The Trial: Day 11 (May 21st)

Day 11

And it is done. What a wild experience. We met early today (8:30), and heard the prosecution's rebuttal. For my money, her rebuttal was by far the weakest performance she gave the whole trial; it was forceful but without much purpose, and almost got insulting towards our intelligence. I should note that she never once thanked us or acknowledged how much we had been through during this trial, which didn't really warm her to me. But here, she was clearly misstating testimony, to the point where the defense objected twice to it. The objections were pointless legally (the judge instantly shot them down), but they were valid.

Anyways, she didn't speak for too long, and we then finally got to go to our deliberation room! We got to go behind the judge's chair to a hallway and then down to the room, which was, as you might imagine, a drab room with twelve seats. The deliberation was great; we were all very attentive, and made absolutely sure we made the right decision. We had a terrific foreman, and while the discussion got heated, it was only because we were arguing over important points, which is what any group with a weighty responsibility should do. In the end, we found our defendant innocent, which was my belief from the very start of the case.

I was nervous at first that I would be the only one who thought he was innocent, but it turned out we all agreed that there was just way too much doubt and lack of evidence to convict him on any kind of charge. When we read the verdict, there was not a lot of reaction from either attorney, but our defendant looked very relieved; I can only imagine after being locked up for two years over something it seems pretty clear he didn't do. He also made a brief statement thanking us personally for acquitting him, which was nice but not really necessary; none of us felt that he was a saint, but that he had been given a deserved second chance, and that it was up to him now to make the most of it.

A bunch of us met with the defense attorney afterwards and shook his hand, telling him how great a job he did for his client. He was humble and a little overwhelmed by our praise of him; he seems like a pretty meek guy, actually. We then gathered in the parking lot briefly, went over the case, and then said our goodbyes.

I'm sad that I'll likely never see most of my fellow jurors ever again, but I became good friends with one of the jurors, Katherine, and I received business cards from a number of the jurors, and I'm sure we'll find a way to get in touch one way or another. It's an incredible bonding experience, actually; you, as a group of twelve people, decide another person's fate, and especially if you do it with the attention and care that we showed today, you become quite connected to everyone's feelings and ways of thinking. This is an experience I'll never forget, and really one that I'll cherish as a proud moment in my life, where I got to take part in serving justice. Being on a jury may seem like a burden, but don't knock it until you've actually been on one. It's an experience like no other.

Random Notes

Today felt weird. We've been coming to this courthouse and dealing with this case, off and on, for exactly one month. It doesn't necessarily feel like its been longer than that, but when you do something for a month, it truly does become routine (I think three weeks is often considered the point when something becomes ingrained). I'm not exactly sad that I'll never have to go to the courthouse again, but a part of me will likely miss it for a while.

The hallway we went through behind the judge's chair was way sparser than I was expecting. Somehow, I was expecting the area behind the judge's chair to contain his office or something, but nope, just a grey hallway that led into another grey hallway. There were some conference rooms with nice views of the city, and a random person working behind a desk...without a view or anyone around her. Man, that must be a soul-crushing job.

When we started deliberating today, we had none of the evidence and no way to play any of the audio evidence even if we had had it. These were the things we really needed to make our decision, and when we asked the foreman about it, he stated that he hadn't cataloged them yet (?) and that we would likely get them in the afternoon. Well, then why were we deliberating in the morning? We kept asking, and finally he gave us a bunch of evidence late in the morning, and was NOT happy about it. We of course still had no way to play the audio, and had to wait for that until after lunch. I guarantee you that if we had the evidence at the very beginning and an audio player of some sort, we could have been out of there before lunch.

On the way down to the first floor for lunch, the elevator took forever to arrive, way longer than usual. I made an offhand comment to one of my fellow jurors as we were getting in about how it seemed like there was only one elevator working. Then, a lawyer in the elevator with us that I'd never seen before made a comment to me that it was my decision that I had chosen jury service and that what I should do in the future to not be annoyed by the elevator is just not answer the call. Now, an important thing to note here is that his tone was upbeat and positive, as if trying to make it seem like he was chums with me and that we were bonding over how annoying jury service was. This is coming from a lawyer. Surrounded by jurors who have clearly been selected to a jury based on their badges being marked with which jury they belonged to. Needless to say, all conversation stopped for a while after his comment, and I just looked at him in disgusted amazement. He went from smiling to looking down at his feet quickly, and then tried to casually chat with his client. Yes, his client was in the elevator with him. If I was that client, I would have tried to find a new lawyer fast.

There were two things that I noticed instantly about the defense attorney as we met him up close. One was that his hands were cold and clammy. He had obviously been very nervous about our verdict. The other thing I noticed were his business cards. They were from Vista Print! Vista Print is a cheap online company that makes you something like 1000 business cards for twenty bucks. They're low quality, and they have generic designs. The only reason I recognized it was that I used the exact same design when I made my business cards from them! Pretty funny stuff. Still, it endeared him even more to me.

Every person involved in this case was terrific. The judge was easygoing and kind, but very good at controlling difficult situations and at taking things seriously when they needed to be serious. The prosecution and the defense both did extraordinary jobs, especially our defense attorney given that he was a public defender. And, most of all, I could not have had a better jury. It was diverse, intelligent, and just a very positive and passionate group of people. I'm truly going to miss them.