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What's it like to be a juror on a high-profile case?

(MyFoxBoston.com) SPECIAL REPORT -- Two high profile trials are dominating the news in Massachusetts at the moment: Former Patriot player Aaron Hernandez and accused Boston Marathon bomber Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
   
Selecting the jury is an intense process, as we have seen with both of these cases, but serving on a jury rivals that for the jurors, who are inundated with graphic testimony and images.
   
FOX 25 decided to talk to some local jurors who served on some high profile cases around the area, to see what these jurors will have to deal with during the trial, and after it's all over.

High profile local trials, seared in our minds, and our criminal history. 
   
Neil Entwistle killed his wife Rachel and their baby Lillian Rose. Nate Fujita is a young man who brutally took the life of his beautiful girlfriend Lauren Astley. And James "Whitey" Bulger is the notorious mobster who was convicted of racketeering, involved in 11 murders. 
   
The defendant always takes center stage during trial, but it's the people we don't usually see, the ones who are serving the highest duty of citizenship who are so critical to the process.
  
But at what cost?

FOX 25's Maria Stephanos spoke with four jurors. When you talk with these people you realize how these trials have had a profound affect on their life.
  
It's changed it forever.

"Sleeping was difficult. I just couldn't get this thing off my mind," said Michael Doherty, the jury foreman for Fujita's trial.

"It's horrifying...for a murder trial," Ashley Sousa, who served on the jury for the Entwistle case said.

These people have heard things and seen things you hope you never have to hear or see, and they couldn't tell a soul anything about the trial when it was going on.
   
"The most difficult time was when [Lauren Astley's] mother came up to the stand," Michael said. "It was just devastating to her, I mean I can't rehash that, but it was heartbreaking."

"I'm a single mom, I had a 2-year-old at the time and I would go home at the end of the day...we can't talk to anybody so I would just hug my son a little tight," Ashley said. "It took me awhile to get his face out of my brain."

"I lived through every gory detail of a young 18-year-old girl's murder and I have a family," Michael said. "I have kids a daughter about the same age as she would be today."

"There are some images and moments that I will never forget that one moment," Ryan Graf, who was also on the Entwistle jury, said.

"You see stuff on TV every day, but what you see on a jury is real, it's not a science fiction movie," said Scott Hotyckey who served on the jury for the duration of the Bulger trial. "It demands attention and it demands respect for the people what were involved in it."

They took their duty so seriously.

"You know you really do have to go through every fact and every single detail and every fact and every possibility, and in doing so you can kinda see the victim in someone that's sitting right next to you, and that kind of emotion is something that's really hard to process," Ryan said.

Retired Judge Isaac Borenstein dealt with jurors for years, and even sat on a jury himself. He says it's a life changing experience, and one they should be proud of.

"These are people from all walks of life who make important decisions and they go and take this experience with them for the rest of their lives," Borenstein said. "I don't know of anymore important immediate experience in a democracy than this."

"I think everybody here would say it's a great honor to be a juror," Scott said. "without good jurors there will not be any real justice."

Some advice they gave to the jurors serving on the Hernandez and Tsarnaev trials?
   
"Take a deep breath, and go in with an open mind."