The Trump verdict is a vindication of the American jury system 

Trial by jury has long been considered a jewel in the crown of America’s constitutional republic.  

Alexis de Tocqueville, who traveled the young nation observing its social, political and legal practices, saw it as a uniquely democratic institution and a key vehicle of popular sovereignty. The jury, as Tocqueville said, “puts the real control of affairs into the hands of the ruled, or some of them, rather than into those of the rulers.”   

He argued that jury service would “instill some of the habits of the judicial mind into every citizen, and just those habits are the very best way of preparing people to be free.”  Juries, he argued, “teach men equity in practice and make all men feel that they have duties toward society.” 

Over the last several weeks, the entire country had a chance to learn about the operation of the jury system in the criminal trial of former President Donald Trump and to judge how his jury discharged its “duties toward society.” In many ways, his trial was a vindication of the American jury system.  

Twelve ordinary citizens were called on to judge the former president under the glare of a national and international spotlight. They were selected, as NBC News reported, “after both sides had questioned close to 200 potential jurors about whether they can be fair and impartial when it comes to the polarizing former president and the criminal charges against him.” A large number indicated they could not be and were dismissed.  

The jury that was eventually seated consisted of seven men and five women. They came from all over Manhattan, from neighborhoods as different as the fashionable Upper East Side, Harlem, Hell’s Kitchen and the West Village. They “included two attorneys, a software engineer, an e-commerce sales professional, a security engineer, a teacher, a speech therapist, an investment banker and a retired wealth manager.” 

As The Guardian noted, the man who works in sales had “previously worked as a waiter, and has some college education. He is married with no children, and says he gets news from a range of outlets such as the New York Times, the Daily Mail, Fox News and MSNBC.” 

Another juror was “a young woman who said that she had friends with strong opinions on Trump, but that she was not a political person and avoided the news. She said she did appreciate Trump’s candor, and that he ‘speaks his mind, and I’d rather that than someone who’s in office who you don’t know what they’re thinking.’” 

A third juror was “a woman who said she did not follow the news but did watch late-night comedy shows. She is originally from California and said she had never rallied for or against Trump.”  

As law professor Gregory Keating put it in an email, the Trump jurors “were chosen because they weren’t partisans – for or against Trump.” Each of them swore that they could be fair and impartial. 

They stepped up and shouldered an enormous burden. They did what was asked of them, listening carefully, focusing on the evidence, and ultimately rendering an impartial judgment. They all had to make it through a grueling selection process in which Trump’s lawyers, aided by a jury consultant, vetted potential jurors and played an essential role.  

As a result, whatever one’s view of the motivations of Manhattan District Attorney Alvin Bragg or the sympathies of Judge Juan Merchan, the jury’s verdict cannot easily be written off by saying that jurors were instruments of the Biden administration or of a radical left conspiracy to injure the former president. 

Nonetheless, in the wake of the Trump verdict, Rep. Nick Langworthy, Republican of New York, alleged that because Trump was tried in a place where he “got 5 percent of the vote. There was no jury of his peers. It was a jury of his adversaries. … And they found the venue that he couldn’t win. I mean, there was no opportunity for him to get a fair jury.” 

But other Trump supporters did not follow suit.  

Even as they complained about other aspects of the trial, they did not impugn the jury. Take House Speaker Mike Johnson, who called the former president’s conviction a “shameful day in American history” but said nothing about the jury. 

And in his Friday news conference Trump again criticized Judge Merchan and the conduct of his trial. He called the whole thing “very unfair” and asserted, “Everybody says there is no crime here.”  

Well, not everyone. Not the 12 jurors who delivered 34 guilty verdicts.  

While it is too soon to know how the public will evaluate the Trump jury, we do know that, even as trust in other institutions craters, Americans still believe in the jury system. The New York Times notes that “Nearly 60 percent of Americans say they have at least a fair amount of trust in juries, according to a new survey — higher than for any other group in the judicial system.” 

A 2017 Pew survey found that “two-thirds of U.S. adults (67%) said serving on a jury ‘is part of what it means to be a good citizen.’ Just 31% took the opposite view and said jury duty service ‘does not have much to do with being a good citizen.’” 

And, as three law professors who studied the public’s views of juries recently noted, “Eighty-four percent of poll respondents agreed that trial by jury has the salutary effect of ensuring that ‘courts and judges only make decisions based on the Constitution, the law, and the facts of each case.’” 

In the end, the conduct of the jury in Trump’s case is just the latest evidence of Thomas Jefferson’s wisdom, when in 1789 he acknowledged that if “called upon to decide whether the people had best be omitted in the legislative or judiciary department, I would say it is better to leave them out of the legislative.”  

Having the people play a key role in the judicial system was crucial in Jefferson’s view because “The execution of the law is more important than the making of them.” That is why it is left to ordinary citizens to judge those who come before the bar of justice — even a former president. 

Austin Sarat is the William Nelson Cromwell Professor Jurisprudence & Political Science at Amherst College.