Deciding a Case With Our Eyes Closed

In 2016 I sat on jury duty for a misdemeanor criminal case. In all, I felt the process worked well. We all put a lot of thought and care into each count. There were clearly biases being presented from each walk of life.

Also, the understanding of the 30 minutes instructions of different rules was a lot to take in without anything written being given to us with each count. That actually didn't really make sense.

There were only two witnesses and not a lot of testimony we felt like we were trying to decide this case with our eyes almost closed. I wonder if many cases feel that way. We said so many times we wanted to raise our hands and asked qualifying questions to the witnesses.? In a way, that was the defense attorney's job.

Below is the full breakdown of my first experience.

The Case:

A driver of an accessory ride vehicle was pulled over by an officer for making an illegal left turn. While the officer was running his license the driver walked out of his vehicle in between his car and the officer's car. The officer repeatedly told him to go back to his car. After the 4th time, he placed him under arrest. The driver then ran back to his van and locked himself in. He eventually had to be subdued by 11 officers and pepper sprayed to get handcuffs on him. During the struggle, one of the officers got injured.?

The Jury:

It was made of 4 women and two men. I was the only attorney on the jury.?

The Witnesses:

The case only had two witnesses. The arresting officer and the officer who got injured. That and a couple of photos were the only evidence we had.?

The Defense Attorney:

Have you ever seen My Cousin Vinny? The first attorney Vinny hired who had trouble speaking. This attorney was similar. It was actually quite uncomfortable as if felt like he was unable to say half of the things he wanted to.?

The Judge:

He was a no-nonsense judge who treated the jury with the utmost of respect. At one point he made someone stand and stop talking in the back of the courtroom and made a speech about it.?

The Summation & Jury Instructions:

The trial was done on the first day. Day 2 they did their summations and then the judge gave us the instructions. It was like 30 minutes of reading us the rules. I got some of it but not all and afterwords talking to everyone it was clear that it was way too much information in too short a time to be able to pick it all up.?

The Deliberations:

This is really the meat of it. After such a short trial, I think many of us had the impression we would go in there and in under 15 minutes and have a verdict. But it soon became clear that would not be the case. One of the women, Judy, started saying she found the whole thing suspicious. She felt the facts did not add up.

A younger woman who was in college also agreed she felt the whole thing did not make sense and they did not prove their case beyond a reasonable doubt.? The older man was sort of mumbling to himself he is guilty on count 5. But in a weird way that the rest of us knew he was not dealing with a full deck.?

Finally, after about 5 to 10 minutes of talking, Judy says to me “what do you think?” And I laughed and made a joke of it because it was more what do you think attorney guy. At least that is how I perceived it.?

I started by saying I think the defense attorney had serious issues and did not do well by his client. Then, I started going through each count.

• Count 1, yes he clearly made an illegal left turn. Easy.
• Count 2, he interfered with public official administration. Well, I was not really sure what that meant. We were all confused so we decided to write a note to the black letter law read to us again on that.
• Count 3, resisting arrest. I said guilty of that. Why? Whether or not we believe he should have been arrested. He clearly resisted it.
• Count 4, Wreckless endangerment. This was about the other officer getting injured. I felt it could have been maybe, but to be honest I also knew based on the opinions of everyone else it would never be unanimous. Plus they did such a bad job of making it clear how he was guilty I did have a reasonable doubt.
• Count 5, reckless driving, they said he tried to drive off or at least put the car in drive with the officer standing next to the open car door. Again, that was pretty unclear so there was a reasonable doubt.?

We also had the entire testimony of the first officer read back to us because we wanted to confirm the timeline of things as there was confusion.

After we got the rules and the testimony again we still felt like we are missing something. We asked for the summation for counts 2 and 4 from the prosecutor to be read back to us to hear how he thought he proved the case. After an hour wait, the judge finally said we cannot hear that again as it is not evidence.

It was getting close to 4:30. I started hearing people say that they don't want to go to work tomorrow and in not so many words want to come back here. That is when I tried to make the decision happen.

I said, "ok my opinion is he is guilty on counts 1, 2, and 3 and innocent on counts 4 and 5." This was the first time I actually was definite about my opinion. Everyone seemed to be in agreement except one person. She said she was not convinced about count 2. One of the other women gave her case as to why she felt he was guilty of count 2. I am not sure it was right the way she explained it but it was enough to get the college girl to change her mind to guilty.

Verdict:

This is where it got real. When we walked into the courtroom there were 5 extra officers standing behind the defendant. I guess this is just in case he was upset about the verdict. The foreman, the older guy, stood up and gave the verdict on each count. The judge thanked us for our service and we were done back to real life.

Conclusion:

All in all, I am glad I was on the jury. Not only is it our civic duty, but it is also one to add to my life experiences, and especially being in the CLE business, it gave me more insight into the judicial process.?