D. Graham Burnett's "Trial By Jury" is not a "true crime" novel. In fact, it is to "true crime" what Jane Austen is to Harlequin romances. I am not writing this to sound smarmy, but just to let the reader know that while this is a story of a trial and the tensions arising therefrom, the reader should not expect anything resembling Ann Rule or even Truman Capote. [This mis-expectation, I think, accounts for several of the negative reviews.]

This is a autobiographical recount of D. Graham Burnett's jury duty on a murder trial. Burnett's rationle for recounting the trial is to give us a view of the machinations of the jury trial and, in so doing, reflect on such things as the difference between law and justice, and the ways in which we try to ascertain the truth of a matter when all we have are disjointed facts and clues.

The trial is that of Monte Virginia Millcray, who is charged with stabbing Randolph Cuffee about 20 times. Millcray says the stabbings were in self-defense, after Cuffee (posing as a woman) tried to rape Millcray. The prosecutions account is that Millcray and Cuffee were in a relationship and Millcray snapped.

About half of the book is about the courtroom drama and half is about the lengthy (20+ hour) deliberation process and it is clear that the author places much more emphasis on the latter half of the book. Witnesses are gone through rather quickly, summarized as might be done by a story teller quickly laying the obligatory groundwork for the "real" story. By contrast, Burnett's recounting of the jury deliberation is quite lengthy and detailed.

To this reader's mind, Burnett really does a good job with describing the jury deliberations and for those of us who've done jury duty before, much of his retelling will seem familiar. Tempers flare, opinions clash and fluctuate. Evidence is combed over again and again, in hopes that each time will reveal something missed the time before.

Burnett also reflects on the jury process. Some of his reflections - the mismatch between law and justice - are rather pedestrian and hackneyed. (I confess that I was sometimes annoyed that some of Burnett's more pedestrian reflections were sometimes treated as if he were the first to have thought of them.) Others - jury sequestration as an example of the virtually unlimited power of the state - were quite interesting. Either way, Burnett's retelling of the jury deliberation is as much recount as it is reflection. (If that would bore you, you might get bored with this book.)

"Trial by Jury" is not for everyone. As noted, it is not a "true crime" novel, and is not a page-turner. I don't think that was D. Graham Burnett's goal in writing the book. Rather, it is a sometimes entertaining and other-times thought-provoking examination of one man's experience with, and reflections on, a jury trial as a way to try and mete out imperfect justice in an imperfect world.