee breaks and lunches. With the stresses in all of our lives, our [forced] time together seemed like forever at the time, but it was very short looking back. Now that I have moved away from those folks, it is a greater possibility that I will never see them again: not the new-mom broker or the landscaping dad-to-be, not the pilates chic, not the bad-ass chef/mom/restaurant-owner/writer, not the woman who dressed as if it was Halloween every day.

I will never forget what it felt like to decide someone's fate for the worst. The 911 recording played over and over in my head as I fought the instinct that told me I had no business being there and deciding such a thing. Heavy-hearted, I remember wishing that I could confide in my closest friends (and husband) so that they could help me with this burden I had of deciding what to do. But of course we were all silenced by the law. Thankfully no other opinions could further confuse the already confusing evidence swirling in my brain. In the end, it was the faint voice of Howard Brown himself that told us what to do. After each of us listening through headphones for what seemed like 100 times, we all heard the eerie "Tony did it".

Howard Brown, a man with a "pip in his step", someone who liked to eat pig's ears (or was it feet) when the neighbor's brought it over, someone that wasn't even close to dying - Mr. Brown fought for his life, and his grandson is paying with his life for taking the life of another. The haze of the trial and the sleepless nights finally cleared once I finally moved on from the fact that I did not ask to judge this man's life but was chosen for whatever reason. I did the very best that I could and I only hope that should I ever be in a role reversal, that my life is weighed with as much thought, contemplation and respect as was given by the jury on which I served.