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2003-04-19 - 10:47 p.m.

Tuesday- Up at 6, in Fondy by 7:45, ready to begin doing my civic duty and see if I will get selected to be a jury of someone's peers. I am just barely selected in the random drawing of initial candidates (#20 out of 20), and somehow, despite being the only person within 20 years of the defendants age and professing a distrust of police officers, I am selected to take part in a trial where the 19 year old defendant is charged with criminal destruction of property to the tune of $10000, making it a felony. We hear testimony for the rest of the day. I am 20 years younger than anyone else on the damn jury.

Leave the courthouse at 5:30, arrive in Ripon just in time for jazz band, drag my tired ass to bed shortly thereafter.

Wednesday- another full day of testimony. Closing arguments take 1 and a half hours. (I could detail the actual specifics of the trial here, but most of it was repetitive and boring. The upshot of all of it is that there is no evidence directly linking the kid to the crime, except for a confession he gave and signed voluntarily in which he claims to have been involved.) I am skeptical about the "voluntary" nature of this confession because the kid was only 16 at the time, the officer who took it is obviously a shifty, seedy bastard who might not be above coercing the guy, and the fact that the confession is ALL that the prosecution has to offer after three years of an obviously completely half-assed investigation has produced a half-assed case.

The defense has a half-assed case of their own to counter, as they try a little bit of everything. Witnesses testify, only moderately convincingly that "he's a good kid" "he's too smart to do something like this and then up and confess to it" "he confessed cause he was scared and the cops made him" "he's too dumb to know how much serious trouble he could have gotten in" "he was on drugs (Zoloft, alcohol and weed, with a possible bit of LSD) and temporarily insane" "he's in a perfectly healthy mental state" "he was depressed and had attempted suicide before" The upshot of it all is that it essentially comes down to the word of the kid and his buddy (whom he implicated as being the ringleader in the affair) that they didn't do it, versus the word of the two cops who were in the room when he confessed and the word of the kids girlfriend who says he had bragged about doing the crime a couple months before his arrest.

All well and good, until the kid and his buddy take the stand, where it becomes immediately obvious that they are lying through their teeth about not having anything to do with it. They freely admit to lying about their alibi for that night on no less than four seperate occasions, and it's also readily apparent that their respective fathers are trying desperately to cover for them.

I believe in my heart that they have done it, but I have lingering doubt that the state has proven this, given that we are being asked to take the word of a pathological liar to convict the kid. (Nevermind that the liar in question is also the defendant) When we are finally dismissed to deliberate at 6, I argue this point to people, and I put forth a good argument (the attorney on the jury says I ought to consider lawyering. I resist the urge to smack her face off)

Thursday- Back again at 8 for more deliberation. After thinking about it overnight, and talking it over with the gang in the jury box for a couple hours, I come to realize that my doubt is unreasonable, because while the kid is a liar, he obviously has much more to gain by lying to say he didn't do it than to lie and say he did. "he was confessing to impress his girlfriend" is an obvious ploy for sympathy, and also hard to swallow, seeing as he didn't begin to deny his "confessions" until after he had been arrested for them, which, by the way, was not until three weeks after he initially admitted to it. "I'm too dumb to remember that everything I say can and will be used against me in a court of law and thus insist that my lawyer be present, especially when it's obvious to everyone and their mom that there's no way in hell they can convict me without my cooperation." is not a good enough defense. The straw that breaks the camels back came when I was reminded that the kid had slipped up and described the bat used to break the windows before the police had ever mentioned a bat, and while there are possible scenarios where he could have known what it looked like without having been involved, they are far more outside the realm of believability than the simple fact that he's guilty. I change my vote to guilty, so does the other guy who was holding out for acquittal, and we have a verdict. Dunno what the kid will get, but he's young, and it was only his second offense (and committed when he was a minor) so his life is not over.

Plus anyone that stupid needs to be scared into not even thinking about committing another crime early on (it would not do to have this kid thinking he's some kind of master criminal- he'd be in for a life of disappointment)

I'm proud of our jury- we paid close attention (I took 30 pages of notes), considered all the facts, were not swayed by emotion, and took our time despite the length of the trial to come up with what we felt was the right verdict. Go us!

And that was my week as a juror. I have to go back again for a different trial next thursday. I'm enjoying the experienc, even if I did just find a guy guilty. My newfound knowledge of the ins and outs of the American criminal justice system will serve me well in the future, making it far harder for any jury to convict me.

Ken

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