jury report - long

[skybytch 273]

[dancing around the room]
I'm Done! I'm Done! After 6 weeks of being on the jury, today we made our decision and I'm Done! I said I'd give you the details once I could; if you care, here 'tis...
(Now's the time to go back to the index if you aren't interested in jury duty/court/law/death penalty stuff)
It was the penalty phase only of a first degree murder with special circumstances (robbery and burglary), which in California means that someone was killed during the commission of a robbery and burglary. Another jury had already found our defendant guilty and found that the special circumstances applied, so our decision was to be either life in prison without possibility of parole or death.
We heard about the murder he was convicted of. Wierd situation. Everyone involved - the defendant, his "crime partner", the victim, the person living in the house, her husband-in-prison, their friends... - was an active participant in methamphetamine use and/or sale and/or the acquiring (whether by "hand" or by purchase) of stolen property.
Then we heard about the 5 guys he had stabbed in prison and jail, one of whom lived only by sheer luck - his neck was slashed from one side almost through the skin on the other side - another of whom was his cellmate of 24 hours (he was only stabbed 23 times).
Then we heard about his childhood, with a father on the stand saying it was all his fault that his son turned out this way (right....) and neighbors telling us how the defendant and his brother weren't really wanted around the house.
Much longer story shortened -
We ended up spending two days deliberating. We got the decision shortly after lunch today. While the defendant is an extremely violent person and I think truly deserved to die, we couldn't find a single piece of physical evidence or a single believable eyewitness' testimony that without a doubt placed him at the scene of the murder - no fingerprints, no gun, no details about the car they arrived in, nothing. Without an absolute certainty that he was there (even though all of us THINK he was there) we couldn't vote death and then go to sleep tonight.
So we returned a unanimous verdict of life in prison without the possibility of parole. He'll never see the light of the sun - he'll go straight to a maximum security, solitary confinement situation and he'll never leave there. And yet he still looked over at us afterward and said "thank you".
I'm not sorry I served on this jury. Learned a LOT about the court system, saw and heard some people I NEVER want to see or hear again (one witness was literally the worst of the worst, you could feel the evil coming out of him; should have seen the size of the 5 guards who came in with him), met some neat people in the other jurors and I've stamped PAID IN FULL on my debt to society. I'll never do it again though; maybe a simple one or two day trial but never again something like this.
pull and flare,
lisa

[cdunham 0]

Lisa,
Sounds like a lot of difficult work and a very difficult decision, but that you and the rest of the jury exercised a great deal of courage making the decision you did, especially given that he was already convicted.
It's nice to know that the system works, at least sometimes.

[Hellian 0]

Although a comendable job done, no question on that, i don't personally feel it was a difficult descision.
Death Penalty = Wrong
Your situation = reason
how many juries woulda sent him to the chair, chamber, bed or whatever is in your state?.
only to find out ten days later, oh wait, he's innocent, "oh bugger".
Just my £0.02p
Ed

[PalmettoTiger 1]

Lisa, from all of the well-thought-out gear advice you've given, I can tell you're the kind of conscientious person who should be on a jury. Your post only confirmed this. Good job!
But as for the debt to society being paid in full, I'm not sure the IRS is going to like that.
Blues, squares,
PTiger