Jury Foreman

A buddy o' mine blogged about these 2 inter-related videos about the 5th Ammendment. The title at boingboing summarizes them pretty well:

Law prof and cop agree: never ever ever ever ever ever ever talk to the cops about a crime, even if you're innocent

Watching those videos, it occurred to me that I didn't have a soapbox (ie: blog) when last I was involved in anything related to the legal process. I've got some interesting anecdotes that have never been told to the net. Here's the one I'm most proud of:

Two years ago, I was on the a jury on a domestic violence case. Upon the completion of closing arguments, just after we sealed in to the little deliberation room, I volunteered to be foreman. Immediately thereafter, I polled the room, a quick show of hands - would anyone vote guilty right now? I was rather surprised that 4 of the 6 jurors raised their hands. Turns out at that moment it was 4 guilty votes, 1 undecided, and myself. My point of view was that the guy was more than likely a jerk, but that the prosecutors hadn't done enough to prove his guilt of any specific crime.

I told them something to the affect of: "He seems like an ass, and some jail time would probably do wonders towards restoring his wife's mental peace and empowering her to get away from him. I wish my conscience would let me award her that opportunity. But that's not how this is supposed to work. We can't send a man to jail unless he's proven to be guilty, and I don't think the prosecution even came close."

The accused had not testified, he invoked his 5th Amendment rights. 4 out of 6 jurors wanted to convict him for that. But the burden of proof lies squarely upon the prosecution's shoulders, and the prosecution had no testimony of anything other than both of them arguing. We were told that there were 3 witnesses to that late night fight, but only 1 of them was willing to testify. A car's windows were shattered, but that was 2 days after the big public argument, and no one (not even one of the prosecution's witnesses) saw who broke those windows, nor even saw him near the car on the day it happened. There were no photos of injuries, no records of hospital treatment, no eyewitnesses to any attack or threat. Even the supposed victim was nebulous about what had been done to her: she said that she was afraid for her life, but didn't list a single violent act that she'd ever witnessed or been the brunt of.

Frankly, I was a little surprised it went to trial under an assault charge. I was even more shocked that my fellow jurors were ready to convict simply because he didn't testify in his defense. I had to educate them about the law and the purpose of the 5th Amendment. "Do you remember the part where the judge instructed us that we could not consider his lack of testimony to be evidence either for or against his guilt?"

Two and a half hours of deliberation later we had a unanimous not-guilty vote.