S.8 #10 | God in the courtroom

 In this powerful episode, I share my firsthand experience serving on jury duty and reflect on the deep intersection between faith, justice, and everyday civic life in America. From courtroom oaths to the Pledge of Allegiance and the phrase “In God We Trust” on U.S. currency, we explore how God remains embedded in public institutions. I discuss a real court case involving stalking and menacing, where the defendant used religious language—invoking God, punishment, and karma—to intimidate the victim. This episode examines the danger of misusing faith to justify harm, and contrasts it with the Torah’s ethical framework, which teaches respect, responsibility, and the sanctity of human life. Discover how living by Torah values can serve as a blueprint for avoiding conflict and building a just, compassionate society. 

Transcript

I recently served on jury duty, again, and I want to tell you all about it. I say again, because I’ve been called to jury duty more times than I can count on my fingers. I served on a week-long case probably 15 years ago, which was super interesting and which I enjoyed a lot (it wasn’t a murder case or anything, rather a property line dispute, but we got to take a field trip there and it was just very memorable to me). Between then and now I must have been summoned a dozen times. A couple times I went through jury selection, but was not chosen, other times I asked to be excused, and finally, I decided I need to get it over with. Before kids, it was easy. I didn’t mind spending a full day at the court and getting paid pennies for that time, but now, as a mom and entrepreneur who values her time much more, I find it difficult to say yes. 

Thankfully, I was lucky this time, the case only took one full day to complete, partly thanks to me. I will explain in just a moment. First, I want to share my thoughts on what I observed in the courtroom. I can’t help but mention the presence of God in the courtroom to this day. To me, seeing tradition alive is amazing and wonderful, but I wondered how other people who don’t believe in God feel when they hear someone taking an oath with the phrase “so help me God”. Interestingly enough, I found out later, in my state, in Ohio, and most jurisdictions, you are not legally required to use religious language or swear upon a religious text. Courts allow you to "affirm" your commitment to truth instead of taking an oath. However, I’m pretty sure I heard God mentioned several times when witnesses came to the stand, and when the jurors were sworn in.

Then I thought of other places where God is very much part of our life. For example, money! On every US coin and paper bill it says “in God we trust”. Then there is the pledge of allegiance recited in schools and many types of events. If you think about it, whether you’re religious or not, we always have God around us in one way or another. Our country was, after all, founded on a Christian cultural and moral framework, which of course borrowed heavily from Judaism. 

In any case, returning to my jury duty…the case seemed clear cut at first. An attorney in his forties, a father of two young children, was suing a distant relative, who is not related by blood, on three counts of harassment - aggravated menacing, stalking by phone and harassment by other telecommunications. The plaintiff filed a complaint because his relative wouldn’t stop harassing him by texting him nasty messages, some of which clearly referred to a wish to set the plaintiff’s house on fire and cause harm to his children. Right off the bat, I sided with the plaintiff, especially because the defendant never spoke in his own defence and also because he looked very suspicious. I know we should not be biased and we should not judge a book by its cover, but it’s so hard to not side with a handsome young attorney who spoke so well and seemed so concerned for his safety, while his relative, supposedly of similar age, had previous arrests, was overweight, walked with a cane, wore dark glasses indoors, and had long hair and a beard. Everything about the defendant looked and sounded suspicious. 

However, as the case progressed, I, and other jurors, noticed something strange in the behavior of both the prosecutor and the defense attorney and the gaps in the evidence they presented. It was as if something were being hidden from us. Nonetheless, it was still difficult for me to get past the defendant’s malicious text messages that were read aloud during the hearing and that the jurors later got to inspect. This strange man obviously had a lot of anger in him, which he was directing at the victim through endless text messages, after being asked repeatedly by the victim to stop. What was especially interesting to me was the fact that the defendant spoke a lot about God in his texts, but not in the way that I’ve been learning to talk - you know, love, kindness, compassion, forgiveness - but instead he wrote with such aggression, with so many curse words and with so many threats in the name of God. He went on and on about God punishing this young attorney, about karma coming back to bite him, and in some instances it seemed that the defendant was planning to take matters into his own hands to punish his relative. It wasn’t clear what issues they might have had in the past, but regardless, from a spiritual and moral perspective this defendant, who by the way wore a huge cross on his chest, crossed the line with his harassment. I so wanted to tell that man that he was praying to the wrong god. If his god is somehow telling him or influencing him to seek revenge or cause harm to another human being, it is not a true god. The God, our Creator, would never want any human being to harm another, unless it was in self defense, like in a war, or during an armed robbery and his life was in true danger. 

We spent the morning hearing from the victim and then from a police officer who had taken the victim’s written complaint some months prior, we heard from the prosecutor and the defense attorney, and the more we heard, the more questions we had. The case was becoming less and less clear. The jurors took a lunch break, during which we were not to discuss the case, so I went on my own to read a book - the great book called “Making it relevant”, the author of which I recently interviewed by the way. And after lunch, we went into the courtroom briefly, after which it was time to deliberate. 

We were escorted into a private room with a big round table and seating all around it. The judge asked us to pick a foreman, or foreperson, chosen to serve as the leader and official spokesperson for the entire jury. I don’t know what got over me, but I volunteered myself and everyone agreed. Our group was an interesting mix of 8 jurors. There were three white people, myself included, the youngest being 20 and the oldest me at 39. The rest were African American, with the youngest probably around 18 and the oldest around 60. Half were men and half were women. I took the lead, which historically has not been very characteristic of me, but I have noticed so many changes in myself on my spiritual journey, that sometimes I think I’ve become a completely different person.

The only evidence we were provided were the printed text messages between the victim and the defendant, along with three papers that all jurors had to sign after reaching an agreement on each of the counts. We began to deliberate, and immediately I realized that we were not in agreement. How could this be? The case seemed so clear! But the more we discussed the case, the more we disagreed. We had a couple jurors who wanted the defendant charged guilty on all three accounts, and we had a couple that proposed the defendant was not guilty at all. Ahead of us lay four hours of deliberation! At 5pm, I told the group we have to come to some sort of agreement, because if not we would be sitting there until the next day! Some jurors needed to be persuaded one way or the other, some of us had to give in when for instance it was 7 in favor and one against. Honestly, I could not believe it took us that long to come to a decision! Like I said, something about the case was off. The text messages we were given as evidence, for instance, were incomplete. When we asked the judge for some timelines to better understand when the plaintiff filed the first complaint to the police, we were denied this information. The text messages were hard to follow because most of them looked like gibberish or something that a lunatic would write with occasional references to past conflicts between the two parties that we knew nothing about. Due to lack of testimonial evidence, we kept going over what we could remember of the oral statement, which made me realize - if I serve on jury duty again, I need to bring paper and a pen to take notes. What made the case strange was also the fact the prosecutor, we thought, didn’t do a very good job at representing the victim, it’s as if he hadn’t prepared very well for the case, and the defense attorney was barely able to point out reasonable doubt. Those jurors that sided with the defendant had a fair point of view. Why would this man be charged for sending text messages? Yes, they were annoying, but he didn’t actually do anything, he didn’t cause anyone harm. The same jurors thought, and I partially agreed with it, that it looked like the plaintiff, being an attorney himself, evidently had the resources and enough knowledge of the system to take his relative to court to put an end to their relationship. I’m sure we all have some crazy relative that we want nothing to do with, and to the plaintiff, this tactic seemed like a good way to cut all ties with his lunatic family member. 

In the end, we decided the defendant would be charged on two accounts, not three, but to this day, a month later, this case haunts me because I don’t know if we made the correction decision and we never found out the sentence, which was also very strange! We thought, typically, the judge announces the sentence at the conclusion of the trial, but in our case, the judge said he needed more time to go over the details to carry out a just verdict. 

All in all, I enjoyed serving on jury duty. It was very educational, very interesting, the judge had a great sense of humor, and I loved being the foreperson and taking the lead in the discussion and handing in the verdict to the judge. My personal takeaways from this experience are to continue on my spiritual journey believing in the one true God, to continue following the Jewish moral compass. The Torah, being the blueprint for life on earth, does a tremendous job at protecting its students from breaking the law. Rather than viewing secular government and religious duties as separate, Jewish law (Halakha) binds them together through several core ethical and legal principles:

1. Established by the Talmudic sage Shmuel, this principle states that Jews are religiously obligated to obey the civil and criminal laws of the country in which they live.  
2. The Torah places an exceptionally high moral premium on how religious people conduct themselves in public. 
3. The Torah recognizes that civil laws, police, and courts are necessary to maintain societal peace. 
4. Many crimes in secular statutory law are already strictly forbidden by the ethical mitzvot (commandments) of the Torah. A student deeply immersed in Torah study is continuously trained to avoid:

• Verbal deception, fraud, or misrepresentation.
• Theft and illegal seizure of property.
• Placing a stumbling block before the blind, which underpins laws regarding public safety, negligence, and environmental hazards.

By transforming civic obedience into a divine mandate, the Torah acts as a roadmap that naturally steers its adherents away from legal conflicts. 

Thanks for listening, and stay out of trouble! 

Mentions: Book Making it Relevant by Katia Bolotin