Ira Glass

And...

There is a clue that something else was going on with this judge, which was at the end of this strange day in court, he calls the jury back in and he gives this little speech and it kind of comes out of nowhere.

He talks again about how much jury service matters and this should be a place where you can set your personal politics aside.

And then he says, Wait, what?

I know.

Everyone around me was looking at each other like, what was that?

And...

I think he was frustrated by how impossible it seemed to create a room right now that is what a courtroom is supposed to be.

Neutral ground.

He said over and over during the whole day how important it is to get an unbiased jury that only considers the facts in front of them to have a room with no politics in it.

The shirt violated that and possibly the jurors answers about ICE.

But of course, the problem in trying to create an apolitical trial is the very premise of this trial is so political.

It's about this stuff being debated literally every day, all the time.

It's ICE, Trump, Antifa, Antifa versus ICE.

Right.

Maybe there's a room somewhere you could discuss it objectively.

I just don't know if that room exists in the United States.

This is Ira Glass.

On This American Life, we look for stories that are surprising, that you won't hear anywhere else.

Like, for example, this one astronaut who went to the moon.