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In 2005, I served on a jury. We lived in Massachusetts, and somehow, the legal system found me. I couldn’t believe it. The snail mail letter instructed me to show up at the Worcester, MA, courthouse early on a weekday morning.

Should I wiggle out of it? I thought, I have work to do. I could call in sick. It’s a drive and inconvenient.

I almost did, but something stopped me. Today, just a week after a jury convicted Donald Trump of 34 felonies, I am reminded of that morning I woke up early to drive from Boston to the Worcester Superior Courthouse and how there was something about it that is essential to our democracy.  

Today, Worcester is a model for what American cities can be. It is very diverse. Vietnamese, Albanians, Chinese, and other immigrants make up 22 percent of the population. Higher education is the economic driver. The UMass Medical School and Hospital employ almost 20,000 people. The anarchist Emma Goldman once opened an ice cream shop there. And all that diversity is what scares the MAGA crowd.  

When I arrived in 2005, it was a failed city. Due to textiles and wire manufacturing, Worcester once thrived, but like most of America, the jobs and factories faded away after World War II. 

Once inside the courthouse, the gravity of a working democracy hit me in the face. The other jurors and I were ushered into a room. This cross-section of Americans would soon be chosen to fill a jury to decide a fellow citizen’s fate under the law, just as the Constitution lays out. 

We were introduced to the judge, a gentle, young-ish, serious man who briefly explained the case as a DUI. A woman was charged. 

The judge then oversaw the lawyer's selection of the jury. I made it through and couldn’t help but be excited. This was Democracy in action! Now, I wanted to serve.

We were ushered into the courtroom. Some of us stole looks at each other as if to say - “They trust us with this woman’s life?’’

The trial began. The prosecutor was a nervous young woman straight out of law school, making her bones. The defense lawyer had an office right across the street. He handled these cases all the time.

The woman, the prosecutor explained, was driving from Maine to Massachusetts, swerving all over the road. When the state trooper pulled her over, he saw an empty vodka bottle on the passenger seat. The driver slurred her words and failed a sobriety test. She was clearly hammered.

At lunch, the other jurors selected me as their foreman. It was my job to read our verdict at the end of the trial! I started to sweat. Democracy had now slapped me across the face a second time. The gravity was growing, but we were united as a group. We understood that even in this small city, on a small DUI case, what we did next mattered.   

Final arguments were made, and we were excused to deliberate. 

The judge gave us instructions and explained the law, including that the prosecution, the government, has to prove its case beyond a reasonable doubt. This jury system exists to protect citizens from the power of the state that, if not checked, could throw people in prison for no good reason. It all sprang from a desire for citizens not to be subject to the whims of the King of England. So if the government can’t convince a panel of regular everyday people that the accused is guilty, then they should go free. The burden is on the government to prove it - not the accused. It’s an idea that was and still is revolutionary. 

The judge’s speech was a mini-course on the foundations of American Constitutional law, and it was oddly inspiring.

By that point, we 12 jurors were deadly serious. We were citizens carrying a torch, the tribunal that would decide a woman’s fate at the hands of the government that wants her to be found guilty.

And she was clearly “guilty.’’ She did the crime as they say. But should she do the time? Did the government prove its case?

Nope. We decide that the prosecutor failed to prove the charge beyond a reasonable doubt. Our decision was unanimous. All we had to go on was the evidence. The prosecutor could not prove the vodka bottle belonged to the accused. And he couldn’t prove that she drank from the bottle. We all knew the woman was drunk. We all knew she did wrong. But we let her go, sending a message to the government prosecutor that he had to do better. 

When I read the verdict in open court, the defendant broke into sobs. She shook—some combination of gratefulness and humiliation. I could only guess what was going on in her life. 

There was immense power in that room - the power to decide whether to upend someone’s life. But the power went the other way too - to hold the government accountable, to make them do their job.

In the end, we took the job very seriously, and by all accounts, the Trump jury did the same.

As I look back on my jury experience, I guarantee you that the MAGA claims of a sham trial are all BS. I guarantee you that the jury took the case as seriously as we did - even more so because they were dealing with a former president at the pinnacle of the justice system. 

Why? Because when you walk into the jury room and the courtroom, it gets very real. No cable news. No Twitter. No cell phones. Just the evidence. 

For all the flaws of our system - and there are many - one thing it gets right is that it provides a place where you can’t just say random stuff and get away with it. That’s why politicians often find a courtroom frustrating. You spend your career spouting nonsense in Congress or a city council, but when it comes to a trial, you have to prove what you say with real evidence.

The courtroom may be the only place left where guys like Trump can’t just spout off and have people believe it on cable news. You have to prove it. E. Jean Carroll proved that Trump assaulted her in Bloomingdale’s, and now a jury of regular folks went into a room, deliberated for four-plus hours, and found him guilty on 34 charges.

No amount of bluster, lies, and obfuscation can hide that now.

The truth is - Trump is lucky. In Russia, China, or North Korea, a dictator would have ordered him thrown in jail or poisoned to death. The jury system actually protected Trump and democracy by providing a place where the truth is all that matters.