I may be the only person in Lincoln County excited to get a notice for jury duty.

I’ve always been a civics nerd. I did two seasons of mock trial in high school and I love the concept of getting paid to sit around and listen to facts and pass judgment. I mean sure, it’s $15 a day, which is basically lunch money, but it still counts.

That being said, they really should raise jurors’ pay, or require employers to provide paid jury leave. I’m lucky enough to work for a company that does provide paid jury leave, so the four days I was absent (two for selection, two for the trial itself) didn’t have a negative effect on my paycheck or household income. For a lot of folks, missing four days of work, even for an important civic duty, would be a real burden.

Jury duty felt a lot like being back in school — a lot of sitting around waiting for the teacher to show up, a very hurry-up-and-wait arrangement. There was an individual roll call (by numbers, not name) where we had to say “here.” No hats inside. We watched a video where Bill Green talked to us about the ins and outs of jury duty. We were given an informational packet that had several pages printed upside down.

When we found the defendant in our case was charged with domestic violence assault, things got very serious very quickly.

It was surprisingly difficult (well, probably not surprising for anyone who has ever met me) to sit there quietly and listen throughout the proceedings, because there are so many things you want to ask and basically you’re the only folks in the courtroom who don’t get to speak. You don’t get to ask clarifying questions afterward either. You just take the information you’re given in the courtroom, even if it doesn’t feel like enough to make a solid decision with.

As both the judge and the defense lawyer hammered home, in order to vote for a conviction, the jury has to find the defendant guilty “beyond a reasonable doubt.” And the thing is, in domestic violence cases where there are no witnesses or recordings, just two people with two different stories, there will almost always be room for reasonable doubt.

This is why it is so hard to prosecute those cases successfully, at least before the violence gets to the point where it’s inarguably brutal. The woman said the man attacked her. The man said the woman attacked him first and he acted in self-defense. A reasonable citizen who maybe doesn’t know as much about domestic violence as I do might certainly think, “Well, there’s enough doubt there, and we did take an oath to honestly follow the law, and the law says beyond a reasonable doubt.”

I was the only person in the deliberation room who knew what DARVO was, and how the defendant’s actions fit it. DARVO is an acronym for the pattern behavior that domestic abusers tend to display when accused, invented by psychologist Jennifer Freyd in 1997. It stands for “deny, attack, reverse victim and offender.” I saw the defendant progress through every stage of it through the course of the trial.

The defense had an expensive criminal lawyer, one whose name you see in the paper sometimes, very passionate and performative, with shiny alligator-patterned shoes. (I’m a girl, I notice these things.) The assistant district attorney prosecuting the case was … none of those things. Maybe (probably) he was overworked and underpaid.

Everyone on the jury took their job very seriously. We deliberated for about three hours, and nobody made a single joke about getting out of there faster. (There were some jokes as to why the bathroom window had been sealed shut.) We asked every question. We reviewed all the evidence. We parsed every word of the applicable laws, piece by piece. It was an intellectual exercise as well as a civic duty. And, like many civic duties, it ended in a vote.

The defendant was found not guilty of domestic violence assault. I thought he was guilty. I feel sure he did it, but I could not convince the rest of the jury. Not that it was my job. I did my part, and they did theirs. It would take a smarter, more convincing person than myself to persuade 10 guys from rural Maine on a domestic violence verdict.

Oh, that’s right. The jury makeup was myself, one other woman and 10 men. I’m sure the men reading this think that has nothing to do with the verdict reached. I suspect the women might think otherwise.

The defendant was found guilty of the lesser charge of domestic violence criminal threatening, because you can’t threaten to kill someone even if you’re in a self-defense situation. After we rendered the verdict, the guys on the jury all left. The other woman and I stayed for the sentencing. I don’t know about her, but I wanted to see the whole thing through.

The defendant received two years of probation with potential end of probation after mandatory counseling, as well as a no-contact order with the victim. So there was something, at least.

After that was finished, a woman who identified herself as a victim-witness advocate approached me. She thanked me for my service and asked if I’d noticed the young woman who’d been present in the back row for the entirety of the trial. I said I had — attendance was sparse, it was hard to miss anyone. The advocate told me that the woman had a different domestic violence case, stemming from a different relationship, pending against the defendant.

I was glad have the opportunity to check “serve on a jury” off my bucket list. And I will gladly do it again if summoned. But I hope it’s not another domestic violence case. This one left a bad taste in my mouth, a pebble in the shoe of my conscience.