Christian Lorentzen is a senior editor at the London Review of Books. Follow him on Twitter: @xlorentzen


We?ve heard a lot about grand juries in the past few months, but who aside from lawyers and those who?ve served on them know much about the way they work? The grand juries we?ve heard about in New York and Missouri have done the opposite of what they usually do, which is vote to indict. (Though you could also say they did exactly what they usually do: side with the police.)

Last spring, before the deaths of Michael Brown and Eric Garner, Gideon Lewis-Kraus received a summons to jury duty in Manhattan?s Criminal Courts Building. He served on a grand jury, and this month he risked a Class E New York State felony charge for violation of secrecy to write an essay about the experience for Harper's. ?Over the course of sixty hours of service,? Lewis-Kraus writes, ?we voted on more than a hundred cases. The number of times we refused to indict could be counted on one finger.?