Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater
At Long Last: Jurisprudence, part 5: Deliberation
If you've been following along for years, you may remember that I had jury duty (part 1, part 2, part 3 and part 4), way back in 2009. I never actually got to the final and potentially most interesting part: deliberation.
My memory of all this, being now 2 years old, is necessarily vaguer than I would prefer, but I'll relate what I can still remember.
We got our instructions from the judge, and filed into the jury room. We were to choose a foreman, and come up with a guilty or innocent decision on the two counts before us: Attempted Rape, and Theft in the Second Degree (I think it was second degree -- theft, in any case). The judge read out the definitions for those two charges. I was interested in the theft definition, which specifically excludes the use of force. If force is involved, then it's Robbery.
After some brief discussion about the foreman, I admitted that I would be interested in doing it, and everyone thought that would be fine. No one else seemed at all interested in the job, so it was more like everyone taking a step back than me taking a step forward.
The process was initially somewhat chaotic, as we weren't sure what order we should do things in. After 20 or 30 minutes of random discussions (I think there was a certain amount of "that defense attorney was a jerk"), I tried to get everyone to settle down and tackle the charges one at a time.
We started with Attempted Rape. This was a sticky one to me: Larry's story didn't include it, unless you count his improbable child-like boasting that Danielle was bound and determine to fellate him to within an inch of his orgasm-filled life. Danielle's story included attempted rape. The testimony of everyone else we heard from basically didn't mention it one way or the other, except as a second-hand story from Danielle. In other words, it was him against her.
We didn't take a very long time to figure out Attempted Rape. We needed to decide beyond a reasonable doubt in order to give a guilty verdict, and only one or two people were convinced that strongly. Under our own amateur cross-examination, they gave up, and we decided to give him an innocent verdict on Attempted Rape. I don't think anyone on the jury was convinced he didn't do it, we just weren't 100% convinced that he did. I was about 80% sure he did, but again, not beyond a reasonable doubt.
As we were discussing all this, there was a lot of reconstructing of testimony. I'd taken meager notes (I'm not a very good note-taker, although I tried), some had taken none, and a few folks had pretty good notes. Larry's testimony had been so very different from what Danielle and the police had said that it left a lot of us somewhat confused. I'm sure that was the point. My description in part 4 really is vastly clearer and more coherent than his actual testimony, and I only came to it after having weeks to think about it. In the jury room, less than a day after his testimony, it was a lot more jumbled in my head.
So, we reconstructed his story, as near as we could tell. We made up an approximate map, to get his path of travel. We had actually sent several requests for clarification back to the judge, but every one came back with what amounted to, "There's nothing more I can tell you" as the reply, so we gave up. We all wanted a copy of the map the state attorney had referenced in the first day (but which had not been entered into evidence), but decided that even requesting it was a waste of time given how all our other requests were denied. It turned out, after we were done, that the judge probably would have allowed us to have the map, had we requested it.
We got an approximate time-line of his story and Danielle's story hammered out. I think we actually made the innocent determination on the Attempted Rape charge after that, but I remember we came to the decision pretty quickly and easily, despite our misgivings.
The Theft charge, however, proved to be much more difficult. I personally thought it was a slam-dunk, and much clearer than the Attempted Rape charge: he was found clutching her purse and a $50. Ignore the $50 bill, and the fact that her purse didn't contain anything of real value -- he had her purse. That is a fine literal definition of theft. He had something of hers without her consent. Theft.
However, one of the jurors, who was an older woman, obstinately disagreed with this. Unfortunately, I can't remember her objection clearly, but I think it boiled down to, "I don't like it." We couldn't enter a guilty verdict (which I and several other jurors felt strongly was the correct verdict) without getting her to agree. I laid out the definition of theft, and the facts (much as I did in the previous paragraph) to her, but to no avail. She didn't think it counted as theft. There may have been some element of her personal definition of theft being different than the judge's.
We did eventually sway her, although it took far more time and effort than I ever would have expected. By the end, it was everyone on the jury working on her, trying to find some way to change her mind, as the other 11 jurors all agreed that he was guilty. Finally she relented, and we signaled the judge that we were ready.
The judge didn't make me stand up and do the "We the jury find the defendant... GUILTY!" routine, which was fine with me. Larry looked like the kind of guy who might come to blows if prompted, and I was actually somewhat worried that he might recognize me in Fremont some day (he lived there, I work there) and do something stupid. It's never come up, fortunately.
Instead, she read the verdicts, giving him innocent on Attempted Rape, and guilty on Theft. His reaction was mostly one of disbelief. I'm not sure what part he didn't believe, whether it was that his stellar testimony didn't convince us he was 100% grade-A (drug-addicted) boyscout material, or that we would actually have the temerity to accuse him of something he didn't do. He was led out by a bailiff, and that was the end of the trial.
After it was all over, the judge and two attorneys invited those of us who were interested to hang out and talk. They wanted to hear from us as much as we wanted to hear from them, I think.
The post-trial discussion was quite revealing. The state attorney had evidence that she'd been legally prevented from entering: Larry had been convicted twice in the 80s for doing exactly this: attempting to rape a woman, then running off with her purse. I forget what it was that prevented her, but there was some new law that was fresh on the books which would have allowed it if he'd said some key thing in his testimony. He came close, but in the judge's opinion didn't actually say the right words to "open the door."
Another surprising thing was to learn that the defense attorney -- who seemed roughly as competent as Lionel Hutz from the Simpsons -- was a regular in this courtroom, and was not in fact fresh from 3-hour mail-order law school. He and the sharp state attorney seemed to be friends and respect each other, and came up against each other frequently.
Having learned that Larry had been convicted for doing this twice before, the jurors who'd stayed behind shared a certain amount of, "Oh jeez, if I'd known that..." He would have been found guilty of Attempted Rape as well.
I wasn't entirely clear on this, but I had the impression that this was some kind of a three-strikes deal, and that Larry was headed to prison for his misdeeds. I hope that's true, although that invites a lengthy discussion of the punishment system we have in place, which I'd rather not get into.
After it was all done, I realized that it really was a case of the stupid vs. the stupid. Both Danielle and Larry had basically acted contrary to every instinct I have when it comes to self-preservation on the street. Their behaviors seemed to me to invite all the bad things that eventually happened. From what I could tell, both of them had had similarly bad things happen before, yet they didn't seem to learn anything from life's painful little lessons.
For all that, I found the jury process to be interesting, and one I'd willingly do again. I was actually called for jury duty last year, but when I asked for a different time due to a schedule conflict, I got a letter back saying that I'd been removed from the pool since they had too many jurors anyway, and I'd served the year before. I was a bit disappointed by that.
If you find yourself called for jury duty, keep in mind that it's a fascinating insight into the justice system, and bears only a partial resemblance to all the TV courtroom dramas. Just pray that you don't get selected for a civil suit, unless you really like watching bozos spar over who was at fault for tripping on a rug.
Posted at 13:29 permanent link category: /misc
Categories: all aviation Building a Biplane bicycle gadgets misc motorcycle theater