Jury's Out

The Jury's Out sounds the alarm on a constitutional crisis hiding in plain sight: the disappearing American jury trial.The right to a jury trial is a critical cornerstone of American democracy. It is a check on power as fundamental as the vote itself. Yet today, only about one percent of cases filed in our courts ever reach a jury trial. The fabled American "day in court" is vanishing—and most of the American public is none the wiser. Retired Judge Pierre H. Bergeron and attorney Shannon Price expose how we reached this point. They trace how tort reform, plea bargaining, procedural gauntlets, and a deeply entrenched elitist critique have hollowed out one of the people's most potent constitutional rights. Threading their investigation through the decades-long wrongful-conviction case of Dean Gillispie, Bergeron and Price show what is really at stake when ordinary people lose their day in court. At the same time, they document signs of resistance by a growing coalition of reformers who believe that the jury's decline can indeed be reversed. Part legal history, part courtroom drama, and part rallying cry, The Jury's Out makes a forceful case that the jury remains democracy's most underused weapon—and that reclaiming it is a fight that belongs to all of us.