Page:The Green Bag (1889–1914), Volume 13.pdf/225

 The Green Bag,

JURY

ROOM

SENTIMENTS

AND

DIVERSIONS.

BY ALBKRT H. "ALKER. THE query, "I wonder how the jury is get that they cannot agree and that things are ting along?" which is uppermost in every not going as they should; for here one of the one's mind after the jury has retired for its jurors has gone off by himself and written deliberations is answered in part by written on the wall in blue pencil: "Jury business be records made by scores of Brooklyn jurors damned!" Nor is this the sentiment of a on the walls of one of the jury rooms in the single, isolated, disconsolate juror, for under neath these words another juror lias written: Brooklyn, X. Y., County Court House. These written, or rather scribbled records "I endorse 'the above." This general senti set forth in prose and poetry the doings, de ment is popular, as evidenced by somewhat cisions, mental processes and sentiments of similar testimony inscribed by other jurors. the average juror, and disclose not merely the The difficulty the jurors have in agreeing juror's views as to the merits of the particu is indicated by their written acknowledgment. lar case he is trying to decide, but also his "We cannot agree," one juror has written, opinion of his fellow men temporarily serv which is corroborated by another juror, who ing as jurors. They reveal, as well, the work has written at a slight distance the sentiment: ings of minds ranging through a wide realm "Hell! Oh, Hell!" Of course, that may seem of philosophy, from brightest optimism to an extravagant assertion, but it is perhaps a conservative opinion for a man doing jury soggiest pessimism. This particular room is a cheerless cham duty for twenty-five days, as did a juror who ber about twenty by thirty feet, with a high wrote: "John Y. McKane. Twenty-five days ceiling and void of all decoration. It is bare, jury and locked up here twenty hours." (The desolate and lonesome. It gives one the McKane jury had an unusually severe ex impression of a place animate at times, but perience. For twenty-five days the jurors now deserted, haunted almost. Around the were under most careful surveillance, not sides of the room are ranged eleven chairs, only going to and from the court house, but it being the proper thing, perhaps, for the also during the time spent at their hotel. One foreman to stand. Some six inches above of the jurors said that the only bit of news the tops of the chairs is a dingy yellow band, of the outside world which came to him was six inches or more wide, indicating, perhaps, the result of a famous prize fight which was the reflective positions assumed by the jur being shouted by a newsboy outside the hotel ors. At irregular intervals the dull-colored windows.) tinting is rubbed off, and in some places the The obstinate juror receives considerable plaster is cracked. In the centre of the room attention, and it has been observed at times stands a plain brown-colored wooden table that the obstinate juror is more vigorously with long irregular cracks and seams running disliked by his fellow-jurors than even by its entire length. The table may have been the attorneys whose case he has injured. struck by lightning, or perhaps the cracks Mere printable words are considered insuffi were caused by the blows of the jurors' fists. cient for him sometimes; and here, as we go It is to such a council chamber as this around the room, is a corner into which a that the jurors are conducted, and then juror who had lost all hope retired and drew locked in with the instructions to agree on a lifelike picture of a man about to have his head crushed with a sledgehammer in the a just verdict. But the records show that it soon appears hands of another juror. Above this excel