Jury Duty

Last week I was lucky enough to be chosen as a member of the jury for a burglary/theft case.  I was actually looking forward to it and even a little excited.  You have to remember that I was a paralegal for a short time, contemplated going to law school and majored in criminal justice, so this was fun for me.  The case was very short and only lasted a few hours.  Both sides presented their cases in about three, maybe four hours.  The story was something like this:

Sometime between October 15, 5:00 pm, and October 16, 2010 8:00 am, someone broke into a storage unit and stole an ATV and trailer.  No witnesses, no “evidence” no nothing.  January 2011, the victim went to a friend’s house for lunch and saw his atv sitting in the friends shed.  A comparison of serial numbers confirmed that it was indeed his.  The friend was holding the atv for a friend of his sons.  They had been out riding in the sand dunes that previous weekend, and the son’s friend left it there until he could come get it.  The son’s friend had borrowed the atv from his grandfather, and the grandfather Mr. G, bought the atv from a friend on October 16, 2010.  The friend, who is the defendant in the case, said he bought the atv from a woman who was trying to sell it in a parking lot of an outdoor sporting goods store.  The friend, Mr. H, said he overheard her trying to sell it to another person, but that person wasn’t interested.  Mr. H. talked to the woman and she wanted to sell both the atv and trailer for $1,400, even though the est. value was $6,000.  He said it was a good deal and he knew his friend, Mr. G., was looking for a good deal on an atv so he bought it for his friend.  The woman, however, could not be located.  Mr. H. then said he took the atv out to Mr. G’s house to sell to him. 

Mr. G said that Mr. H came over to his house for drinks and played pool when the conversation came up that Mr. H had an atv to sell.  They then went over to look at it and Mr. G decided to buy it. 

Mr. H said he had a sales receipt, but never produced one in court.  Mr. H never said how he purchased the atv, or proved how he purchased it. 

The verdict …

Not Guilty.

WTF?! 

Only 4 people on the jury felt that he was guilty, the other 8 felt he was not guilty.  We spent 4 to 5 hours deliberating back and forth and nobody budged.  In the end the people who knew he was guilty changed our vote just to end the trial.  Part of me really wanted to hang the jury, because I knew that the prosecution would have a stronger case.  Well, I didn’t and neither did the other 4 and he was found not guilty. 

We had a chance to ask the judge and prosecutor questions afterwards, and found out that Mr. H. was a repeat offender and the sales receipt was just a sentence stating he purchased the atv , but wasn’t dated and could have easily been written by anyone.  He refused to talk to the detectives and because of this, the prosecutor couldn’t ask the questions he needed to. 

It was a very frustrating case because I knew he was guilty because his story was way to convenient to be true, and because the guy standing on the street corner is never really standing on the street corner minding his own business.  People in certain fields of work hear this story waaay to often and can smell the bullshit, but I was amazed at how these 8 people gave him the benefit of the doubt right away.  I was a little sad, too.  In the end, the 4 who knew he was guilty felt that it would be better to let a guilty man go than rather than let an innocent man be punished.  All of us agreed that if he is guilty, Karma would get him; but when we found out the additional information, we felt that Karma got us.