The room is exactly what you’d picture for a room in a local government building built in 1960: hard metal edges, low ceilings, fluorescent light. There was a small TV in the corner — a big, boxy one — showing a video about jury service, starring some recognizable but apparently forgettable celebrity. I hadn’t served on a jury previously, much less in New York, so it was broadly informative, if a bit elementary. And then they asked that question.
I was able to serve on such a jury. I was eager to serve on such a jury. I’ve never really understood why people seek to avoid jury duty; it always seemed to me to be both a civic duty and (more importantly) a fascinating experience. I was doing consulting work at the time and had a contract that just ended, so I raised my hand.
The civil court building sits a few blocks north of City Hall, at the lower end of Manhattan. It’s on the site of what was once called the Collect Pond, a small body of water that served first as a freshwater source and, later, as a repository of all sorts of horrible pollutants during the city’s early years. (The canal that eventually drained the pond was filled in to make Canal Street.) Those of us who volunteered were ushered out of the initial room and — surrounded by guards to avoid having to go through security again — across the street into the criminal court building.
The one where, on Monday, Donald Trump’s criminal trial is getting underway.
I’ve been back to that building several times since on behalf of The Post, covering former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s initial criminal hearing and that of Trump Organization CFO Allen Weisselberg. That morning in early April 2009, though, was my first time in the building. I would eventually return on almost every weekday from May until early October for the trial of Anthony Marshall, son of New York socialite Brooke Astor, who stood accused, along with co-defendant Francis Morrissey, of taking advantage of his dementia-addled mother to siphon away part of her fortune.
When we crossed Centre Street into the criminal court building, though, I didn’t know anything about that. I knew the name Astor — Astor Place, for example, was a stop on the train that I rode regularly — but not about Brooke Astor’s death or the accusations against her son. We were brought into a cramped room (perhaps a courtroom, though I don’t remember) and given a lengthy questionnaire to fill out.
In what neighborhood did I live? With whom did I live? Was I employed? What news sources did I follow? What did I do as a hobby?
Some of the questions were directly related to the case, though I only realize that retrospectively. Do I contribute to charities? (The money Marshall stole would otherwise have gone to New York institutions like the Metropolitan Museum of Art.) Did I have any expertise on wills or powers of attorney? (Morrissey, an attorney, was accused of working with Marshall to alter and amend Astor’s will.) Did I know anyone who’d had Alzheimer’s disease? (As Astor did.) Did I know anyone who I considered to be “extremely wealthy?”
There were also questions about the co-defendants and Astor herself: had I heard of them? This should have been a flag for me about what I was getting into but, again, I hadn’t heard of the case. The prospective jurors in the Trump case, on the other hand, will be hard-pressed to escape the (much longer) questionnaire they’ve been given without knowing what was at stake.
“Do you have any strong opinions or firmly held beliefs about former president Donald Trump,” one question asks, “or the fact that he is a current candidate for president that would interfere with your ability to be a fair and impartial juror?” Another asks if prospective jurors have ever considered themselves supporters of QAnon or the Proud Boys, which did not come up in the Astor case.
I completed my questionnaire, turned it in — and then was sent home.
I don’t remember what brought me back to the courthouse, whether I was told to return soon after or if I got a call asking me to do so. But, either way, I returned. I went through security and came up to the courtroom on the 15th floor where the trial would eventually take place — the courtroom of New York Supreme Court Judge A. Kirke Bartley Jr. I snuck a surreptitious photo, though I was not supposed to.
It was the last time I would sit in the room’s gallery. At the front of the room were the competing sets of attorneys, none of whom I would have recognized as such. The clerk had a large rotating drum, the kind from which you draw Bingo numbers. It was filled with cards representing each prospective juror. The clerk drew a card and the person identified went into a backroom to speak with the teams of attorneys. Then they were either dismissed or sat in the jury box.
I honestly don’t remember that process much because mine was one of the first cards pulled. I nervously got up and went into the backroom, what I would later learn was the jury deliberation room — or, more accurately, the jury-waiting-around-for-months-on-end-while-lawyers-argued-in-front-of-the-judge room.
It was cramped and dim, lit only with natural light. I was asked about my questionnaire, specifically about knowing someone who’d had Alzheimer’s. I mentioned that it was the relative of someone I’d known who I’d only met once or twice. Apparently meeting the attorneys’ satisfaction, I was brought back out and sat in the jury box. Third seat, two down from the chef who, by virtue of being chosen first, would go on to serve as forewoman. And directly next to a woman who would later be dismissed for apparently disparaging the defendant while eating lunch with other jurors.
There was a brief voir dire, when the attorneys asked questions of the jurors as a collective. There was some question I was asked that I answered with a joke; still looking forward to serving, I immediately regretted doing so. In short order, that was that: The jurors and several alternates were decided. The trial would begin a few weeks later.
The process took some time, but — despite the attention the case had already earned in the city tabloids and the New York Times — was dispatched with relatively quickly. The scale and stakes of the Trump trial are far higher, certainly, with a much lower likelihood of stumbling onto people who aren’t familiar with the defendant and a much higher likelihood of finding people inclined to feel one way or another. But it’s easy to underestimate the ability and willingness of people to view information objectively and draw a considered conclusion — especially given the requirement in the jury room of matching the available evidence (much of which will not be familiar to average New Yorkers) with the boundaries of the law.
That was the hard part of our deliberations, which unfolded over more than a week in early October. We found that the prosecution had provided evidence to demonstrate that both Marshall and Morrissey had violated some of the laws they’d been charged with breaking. The 12 of us involved in the deliberation had different views of the evidence and defendants but had nearly all approached the issue with objectivity, rationality and sincerity. It was a validation of the process through which we were chosen — the process underway for a much bigger case in that same building this week.
