It’s not a stupid rule, exactly. The problem is that you and your fellow jurors are likely to give extra weight to anything you hear twice. Unfortunate, in that case, I agree.
If you guys still had questions, then why did you find her guilty beyond a reasonable doubt?
(I mean, based on the way you describe the case, I’d probably have found her guilty as well, but if you guys really had questions and felt there was the possibility she was just a naive bystander, you really should’ve voted not guilty)
I was on a trial about 20 years ago, and I would have liked to ask the question to the defense attorney (in a civil case) Why did you go to four different doctors to give the plaintiff an MMPA (we the jury had low regards for the MMPA’s and basically ignored them) and only call the one with the results that best suited your side? We kinda got the answer to that because the plaintiff"s attorney called the other three. But there was a more important question about the MMPAs that we would have liked to ask but couldn’t. The woman worked 60 hours a week or so for 30 some years at a busy hospital emergency room and your MMPA says she has a tendency to be lazy, something no one had ever said about her in her work reviews. How would you explain this apperant discrepancy? The Defense never asked the question and the plaintff’s attorney point it out in the closing arguments, but never asked it.
In the end it didn’t really matter because all the evidence and the truck driver’s testamony said that the driver was at fault and he had been on the road for 18 or so hours because he had to get a shipment somewhere in an amount of time that wouldn’t allow him to take a break and the only two doctors that gave a medical diagnosis, said the woman would never work again.
On a side note, to a post that turned into one gigantic side note to the OP, I wonder if the defense attorney, or the trucking company ever figured out that besides the fact that the defense was all dancing around the subject, smoke and mirrors, the defense attorney spent four or five times the amount of time questioning and cross examining witnesses. Plus he called way more people. That, more than anything else, in a trail that was eight days of listening to doctors, was why we the jury put the hammer down on the defense to the tune of $4 Million.
I just woke up and the first thought on my mi d was, it’s MMPI not MMPA. :smack: Also, my spelling was a bit rough. I think I should never post when I’m thinking its time to go to bed.
But see, if there was someone else involved it was the defense’s job to point that out. (The whole adversarial relationship thing).
There are a number of explanations:
-stupid/lazy public defender.
(Important point, do you get to hear how competent or how much time defence spent on the case?)
-the woman was willing to take the fall for her boyfriend - love can be crazy that way too. (But then, wouldn’t she have pled guilty to ensure the heat didn’t end up on her boyfriend?)
- the prosecutor was picking on her as a threat to make her roll over on her boyfriend.
-if someone else were involved too, i.e. lived there, presumably they would have been charged if evidence like fingerprints or handwriting or even they had clothes and a bed there, pointed to them.
(Another good point - would you hear if someone else is charged in the same crime? Presumably the trial would be joint, and if severed it would be because each is blaming the other?)