Sean Musial, Managing Editor
With every case that is presented to the court, a juror is sometimes exposed to something in particular that can drastically impact their mental health. They can be exposed to unsettling and graphic images and/or scenarios. The impacts of the final decisions they make on a case can weigh over their lives.
Though not always, what happens when a juror’s mental health is negatively impacted? Philadelphia Jury Commissioner Patrick Martin has been posing that question for years.
Around 70% of people selected for jury come across trauma in one form or another. It can be small things like stress from their bosses that they have to take off work for jury duty, or figuring out a way to make sure their kids are alright for the day. Sometimes the barrier can be larger, like the court dealing with a murder or sexual assault cases. That’s when things can become damaging towards the jurors’ mental health and need to be addressed rather than repressed.
Patrick Martin has been working in the courts for 23 years. Over the years, he has seen many different cases come in and out of the courtroom—some mild, while others are much more horrific. For example, a case came back in 2013 regarding a man named Dr. Kermit Gosnell who performed late term, back room abortions. The case was so bad that this doctor was even snipping the spinal cords of babies as they were coming out of the womb. A woman had passed away under his care and the investigation was brought to his home. The investigators went into the doctor’s home with video cameras that year (2013), finding jars of babies and baby parts all over the residence. The jurors saw that. They witnessed it and it was a very traumatizing thing for them to endure. The judge at the time knew that these jurors needed help and were able to work with the Behavioral Health Department in Philadelphia to connect them with mental health resources.
Martin had never seen anything like this before; he tried to instill a program together to better service jurors who had been assigned with sitting in on obscene court trials. In his previous position, he didn’t have the authority to make this happen. In 2022, he attended a workshop in Pittsburgh where a woman, Paula Hannaford, taught the attendees that support for jurors was needed and there’s only a handful of people that offered it. She let them know that the federal courts in 2001 recognized that they needed to be able to offer support to the jurors in certain cases. The federal courts found a loophole in EAP (Employee Assistant Program) for mental health help due to the fact these jurors are temporarily being employed and being paid for their time. Massachusetts eventually started offering support at the state level.
The Jury Commissioner of Massachusetts, Pamela Wood, began to offer what is known as Psychological First Aid—basically what first responders, police officers, firefighters, etc. are given when they experience horrific scenes that visibly shake them in the moment and they need coping tips that get them back to the way they were before they stepped foot onto that crime scene. Martin brought this information to his boss and let him know that they found a solution to their problems. When his boss asked him “What problems?”, he quickly realized it wasn’t ‘their’ problem but his problem. Martin was the one concerned. He couldn’t do anything about it– at the time at least.
When his boss left and he took his position, struggles still arose at first because it was still in its infancy stage across the country. When a higher up got instilled after not being able to pursue any further, Martin was given the green light to look for other options to make this possible. He first went to the judiciary house for funding. Massachusetts initially had problems with the help of EAP since jurors were technically non-employees. The same happened with Martin when he looked into it and he was declined by his requested funds due to the existing funding going to alternate programs.
In response, he pursued many different ways to ensure that this endeavor was possible—private companies, applying for grants, help from the behavioral health department, etc. After hitting more dead ends, a friend of his went to jury duty one day; they worked in the Psychology department at Holy Family University. They both came up with the idea of having the students who needed clinical hours to be the support system for those jurors. Martin started working with local universities and their students in graduate programs.
Martin also began to reflect on one core idea: what if these jurors don’t need it? After hearing things through the grapevine, he went onto Reddit for some answers. Reddit posts started to spiral into comparing the many different traumatic stories these people had experienced; something they hadn’t planned on going through before they walked through those doors. They weren’t getting any of this feedback through the courtrooms, but they were finding out all this information through social media.
With that, they‘ve been up and running since April 25, 2025; 18 months to be exact.
28 people have used it in that period of time. A little less than they initially though, but that’s looking at it all wrong. That’s 28 people they have had the chance to help since then, and it poses the question of how many people needed help years prior. Another factor is the different cases these jurors have to be a part of. A fender bender or a slip-and-fall isn’t going to have the same psychological effects that it will of a murder or sexual assault case. It’s all about perspective in a thing like this. Having less people is necessarily a good thing, because it tells us that people aren’t as badly affected. But, those 28 who needed that help can walk away with the same mindset they had before walking into the courtroom, or at least, a better one.
As much as Martin wants to help other states—New Jersey, Illinois, Hawaii—which have reached out regarding information on how they have been doing this here in Philadelphia, he is still the Jury Commissioner of the city. Focusing on the jurors who come through his doors is his issue and arguably where he is doing the most work. At the end of each case, they give each juror a brochure with the information. They also follow up with an email thanking them for their service to the case along with a link towards the resource that is provided. A man didn’t think he needed that help at first, but, as time passed, he used that link to get that help that is now provided by the courts.
Generations are different all across the board. The generation consisting roughly from 40 to 70 years of age grew up in a time where the importance of mental health wasn’t discussed and oftentimes brushed under the rug. According to Jury Commissioner Patrick Martin, college kids right now are much more open and welcoming of mental health care, and that’s a great thing. As this generation graduates college, we are given the chance for a “First Aid Kit,” Martin calls it, to help with repercussions of an intense case. Not every case is dark, nor should it be. The ones that are, that one percent of jurors that do need a helping hand through a dark time in their lives, this “First Aid Kit” is here for them.
Who knows: years from now this could be a mandatory addition to every courtroom in the country, and something you might need to help you better your mental health.
