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3 cassettes/approx. 5 hours
Jury duty happens to everyone. When the call came to Graham Burnett—a historian and literary journalist—he had a shock waiting for you. A Trial by Jury is his startling account of how performing this familiar civic duty converted into one of the most harrowing experiences of his life.
Burnett commences the story of the trial: a body with multiple stab wounds found in a fresh York apartment, intimations of cross-dressing, male prostitution, mistake identity. And then, the unexpected drama: Burnett finds himself appointed the foreman, with the responsibility of leading the increasingly frenetic deliberations within the black box of the jury room. Soon he's sequestered—which is to state marooned—with 11 others, included in this a vacuum—cleaner repairman cum urban missionary, a actress, and a guy apparently floundering in a borderline between real life and daytime television. Steering the contentious politics of the temporary no-exit society toward the verdict, he discovers for himself the terrifying ultimate power of their state and the agonizing truth of the legal system: law and justice won't be the same thing.
Part true crime, part political treatise, part contemplation of right, wrong, and the power of words, A Trial by Jury is a mesmerizing narrative of 1 man's come across with crime and punishment, American style. It profoundly affects one's sense of the privileges—and the perils!—of citizenship.
