Customer Reviews

A Trial by Jury

5 star:		(10)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(7)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

I found this book in the library and at the time, had no knowledge of its publisher's heavy push, its substantial hardcover printing, or the author's 10-city book tour as mentioned in the PW and other reviews.

It seemed interesting, and the jacket blurbs referring to "Twelve Angry Men" were appealing.

Other reviewers have stated simply the differences between what the book jacket promises, and what's in the book. Literature, especially this type, responds to the world; it does not direct it.

I've heard dozens of people complain about jury duty, and dozens more say that it's pointless. Despite Professor Burnett's statements to the contrary (after these pages of complete self-obsession and disrespect for his fellow jurors, and every living being in the courtroom with the possible exception of the sommnolent history-loving bailiff) - his "affirmations" that the jury system still works, although men like his fellow juror Felipe should not be allowed to sit - this book tells the story of a jury of one. One man who is no better than, and perhaps a bit worse than all those other people who want to weasel out of jury duty, who don't take it seriously, or who think the system doesn't work.

Those who read this book will learn what the professor ate during sequestration (fruit, nuts, cheese, bread, fennel bulbs). Blood oranges! A dozen blood oranges in New York City. A blood orange is insipid, an expensive luxury that appeals to the eye, but tastes far less rich than an ordinary Navel. They will learn that men who wear large belt buckles that say "Rodeo" are usually knee-jerk conservative "good 'ol boys." Except sometimes they're not. They will learn that the Professor read The Economist during lunch breaks, while sitting in a pleasant, sunny corner. Eating fruit and nuts.

Imagine Bosie Douglas sitting on, and writing about a jury trial. The Professor describes, and quotes, his sixth-grade performance of "The Ballad of Reading Gaol." The witnesses in the trial at hand were mostly drag queens. They had names like Nahteesha and Hector-Laverne. I would like to have known more of them, but they, like everyone else in that courtroom and in that jury room, were not "real" to the Professor. They were neither orange, nor almond. Nor a hard wedge of cheese. Nor belt buckles.

The Professor discloses in a weak moment that he came into the trial wanting a hung jury. Before any evidence was heard, his initial plan was "hung jury." He spends the first days of his jury foremanship seeking that same hung jury, observing and manipulating the others and their various "camps" of guilty or not-guilty, then inexplicably, he changes and comes down on the side of "not guilty." And that is how all voted in the end. I'm not spoiling anything - there is no suspense whatsoever and the entire crime and the "end" is detailed in the beginning of the book.

Most people think the jury system is stupid, and that the legal system is even worse: fumbling, blindly cruel, ultimately injust. Most people would rather have a root canal than serve on a jury. Yet, I think, that if any of these same people were somehow indicted for a crime they didn't commit, every single one of them would want a jury of their peers.

Yet some people do not believe in the fundamental concept of "peer" or "community," and that is absolutely what this book is about. The Professor proposes no alternative to trial by jury; his single cogent, factual argument consists of explaining that "not guilty" is not synonymous with "innocent," and that is true. His example of why the jury system is flawed is Felipe, who seems incoherent and strange (although not provably "stupid," the author's efforts aside), yet it is the Professor who came into the situation committed to a "hung jury," and it is the Professor who manipulated and bludgeoned his fellow jury members into coming to a "not guilty" verdict after days of noncommunication about nonfacts. It does not seem from the limited description of the courtroom case that the State proved "beyond a reasonable doubt," and nearly everyone knows that this is what must be done for a conviction. So, there is a "happy ending" in the sense that this isn't about a miscarriage of justice, for the defendant doesn't seem to have been proven guilty.

This book proves that even the most effete, out of touch, biased, arrogant, bullying, self-obsessed, manipulative, confused and mediocre intellectual can function on a jury of peers and that said jury can come to a decision that was probably appropriate.

I don't know what to say about the publisher's evaluation that this was a book "about the jury system" or anything like "Twelve Angry Men," which depicts twelve individuals as opposed to a jury of one. I don't know what to say about why they thought this odd document that reaffirms that effete, capricious, self-obsessed faux-intellectualism is alive and well and that male academicians can still effectively bully female academicians perfectly well, without a second thought, or that people who dress, look, act, and obsess over perceived slights like Bosie Douglas are "the cutting edge" and worth 100,000 hardcovers and a ten book tour. Maybe it's really an amazing story because it's a wonder that a second murder wasn't committed in the jury room. I think that's it.

I've been a trial lawyer for more than 30 years. I've tried both civil and criminal cases. Currently I am a prosecutor. So I was interested in Burnett's book because it promised to give me a glimpse of how a jury conducts itself in deliberations. If the jury Burnett served on in Manhattan is any indication, it's like the saying that it's better not to see how sausage is made.
I don't fault all the members of this jury... A more alert prosecutor would have struck him at the outset when he observed him segregating himself from the rest of the jury panel, nibbling his fruits and nuts and reading his newspaper in the corner.
It is not the verdict the jury ultimately reached that is offensive. If the jury wanted to entertain a reasonable doubt whether or not the defendant acted in self defense, that was its prerogative. But to sit around and debate justice vs. the law for four days was simply a jury out of control, led by an academic who apparently operates on such a high intellectual plane that common sense is alien to him.
I'd be interested in what his fellow jurors make of Burnett's account of their common experience. My surmise is that they would not recognize his account. He was so off base that in the end, this is simply one man's subjective and distorted view of how the legal system functions.

The idea for this book was certainly a good one. Given how the whole jury system plays such a central role in our judicial system, it is rather surprising that there is so little material on what actually goes in inside the jury room. As Burnett rightly points out, it is a "largely inaccessible space in our society." Thus the book is certainly a step towards filling that void. That said, I found it somewhat unsatisfying for several reasons, some of them within the author's control and some of them not.

In various other reviews here, the author has been described variously as "pretentious" (on several occasions), "pompous", "snobbish", "holier-than thou", "smug", and "self-congratulatory". Anyone see a theme here? I don't really disagree with any of these and I would add pedantic, condescending and superior. It really comes through on almost every page. And yet, I have to say that with the possible exception of Adelle, no one else in that jury room seemed like a candidate for MENSA. In fact, a number of them, such as Felipe and Rachel, seemed like true idiots.

The overall lack of intelligence of so many jury members had several unfortunate consequences. First, with just a few exceptions, including some comments by Adelle and Dean, it made the deliberations (which take up half of the book) much less interesting than they otherwise might have been. Second, whatever sense of pedantry and superiority which is probably naturally latent in the author anyway were probably brought to the fore when he saw who he was dealing with.

Also, again though no fault of the author's, I simply didn't find the case he had to work with all that riveting. A man was lured to or went voluntarily to the apartment of some sort of man/woman/transvestite/cross-dresser/drag queen and either did or did not kill the latter in self-defense when the latter made sexual advances.

All in all, it was not a bad book by any means, but I don't think that it was the book it could have been either.

Kudos to this insightful portrait of the trial by jury. Very few books have revealed the inner workings of a jury's deliberations with such clarity and detail. The author sat as the foreman of the jury in the criminal trial of the People vs. Monte Milcray for murder in the second degree held in New York City. In just 183 pages, the author takes the reader through the jurors and their backgrounds, the trial and the evidence and then reveals how all of this plays together for four days during the jury's deliberations and sequestration. You cannot come away from this text and not better appreciate the power of a jury and the valuable service it performs in our system of "justice." For this alone, you will be glad you read this book.

This book, however, is not without its flaws. Early on in the text, the author refers to Ockham's metaphorical razor as the philosopher's tool used to excise all but the most essential to arrive at the truth. This book's editor obviously misunderstood this concept, and allowed what is a good book to be lessened with the author's ruminations that do nothing to illuminate what this book is about except to reveal the author's intellectual prowess and his penchant for affected behaviors. Maybe that's the way the Princeton University history department likes its assistant professors (the book's jacket identifies the author as one) to appear in print, but since other reviewers on this site have also complained about how the author's smugness gets in the way, I cannot help but think that this book could have been so much better if a stronger editor had been assigned.

If you live in Manhattan or work in its court system, you will particularly appreciate this book. If you're a lawyer, you'd better listen to what the jury actually thinks is important. And if you're a casual reader who appreciates a book about trials and the legal process, I predict you'll like this book, but you probably won't invite its author to your next party.

In a word, disappointing. Overall, A Trial by Jury was a trial to read. It was slow moving and over written. The author spent too much time patting himself on the back. If he spent more time getting to know his fellow jurors instead of judging them, the book would have had some added dimension. This reader walked away thinking that Mr. Burnett thinks quite a bit about him and not much about those he feels are beneath him. Not worth the read.

For those who found (or think they may find) this book pretentious or smug, I strongly suggest you listen to the recorded version. It's recorded by the author himself. I suspect that in the printed version, what Burnett intended to be self-deprecating or self-parodying did indeed come across as self-important. When you hear the author's voice and intonations, though, it's clear that he is aware of his own flaws. In fact, these flaws are part of the story, as much as are the quirks of any of the other characters (jurors). The last lines of the book could not be more clear about the author's awareness of how far he fell short of his duty.

I thought his ruminations on justice, his insight about the difference between literature and law, were perceptive and fascinating -- as were the glimpses into the strange bonding experience of jury duty. Well worth a read -- or a listen.

This book is painfully overwritten and the greatest blessing is its short length.

As a trial attorney I give it two stars because it does cover an interesting topic and a murder that is typical in its quirkiness.
But the story could have been told much more compellingly if the author had taken time after the trial (or during deliberations for that matter) to find out his fellow jurors true thoughts on the matter. As it turns out the book portrays the verdict as somewhat a trial by a judge .. with Judge D. Graham Burnette presiding.

For those who are fans of the courtroom drama or true crime novels, this is not your flavor. More autobigraphical and introspective than insightful into discovering the truth of the crime or what the other jurors really thought.

This is a dreadful story of a horrendous crime and how justice miscarried. Why? Due almost entirely to the silly machinations of the naive and smug author, an Assistant Professor of history at Princeton. He prances through the pages of this shocking story of his jury duty very pleased with himself -- congratulating himself on eating nuts and fruits while others eat meat, enjoying literary chats about Wallace Stevens with a fellow juror who is a kindred soul, and making snide remarks about others, i.e. "I think I figured anyone wearing, apparently without irony, a large cast belt buckle reading 'Rodeo' had to be a law-and-order type, and quite possibly a bigot, too." -- page 91. You can read all that from a belt buckle? And how do you discern that someone is wearing it "apparently without irony"? (Assistant Professor Burnett is no doubt lecturing his students at Princeton about tolerance and diversity as I write).
The most nauseating feature of this book is how the author, chosen as foreman, misleads, confuses, bewilders, divides and harasses the rest of the jury into coming back with a wholly unwarranted acquittal. Of course there are always doubts, especially when someone is killed and the only surviving witness is the defendant, but are they reasonable doubts? The author magnifies every tiny inconsistency into something larger than it really is -- if he sat on every jury in America, no one would ever be convicted. Not to mention his tin ear for street smarts and total lack of common sense.
This is a shameful story of abdication of civic duty and will be read -- if it is read at all -- with repellent horror.

I understand the impact that serving on a jury has on an individual. My experience as a juror on a homicide trial led to my desire to go to law school. However, you can rely on all of the other negative reviews on this book; Mr. Burnett is a self-important, self-involved bore who fancies himself to be superior to his fellow jurors, when in reality he has no clue as to how to approach the legal decision-making process. Many of my fellow jurors came from humble backgrounds and had more common sense and intelligence by accident than Mr. Burnett has accumulated from his years of living in academia. Skip this book! You have better things to do with your time.

I do not want to repeat what other reviewers have stated better than I could, but I do want to reinforce their opinions. They are correct that this book would have been better were it about the jury or the experience of judgment more and about the author and his high opinion of himself less.

I was amazed and amused by the pedantry and pretensions, but I am academic and therefore used to that. What I was less amused but more amazed to discover was that a writer who so esteemed himself throughout the monograph cannot write well. I should have seen this coming, however. The author stated at the beginning that this was his account of his experiences. As I read, I confirmed that this was a book about Mr. Burnett into which the criminal case, the judge, the lawyers, the accused, the evidence, the courthouse staff, and other jurors would intrude from time to time. Given Burnett's fascination with his mental prowess and process, what I regarded as digressions he would have seen as the essences.

Do not buy this book. Go to a public library and get ANATOMY OF A JURY by Seymour Wishman or secure a copy of a "Frontline" cassette called "Inside the Jury Room." That "Frontline" had a pretentious academic, but he was not allowed to dominate.

If you must look at this book, examine it at the bookstore. Skip the parts about what Mr. Burnett ate [please do not believe that I am kidding] and find references to subjects about which you might care. Read those quickly. You can push through this book in an hour or so.