The Jury, Part 2
Let’s see, where were we…
I ended up among the 16 lucky citizens left after 34 of our group were released and the entire 50 extra people were let go also. The trial started.
We were given strict instructions that we could only consider information presented to us by one of the two legal teams using our best discretion. Even though we weren’t sequestered, we were told not to discuss the case even amongst ourselves until the trial was rested and, obviously, we couldn’t discuss it with our friends and families. We were also told not to go investigate anything ourselves (the location of the crime,etc.). Our job was to weigh the evidence presented. Oh, we were told not to talk to either lawyer team and, in fact, were told that if we got on the elevator and one of the lawyers was on the elevator, they’d likely get off to make sure that there wasn’t any discussion with us.
We were given a notebook from which we could take notes but that was left in the court room at all times (and we had to turn it in on the completion of the trial). The first day, I thought I misheard a date given and I raised my hand and inquired whether I could ask a question. Using that same commanding voice I heard at the Expo center, I was informed that I could not ask any questions. I was there to listen and make a determination based on what the lawyers and witnesses said.
The trial was a double murder trail so I won’t try to go through the witnesses we heard. Let us just say that some were relatively boring while others were downright gruesome. We saw pictures of the murder scene and had to consider forensic processes that we likely had never heard before. I came down with Covid on a Friday morning. I called the court officer and found out, at the time, the recommendation was to isolate 5 days. I also found out that there was an issue with a potential add to the prosecution witnesses and the Judge was considering postponing the trial a couple of days to give the defense team time to investigate. Covid didn’t even get me off the hook.
After a couple of weeks of hearing evidence and witnesses, we were given carefully crafted instructions on how to determine whether we believed that the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt or not. Have you ever really considered the gravity of that decision? During the trial, for various reasons, we lost 3 of our 16 potential jurors leaving just 13 of us. The judge selected one of us to release leaving the jury of 12 (I’m still in the mix).
Now that we, the jury, was deliberating, we could talk to each other. We selected a Forman. He took an initial feeling, non-binding vote (you could vote guilty, leaning guilty, leaning not guilty or not guilty) and it was split. I was still weighing the concept of reasonable doubt so, at the time, I didn’t feel comfortable voting either extreme.
We went through each witness and the evidence one by one. Some of the evidence was recordings that were almost impossible to hear in the big court room. But in the much smaller jury room, we could raise the volume and even had some ability to reduce the background noise.
The review of the witnesses and testimony took a considerable amount of time. Each day, we walked into the court room, walking past lawyers and the defendant. Each day, we had to request breaks and lunch breaks. Each day, we determined how long to work and when to stop for the day (each with the judges approval). We made it through all of the witnesses and the evidence and took another preliminary vote. This time the choices were only guilty or not guilty. The vote was 8 guilty and 4 not guilty.
We spent another day deliberating and took a final vote. It was 7 guilty and 5 not guilty. We notified the judge. She asked us if there was any chance, if we continued deliberating, that we could reach a unanimous verdict. We polled ourselves and determined that there were several who adamantly believed either the defendant was guilty or not guilty and no amount of discussion, based on the evidence we heard, was going to change that. We notified the judge. She declared a hung jury.
After she announced the decision to the court room, the two lawyer teams came in and talked to us. They asked us a couple of questions and we asked them questions. I found out evidence that wasn’t allowed to be presented because the witness had died between the murders and the trial. I determined that my deliberation was even more beyond a reasonable doubt.
“I am the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of slavery. You shall have no other gods before me. You shall not make for yourself a carved image, or any likeness of anything that is in heaven above, or that is in the earth beneath, or that is in the water under the earth. You shall not bow down to them or serve them, for I the Lord your God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers on the children to the third and the fourth generation of those who hate me, but showing steadfast love to thousands of those who love me and keep my commandments. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain, for the Lord will not hold him guiltless who takes his name in vain.“Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Six days you shall labor, and do all your work, but the seventh day is a Sabbath to the Lord your God. On it you shall not do any work, you, or your son, or your daughter, your male servant, or your female servant, or your livestock, or the sojourner who is within your gates. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that is in them, and rested on the seventh day. Therefore the Lord blessed the Sabbath day and made it holy. Honor your father and your mother, that your days may be long in the land that the Lord your God is giving you. You shall not murder. You shall not commit adultery. You shall not steal. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, or his male servant, or his female servant, or his ox, or his donkey, or anything that is your neighbor’s.” - Exodus 20:2-17 ESV
Epilogue - The District Attorney decided to retry the defendant and that trial just concluded today (2 1/2 years after the trial I was a juror on and 22 1/2 years after the murders). This jury determined that the defendant was guilty after only a few hours of deliberation.
Our legal system may not be perfect but after my exposure to this difficult trial, I am proud of the safeguards and fairness that are built into the system. It may not be the speediest but I think it would be hard to get that balance between fairness and expediency any other way.
