I was a Jan. 6 juror. What I learned surprised me.

I was a Jan. 6 juror. What I learned surprised me. Trump’s pardons of virtually all of the Jan. 6 rioters left me dejected. Am I safe?

When the jury summons for federal criminal court arrived in my mailbox in November 2023, I knew I had to answer it. And not just because I had been deferring and deferring and now I was all out of deferments. I had to answer this one because in my gut I knew it wasn’t going to be just any old criminal case. I remember saying to my partner, “I bet you anything it’s a January 6 case.” Make sense of the latest news and debates with our daily newsletter At that point, it had been more than two years since a violent mob attacked the U.S. Capitol in the city that has been my home for 16 years. But criminal cases related to the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection were still making their way through the federal court in D.C. at a pretty steady clip. At the time my summons arrived, roughly 1,200 Jan. 6 cases had already been adjudicated, and there were still many more to go. As a result, thousands of D.C. residents just like me had been called to perform this solemn civic duty. I couldn’t have imagined that our carefully considered verdicts could be so easily upended. Or how dejected I would feel when they were. I had always wanted to serve on a jury. But because I am a journalist and also the daughter of a former district attorney, I have always been dismissed in the first round of voir dire. I really believed I would be so much better than jurors on TV shows. I’d take more notes, I’d never fall asleep, and I would absolutely not wear a sweater vest in the jury box. Sadly, I had to resign myself to never experiencing jury service. So imagine my surprise when I showed up to the E. Barrett Prettyman United States Court House and actually got seated as one of the 12. And on a Jan. 6 case, just like I predicted. If this had been a normal criminal case, I would never have made the cut. But the defendant in this case — Taylor Johnatakis — waived his right to counsel and chose to represent himself. Furthermore, he made no jury challenges, and therefore the prosecution basically got to tailor-make its perfect D.C. jury. Along with me — a White, middle-aged, lady journalist — there was a lawyer, a retired accountant and a woman whose father was a Secret Service agent for Lady Bird Johnson, the former first lady. There were six Black people, four White people, one very pregnant Asian woman and an immigrant from Iran. There was a very antsy 20-something and a creaky octogenarian. And there were three gay people, including me. We were a zesty salad bowl of D.C. diversity. The Johnatakis case was bizarre from the get-go. The defendant — a septic systems installer from Washington state — was charged with four misdemeanors and three felonies, including assaulting a law enforcement officer. During his opening statement, he said he got swept up in “hyperbolic rhetoric,” he apologized for dishonoring his family and the people of the District of Columbia, and then he quoted Proverbs — “Free yourself, like a gazelle from the hand of the hunter; like a bird from the snare of the fowler.” He told the court he was sorry for his actions and repented his sins. 🎤 Following Opinions on the news Following The government laid out its case, just like it had laid out hundreds of other Jan. 6 cases before. When it was Johnatakis’s turn to cross-examine witnesses, he didn’t ask questions. Rather, he asked for forgiveness. The judge — a Ronald Reagan appointee — reprimanded Johnatakis many times. It was all incredibly awkward. The government rested its case after two and a half days of testimony. The jury approached the deliberation process with the utmost seriousness, and we talked through the questions we had. I was impressed that my fellow jurors were resistant to making a snap judgment even though the evidence against the defendant was overwhelming. In video after damning video, Johnatakis boasted that he “organized a push up to the Capitol” and that the Capitol was “stormed and taken” and that “it wasn’t antifa who broke in; we did. I was on the front line.” The government more than proved its case, and we the jury rendered the only possible verdict: guilty. All but four Jan. 6 defendants have been found guilty. The Jan. 6 cases really were open and shut. The evidence of criminal behavior was undeniable and lock-tight. Law and order prevailed, and we could all go home knowing justice was served. Weeks after the verdict, I received a letter from the judge thanking me for my service as jury foreperson. He wrote: “Without good citizens like you, we could not fairly administer justice. Thank you for your dedicated and conscientious service on this jury.” The letter made me feel as though what I and my fellow jurors did was important and necessary. We had performed citizenship; we were fair and impartial, and that counted for something. Except then, on Jan. 20, 2025, President Donald Trump pardoned virtually all of the roughly 1,500 Jan. 6 defendants and shredded the thoughtful deliberations of countless D.C. juries. The Justice Department has since fired dozens of federal prosecutors who handled Capitol riot cases. More recently, Trump said he would fire FBI agents who worked on the cases, claiming they were corrupt. It’s a post-insurrection purge of people who were just doing their jobs. Now, there is talk of defendants trying to extract financial compensation for their “wrongful” imprisonment and going after law enforcement, prosecutors and judges who sent them to prison. Will their anger extend to the regular citizens who served as jurors? Should I be worried for my safety because I faithfully performed my civic duty? This is not how our justice system is supposed to work. Around the time of my jury service, my partner, the journalist Hanna Rosin, and I learned that our neighbors included prominent Jan. 6 sympathizers — Micki Witthoeft, mother of Ashli Babbitt, and Nicole Reffitt, wife of the Three Percenters militia’s Guy Reffitt. Rather than egging their house or vandalizing their SUV covered in pro-militia stickers, we decided to get to know them. They were not at all what I imagined. Micki had a clever command of language and was surprisingly maternal — she was always telling me to watch my step on stairs or ice or unstable ground. And Nicole was laid back and loved to make jokes — usually at my expense, but still. Hanna and I took our experiences with our neighbors and made a podcast called “We Live Here Now” about our efforts to understand them. During the course of our reporting, Hanna flew to Seattle to visit with Taylor Johnatakis’s wife after he was sent to prison. Marie Johnatakis, a mother of five, was gracious and kind. Her voice was honeyed and feminine. Hanna characterized her like a sort of gentle fawn. When Hanna nervously told Marie that I was one of the jurors who convicted her husband, Marie’s response was surprising. She said: “We went to the sentencing, and I watched the judge up there playing his role and the prosecution doing their role. I just felt a lot of compassion toward them all, because everybody is playing the part that they have been asked to play, including your partner. And I think that we all just do our best.” And she was right — we were all just doing our best. She had the grace to see that. I hope that the rest of the country can see that, too.