As an IT specialist, 37-year-old Korey Wallace is used to offering support to others. But he says he was the one who needed help after serving on a jury for a murder trial in Philadelphia.<\/p>\n
The jury ultimately convicted a man accused of first-degree murder in the killing of a 27-year-old transgender woman. Investigators found her dismembered body in a river near a park that Wallace used to frequent.<\/p>\n
“There would be nights where I was just driving around the city and I might make eye contact with a transgender person as I’m in the car. It’s just like a lightning strike. I thought I was over it, moving past it, and I was getting dumped back in these flashes,” Wallace said.<\/p>\n
Jurors were shown gruesome pictures of bloody crime scenes. Wallace said he never saw the victim’s face until after the trial.<\/p>\n
“The first thing I saw was her face and the eyes and the hair and it struck me. This woman that was full of life was so savagely murdered,” Wallace said.<\/p>\n
Across the country, 11 million people report for jury duty each year. Less than half a million will serve on violent criminal cases, including murder. But counseling and mental health services offered to jurors after those verdicts are rare.<\/p>\n
Philadelphia Jury Commissioner Patrick Martin wants to change that. He set out to create a program to help jurors handle trauma.<\/p>\n
“I’m pulling regular people off the street \u2014 a deli worker, a plumber, a librarian. They don’t know what they’re really getting into when they come down for jury service,” Martin said.<\/p>\n
He added, “The jurors are mine. They’re my responsibility. Not just when they get the summons in the mail, but when they go home.”<\/p>\n
Martin partnered with psychologist Michele Pole at West Chester University to come up with a plan. Grad students, who are trained by Pole, offer at least three free support sessions to jurors. They use a technique called psychological first aid.<\/p>\n
“It’s not any different from what first responders receive,” Pole said. “And what we’ve done with psychological first aid is really to focus on where do we customize this for jurors?”<\/p>\n
The program launched in April, and Wallace was one of the first jurors to take advantage.<\/p>\n
“She helped me kind of disconnect that web of yarn that had all those conflicting emotions associated with it. I would not have been able to do that without her,” Wallace said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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