A Trial by Jury Audiobook (Free)

Jury duty happens to everyone. When the decision found Graham Burnett, a young historian, he had a shock waiting for you. A Trial by Jury is his startling accounts of how executing this familiar civic duty challenged him with techniques he never thought possible and turned into perhaps one of the most consuming encounters of his existence.

Burnett begins with the story from the trial: a body with multiple stab wounds found in a New York apartment, intimations of cross-dressing, man prostitution, mistaken identity. And then, about A Trial by Jury the unexpected drama: Burnett discovers himself appointed the foreman, with the responsibility of leading the increasingly frenetic deliberations inside the black box of the jury room.

Soon he’s sequestered-which is to state marooned-with eleven others, several people who watch their task, and frequently each other, with palpable distaste. Among his colleagues: a vacuum-cleaner repairman cum metropolitan missionary, a actress, and a man apparently floundering inside a borderland between real life and daytime tv.

As Burnett steers the contentious politics of their temporary no-exit society toward the verdict, he undergoes an unexpected awakening. Having been plucked from his cozy nest in the wonderful world of books and suggestions and then plunged in to the netherworld of lurid crime, he learns the limitations of what intellect by itself can accomplish in the real world. Above all, Burnett discovers firsthand the terrifying best power of the state as well as the agonies of being asked to do justice within the rigid dictates of the law.

Part true criminal offense, component political treatise, component contemplation of best, wrong, and the energy of words, A Trial by Jury is a mesmerizing narrative of one man’s encounter with crime and punishment, American design. It profoundly impacts one’s sense from the privileges-and the perils-of citizenship.