One conviction. One victim. One judgement.
Dear America,
Repeat Offender. That is the word or phrase on my mind lately. The one that walks into my thoughts as I go about my day. Repeat Offender. Three strikes. The words that were withheld from the jury. The one I served on during the days of this last presidential election. Three strikes. It’s a strike, the defendant kept saying. Or what we read in the transcripts of phone calls, hear in testimony from law enforcement. What he said as they walked him to the police car after his arrest. We hear recordings of calls from jail to the woman he beat. Calls he made in defiance of restraining orders.
In the end there will 12 of us in a room high above the county court plaza. A lovely room with lofty windows looking out over the nearby mountains, puffy white clouds in a blue sky, a dusting of snow on the highest peaks. Flags flapping in a chilly wind. We, the jury, cannot talk yet about what we’ve heard. What we think. Not quite yet, but soon. We will have been given pages of instructions from the judge, spent days viewing pictures of blood and bruises, heard reports from doctors. Brain bleeding. Brain injury. Strangulation. Over and over, I picture her texting a friend from a closet for help.
I start jury duty the Monday before election day. There are 65 of us called in for this trial. The first day we wait in the jury room while lawyers and the judge work out what can or cannot be admitted. I spend time watching people registering to vote below me, long lines streaming out from an office across the way, watch sheriffs milling around as people come and go from the ballot box. All that really happens that day is that we get our juror numbers before being sent home. I’m number 37 and feel quite certain I will not get picked for this jury.
The day of the election is jury selection day. We are brought into a court room and learn the case is about domestic violence. All 60+ of us squish into three rows of pews plus the jurors’ box. A few extra chairs are brought out and a few folks stand against the back wall. We see, for the first time, the lawyers, the defendant, the prosecutors, the judge. The day goes long, goes from listening to silly or self-important excuses of those trying to avoid jury duty, to histories of deep anguish. We are asked question after question, pushed for opinions, notions of violence, attitudes about domestic disputes, sexual assault. Are domestic matters any business of the state? One juror after another is bumped. Some of the excused leave visibly distraught or in tears. After lunch there is plenty of room for everyone to sit, the extra chairs taken away, and sooner than expected and though it has taken all day to get to this point, it seems sudden when I stand and walk to the juror’s booth to replace juror number four. After me, just one more juror is picked, though they go through another ten to get there, to the last juror. Then the rest are let go.
I see birch trees in a line as I exit the courthouse and walk to the parking garage. A few remaining golden leaves dangle in angled sunlight. The mood in the courtyard is nearly festive as folks stop to drop ballets in a ballot box. I drive in the evening light, and toward a starry night, listen to music not news because I’m anticipating watching the election returns with my husband, wary but optimistic. As soon as I come in the door though, my husband says he doesn’t want to watch or listen to anything at all, says let’s pretend it’s just another regular old night, but I insist and turn on the television.
There are 14 jurors to begin with, two of us are alternates though we won’t know which two until right before deliberations. We are seven women, seven men. The oldest is somewhere near 70 and the youngest in her 20s. We are grandmas, young mothers, and dads. Someone asks if it’s always this hard, parenting, do you ever get any sleep and everyone laughs. We are also retirees and working folks, some bring their laptops and try to work during the odd breaks. The conversation is friendly as we wait in the jury room to be ushered into the court room. Talk comes in spurts, about vacation trips, hiking adventures, the names of peaks we see out the window, bad traffic, coyotes on the golf course, sports teams. No one ventures into politics.
That day, the day after the election, we start in on the trial. The first thing we learn is that our victim has died. A death unrelated to this trial. But tragic. We hear from the friend she texted asking for help. We listen to her dad, notified by the friend. He called law enforcement asking for safety checks. When, during repeated checks, no one answered the door, he drove hours to pound on the door. For days I picture his pounding, his yelling open the door. He cries on the witness stand as he testifies. Hangs his head until he can talk again, about the moment his daughter opens the door. What he sees. He is a big burly man, tattoos, and a beard. He wanted to beat the guy but refrained and instead called law enforcement, an ambulance, let the defendant run. We hear from law enforcement, the doctor that first saw her at the hospital.
A big part of the next day is spent listening to phone calls from the defendant to the victim. Calls made from the county jail after his arrest. The defendant’s biggest concern is how badly he hurt her, not because he’s worried about her, but worried if her injuries are enough to put him in jail. He pleads with her not to testify, says they could be together forever, just give him one more chance. Our victim pushes back, is kind-hearted, worries more about the other women he might hurt. He offers to make her a steak, those ones they have in the freezer still, he says. You know you almost killed me, she says.
I drive home in the dark after hours of listening to the phone calls. The traffic is bad as ever, inching slowly north up the interstate. I think about how jarring it was to hear his voice, the voice of the man that has sat quietly in front of us these past days. His voice. Hers. I don’t want anyone else hurt, she says. Don’t testify, he says, I’ll be the one hurt. I sit in my driveway a long time that evening. Cry. Gas lighting, I think. Master manipulator, is what I write in my notes. I think about the election, in the highest office soon will be a man liable for sexual abuse. A man accused by over two dozen women of sexual misconduct including rape, sexual assault, and sexual harassment. A repeat offender, it would seem.
The deliberation is not long, though time is taken to go through all the judge’s instructions, to be sure we, the jury, have understood the tasks before us, done our due diligence. After conviction we learn our defendant is also a murderer. This is information that was withheld, and I understand why, and I am grateful to not have known, to not have known that this was also his third strike. The strikes he kept talking about. A third strike for a violent offender in this state could mean life in prison. Turns out he killed a high school student—duct-taped her to a chair and wrapped telephone cord around her neck. Raped, then strangled her. Fourteen years he served. Then assaulted a neighbor. Then this.
When I see friends after the trial ends and I am free to talk about the case I say that I felt fortunate to be there during this time, during the election and in the days after, participating in the democratic process, the justice system at work. To be with a group of seemingly kind and caring strangers taking their duties seriously, randomly selected Americans needing to work together for justice for a woman we never met, a woman no longer alive. I hang onto this in the days after, when I first hear the news that the country has chosen a man who has bragged about grabbing women by their genitals, by the pussy, he said. I live in a country where this kind of toxic male behavior is being rewarded and celebrated. I live in a country where a saying like Your Body, My Choice goes viral. I say I feel lucky to have been at this trial during this time—partly because I had to turn my phone off for most of the days before and after the election, but mostly because I watched in awe and admiration, the many professional women, at work. The lawyers, the doctors, the judge, the county jail employee, all women. But also, the male sheriffs who talked with sensitivity about the victim. This is what saves us, how things change, individuals doing what they do best, working hard to get themselves into positions where they can create change. One conviction at a time. One victim cared for. One judgement. I got a glimpse of us, this country, at its best.
It is difficult to understand the not caring, to imagine someone you love, that you think loves you, will hurt you, abuse you, kill you. It’s difficult to imagine so many people not caring. It’s shattering, my dearest America, heartbreaking, to realize so many Americans care more about the offenders than the victims. But the truth is that until very shockingly recent, domestic violence in the United States has been considered a private matter not suited to public intervention and not necessarily punishable by law, and more often than not prosecutors chose not to prosecute. And while rape has been a crime for much of history and in many cultures, it was usually only as it concerned virgins, or as it related to women as the property of an estate. Most often rape or violence within marriage, or between domestic partners, was not considered to be a concern of the state at all. The Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) was passed in 1994 to push back against these norms because the truth is, at some point in their lives, one in six American women will be victims of domestic violence and one in five will experience sexual assault.
The VAWA has had a rocky history of renewal with pushback most often from Republicans and the conservative right at each renewal. In 2012, conservative Republicans objected to inclusion of undocumented immigrant workers, LGBTQ partners, and the allowance of Native American tribal authorities to prosecute sex crimes involving non-Native Americans on tribal lands. The act was renewed in 2013 during Obama’s presidency. Then contested once again in 2019 and finally renewed in 2022 under the Biden administration. It is up for renewal under the Trump administration in 2027. I’m guessing it’s unlikely, Trump, the sexual abuser, who nominated Matt Gaetz, accused of sex trafficking, to be the attorney general, and Pete Hegseth, accused of rape, to be his Secretary of Defense, will renew VAWA.
Am I afraid? Yes. Do I fear toxic male culture? I do. I fear for so many in the upcoming years. I wonder how we’ll carry on. I look out at the nearby mountains. Clouds in the sky. It was July when her assault happened. I picture a woman in a closet texting for help. I imagine all the stars in her sky. The shimmering waters of the nearby bay. The lap of waves. The sound of children and people in a park. Summer in the city. I want to believe in you, America, that you can be better. That you will fight back against the abuses of power. Offer compassion. That you can rise to your potential, but it’s going to be a bit, and it’s going to be a struggle, but I’m going to remain optimistic. I saw those women at work. I saw those women fighting for justice. I saw what is possible.
Sincerely,
Dawn
Dawn Erickson is a writer based in the Pacific Northwest by way of Minnesota. Her essays, poems, and stories have been published in The Hopper, Literary Mama, Cease, Cows, and elsewhere. She holds an MFA in Nature Writing from Western Colorado University.
Read other Letters to America online or in Dear America: Letters of Hope, Habitat, Defiance, and Democracy, published in partnership with Trinity University Press.
Header photo by sebra, courtesy Shutterstock. Photo of Dawn Erickson by Jesse Paull.
