Conversation with my younger son yesterday: Me: "So how was your week?" Son: "I spent the whole week on a jury for a double murder." Yikes. I had read about the trial in the news, but had no idea he was on the jury. Of course one isn't supposed to talk about it while the trial is ongoing.
Not fun, but he was lucky it only lasted a week and that it wasn't sequestered. I have served on a jury once, luckily it wasn't murder, just a liquor store burglary. At the time I was eight and a half months pregnant with younger son, so I kidded him that he had been on a jury twice. I was selected for a jury when we lived in Colorado, but they ended up settling out of court.
My husband has served on a jury for a "possession with intent to sell" case. The person was acquitted. The defense attorney called it the Grape Nut case, because the amount of drug found was about the size of a piece of Grape Nuts cereal.
I recently got a letter from the county clerk re: jury duty. There was a form giving some reasons to be excused. One of the reasons was being over seventy years of age. I debated a bit, but checked that off and sent it in. Probably should have volunteered to serve.
I was called to jury duty four times but was appointed to a jury only once. A civil lawsuit. Not a big deal. Two friends of mine served on murder trials. No thanks.
ReplyDeleteI have been called to jury duty twice.
ReplyDeleteThe first was to the local municipal court. A bunch of us assembled for the choosing, but a court official finally came in to tell us that the case had been settled out of court. I guess it is often the case the parties wait until the last minute and then decide their best deal might be the one that they can agree upon. I have no idea what the case was about.
The second case was to the county court. It was a drug trafficking case. Again, we all assembled. The jury of twelve was selected. I guess that the prosecutor and defense lawyers have so many people they can strike without giving a reason. Several were removed for no apparent reason.
Finally, they selected an alternate. It turned out to be me. In a way it was good because I could consider the case from the perspective that I might become one of the twelve. Yet I could also be somewhat objective since that probably was low. I was excused and thanked by the judge right before he sent the twelves to the jury room.
The defendant was a young black male with wife and young children. He was accused of selling marijuana and crack cocaine. He got caught because the white male to whom he sold marijuana was on parole. When that guy got stopped by the police for another reason, he was found to be in possession, a parole violation. The prosecutor basically told him he would go back to prison unless he cooperated in handing over the drug dealer. A paradigm of the racial criminal injustice; a white male felon goes free while a black male goes to jail.
It may also have been a paradigm of police work. A very highly sophisticated operation in police procedure got a drug dealer because they got lucky. But once they got lucky, they had all the sophistication in getting the felon to do their bidding exactly, monitoring him all the way both visually and by concealed mike as he went to the drug dealer and made a purchase with marked money. All the correct handling of the evidence both initially and once they had the warrant to search the suspect’s house. It was an airtight case; there was nothing I could think of that would cast reasonable doubt. This did not involve opioids, so I might have been willing to test my fellow jurors if I could have presented an argument for a reasonable doubt.
I wondered why the case even came to trial. The white defense lawyer made no other arguments other than during the questioning of the jury he said the trial involved the credibility of a convicted felon, and possible entrapment. That guy turned out to be a mere robot in the hands of the police. This clearly was not a one- time sale by the dealer that only occurred because the police set him up. Maybe the only plea bargain for the dealer was a possible death sentence if he handed over his supplier.
The legal system is very interesting since the jury is really confined to a narrow set of evidence over a narrow set of issues. Not much room for investigative reporting of the police department or social science evidence about the criminal justice system.
Jack, I listened to a fascinating podcast that followed several cases thru the Cleveland court house. Some of the judges--ye gods! So many of the proceedings have less to do with justice than on grinding people thru the system with plea bargains because public defenders don't have time to mount defense cases. Here is the link to the podcast series if anyone is interested: https://serialpodcast.org/
DeleteI've been called for jury duty many times. I have made it into the courtroom three or four times. I was impaneled once. It was a civil case, involving five parties in four vehicles in a multi-vehicle collision. One party sued the other four, so the other four countersued the original plaintiff and one another. Basically, everyone sued everybody. It was all adjudicated in the same trial, so every time a witness was examined by one of the attorneys, s/he was then cross-examined by four other attorneys. So it took a long time to get through the trial - about six weeks.
ReplyDeleteA number of expert medical witnesses were called to the stand - the heart of the case was the claim by the original plaintiff, a construction worker, that he could no longer work because of alleged injuries sustained in the collision. But the expert medical witnesses were all very busy doctors, and the court had to suit their schedules, not the other way around. So the doctors were called out of order: they'd appear when they were available, not when it suited the narrative of the case the attorney was trying to build.
I was fortunate in that I worked for a corporation that provided me with a full pay benefit for jury duty. So I didn't lose any money or vacation days over the course of the six weeks. In fact, I was also allowed to keep the puny jury stipend, which was something like $17/day, so I came out a bit ahead. There were a couple of folks on the jury who were self-employed. They were out of luck - they couldn't work over the six weeks. They were really frustrated. Even more so because, over the course of an eight our work day, we'd spend four hours, at most, in the courtroom. We'd start at 10 am, go until noon, then break for two hours for lunch. Then two more hours from 2-4 pm. In retrospect, I can see that the judge and attorneys needed time outside the courtroom to do other things. But it added to our frustration; we felt that if we could do more each day, it wouldn't take as many weeks to get through it. And whenever there was a sidebar or motions in the judge's chambers, which was frequent, we'd get marched back into the jury room to cool our heels - sometimes for a day or more.
Katherine, I got a jury notice last week. I took advantage of my right to excuse myself due to my age. At least a few good things from getting older! I served on one jury, a civil trial after a car hit a bicyclist who had some cuts and bruises. It was pretty clear that the bicyclist had not been following the law - in Maryland if there is contributory negligence on the part of the injured person, then no damages are awarded. It was also pretty clear that he figured he had nothing to lose by letting an ambulance chaser lawyer try to win him a settlement. He didn't get one, due this the contributory negligence. The police officer who went to the accident site testified but was not allowed to say whether or not he had given the driver of the car a ticket. After the trial was over we learned that she had not been cited - the police officer believed from investigating the scene that the primary cause of the accident was the behavior of the bicyclist. In the DC area, the police reports indicate that more than 75% of bike/car accidents are the fault of the bicyclist. Somehow many bicyclists believe that the rules of the road don't apply to them.
ReplyDeleteI would never be able to serve on a murder jury, especially in a capital punishment state. But since you mentioned your son's experience, I will ask all of you for prayers.
The trial for the murder of my niece and her husband is scheduled to begin in mid-July - 4 1/2 years after the murders. The original prosecutor has been replaced and my sister (a lawyer) is upset because she says that he is not nearly as competent than the original prosecutor assigned to the case. We are guessing they will go for some kind of temporary insanity plea. That didn't work for the guy in Charlottesville who deliberately hit a young woman with his car and killed her during the white supremacist/neo-nazi rally there in 2017 - the group that trump claimed had some "very fine people" in it. His defense relied on his long history of treatments for various mental illnesses. It failed. We're guessing the defense in our niece's case may be similar, as he also has a long history of emotional/mental illness. Please pray that he is not acquitted. He is a very dangerous individual who should remain in prison to protect the populace.
My prayer is for a plea bargain to be reached before then - to spare my sister and her husband, and their 3 grandchildren who are their daughter's children, from the trial. They have reserved 3 weeks for it, which would be 3 weeks of sheer hell for the family.
I will pray for your family, Anne, and for a just outcome. I am sorry to say, my own jury experience has lowered my expectations for justice in our system. But if they get the verdict right, that is something.
DeleteAnne, I will pray also for them. Either a plea bargain or a short trial in which a just verdict is reached quickly.
DeleteThat seemed to be the case in the trial my son was on the jury for. He was actually an alternate, but they didn't tell them they were alternates until time for deliberation.
Our state is an on again, off again, death penalty state. Right now it is, but it has only actually been used a handful of times in the last 30 years. So it is unlikely that the person convicted in this latest trial would be executed.
I am sorry for what your family has had to go through. Hoping that they will get some closure from the trial or plea bargain. Of course the tragedy will always be with them.
How awful. Prayers for justice.
DeleteMay you and your family be spared further agony.
DeleteThank for your prayers.
DeleteJustice - I assume there will be legal justice of some kind and the murderer won’t go free. He is a danger to society. But real justice would somehow restore my niece and her husband to the living, which is impossible. Keeping the murderer in prison will protect other innocent people from him, but the emotional and psychological damage on my niece’s children will impact their lives for their whole lives, especially her daughter (he was her boyfriend and breaking up with him precipitated the murders) and her younger son, who held her hand as she was dying. The family had celebrated his 10th birthday only a week earlier. And the young man who murdered two innocent people? Based on what little we know of his family, he was raised by parents who openly looked down on minorities. He had become fascinated by an extremist neo-Nazi group online, a group that was also the inspiration for another murder the same year, in California. The neo-Nazis and white supremacists caused the violence in Charlottesville VA that resulted in the death of Heather Heyer. The young man who murdered my niece and her husband, devastating two families, was deprived of an upbringing that might have steered him away from hate instead of towards it. Of course, in prison, he is unlikely to ever receive the kind of help he needs to turn away from hate, and there is a big risk that his hate may only deepen. Justice for him would mean rolling back the clock and having divine intervention to ensure that he would be born into a different family. There can never be justice in these cases other than strictly legal kind. Often not even that.
Murder leaves a horrible wound in the living. Twenty years ago, my neighbor's mother was carjacked and murdered. Amazingly, the perpetrator was found. My neighbor and her two children underwent years of therapy. I guess her husband participated as well. They seem to have come out of it well.
DeleteYes, legal justice only occurs after the damage is done. Cold comfort for those left behind after what you describe. White supremacists seem to thrive in the prison system, often terrorizing other prisoners. It is very hard some days to resist the idea that these people should be put down like rabid dogs.
DeleteAnne, I just want to thank you for that reflection (which I find to be quite profound) on the limits of earthly justice.
DeleteIt's pertinent for the Easter Season. The Resurrection promises to make all things new - to open possibilities for the fullness of justice which, as your reflection indicates, is presently beyond our reach in this earthly realm. Jesus, please change our hearts.
FWIW - the traditional Catholic teaching on criminal punishment, as captured in the Catechism of the Catholic Church (#2266) identifies three purposes of punishing criminals:
Delete1. "Redressing the disorder brought about by the offense". Much more could be said about this.
2. Protecting society from further crimes on the part of the criminal
3. Offering the criminal the opportunity to repent and rehabilitate
All of these are grouped under the umbrella of the Common Good.
We might think of this as a *proximate* set of duties: a crime is committed; the legitimate authority investigates; the suspected perpetrator is arrested and tried; and, if found guilty, is punished.
The possibilities of further social restoration aren't really thought to be part of the purview of criminal justice. Restitution, to the extent that is possible (obviously not possible for some crimes such as murder, rape or abuse of minors), would be handled via civil justice.
I am generally opposed to the death penalty because I don't have any trust in the system, especially in the treatment of minorities and the poor. But in the case of serial killers and sadists, I might make an exception. It's that they do what they do because they like it. The would repeat their deeds given an opportunity. It's not execution out of anger or revenge, but caution.
DeleteStanley, right, but keeping them locked up in secure prisons might accomplish the precautionary measures.
DeleteI am opposed to capital punishment. Society needs to be protected from violent criminals, so prisons are necessary, unfortunately. But life imprisonment actually costs less than the lengthy legal processes that result from the imposition of the death penalty, and provides time to at least occasionally result in a true change of heart.
DeleteSpeaking of civic duties I did mine today. It's the Nebraska primary. Went to our polling place, the Eagles Club. Only had to wait a couple minutes. The most important thing on the ballot is the gubernatorial candidates. There are something like 9 Republicans on the ballot. Only three of them actually have a chance. I voted for the one I felt would be least divisive.
ReplyDeleteWell, the more moderate guy, Lindstrom, didn't win. But he surprised a lot of people by pulling ahead for a while. Jim Pillen won. He is from our town and I don't feel terrible about his winning. At least it wasn't Herbster, the guy Trump endorsed, and even paid a visit to Nebraska to campaign for. I'm talking like it's already decided who will be governor, even though this is only the primary. It pretty much is a done deal, the Democrats don't have a chance this time, even though we have had Democratic governors in different political times.
DeleteLOL, my sister texted that her five year old grandson said, "Mommy doesn't want Hamster to win."
DeleteI am happy to serve on juries. I never try to get out of jury duty since I read that the pool of jurors is often comprised of uninterested and poorly educated individuals. Served on a juvenile case and have been called but not selected in othets.
ReplyDeleteI was paid $9 per day by the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania. My employer, the government of the USA paid me my regular salary but I had to give them my $27 or so of jury pay.
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