Help me believe in the US court system again

Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share
1

I had jury duty today. And yesterday. And the day before that. While taking up three days of my life wasn’t so hot, I actually enjoyed getting an upclose look at the court system, civic duty, and all that.

I’m not so happy with the verdict. Actually, I’m very very upset.
8 people were selected for the jury, which was reduced to 6 for deliberations. I was not one of the 6. So while I had formed a very strong opinion on the matter, my opinion didn’t count. While annoying, that’s not precisely why I’m so upset.

I was shocked that the jury came back with a guilty verdict (precisely one guilty and two not guilty). I was convinced of a not guilty result. To me, it wasn’t even close in my mind.

Now a young woman has a conviction of assaulting an officer because she “touched” him. (I don’t believe she touched him, but even if she did, charging her with assault is BS). The officers testified that the young woman was polite, compliant with requests, and actively trying to diffuse the situation that was escalating due to the actions of her friend. Oh, and she ended up with stitches and scars. The officer? not a scratch.

I can’t believe the system even put her through a trial!

The other ‘alternate’ also thought she was not guilty. He was even more incensed than me. He thought the officer should be investigated for hurting her.

So now I’m wracked with guilt, anger, sadness… I just feel really bad right now.

Help me understand. I want to believe in this system of justice. Right now I really don’t.

2

I served on a jury in a federal drug case last year and we found someone guilty of several counts, probably ensuring that he’ll be in jail for quite some time. Even though we were quite sure of our verdict it was a difficult thing emotionally to face him in court while the guilty verdicts were read and the man’s wife cried while holding their little daughter.

So that’s the emotional side of things. And it has nothing to do with serving on a jury, IMHO. A juror’s job is to objectively weigh the evidence and decide whether it meets the criteria of the crime in question - that’s what you are sworn in to do. For example (and I’m not a lawyer so I don’t know if this is an actual crime) let’s suppose that “Simple battery” is defined as “Touching a police officer when he said not to do so” and in this case the young lady put her hand on his shoulder while trying to defuse a situation. A juror’s job would be to say “Here’s the definition of the offense she’s charged with. Here’s the evidence and her actions meet the definition we were given. She’s guilty”.

It’s not the jury’s job to say “But she didn’t mean any harm” or “This is a pretty trivial offense” or anything else. Having served on a jury that’s how I would want one to work if I was on trial, because if the jurors start basing their decisions on something other than the facts and the law then that’s when I will start to lose faith in our criminal justice system.

If her offense is really trivial and people don’t think it warrants going to jail then that particular law should be changed through the normal procedures for doing so.

I assume someone will be in shortly to start talking about “jury nullification”.

3

Well I was on two jury trials and my husband on one in the not to distant past, which surprised us both because we’re engineers and thought we wouldn’t be picked. All three ended to our satisfaction in not guilty verdicts. One of mine was a bank robbery and the other was a personal injury claim. Both defendents were IMHO not guilty based on the evidence presented.

The cops in the bank robbery were pretty pissed that we didn’t convict. But the prosecution presented no evidence at all that the guy was there when the crime was committed nor that he had anything to do with it. His car that started with a screwdriver might have been used by the two guys they said actually robbed the bank. Video of two guys obviousely not the defendent were shown actually robbing the bank. We found out later that the two guys they said robbed the bank had been acquitted prior to the car owner’s trial. It was like they were scraping the barrel to convict some one, anyone (heh kind of like mafia :dubious: ).

The other case was a fender bender personal injury thing. Even the woman’s doctors contradicted her testimony. Many members of the jury believed that although she was not actually injured we should award her something because ya know the guy’s insurance would pay for it. Her husband was also suing for…wait for it, not the loss of sexual activity with his wife, but for the loss of his wife’s ability to vacuum. :rolleyes: I am not making that up. I and several others who actually pay for insurance quickly stomped on the theory that she should get even a dime.

I’m sorry you had a bad experience. My experiences made me believe in the system more then I did before I participated. Samey samey for my husband. If you’re called again I hope you go and are seated on a jury.

4

She can appeal the decision. That’s part of the system.

What system of justice would you substitute?

Our system of justice is not perfect. NO system of justice is perfect. People are not perfect. NOTHING is perfect.

5

I’m firmly convinced that the best way to disabuse someone of their illusions regarding the effectiveness of the institutions of democracy is to force him or her to participate in it. Jury trials, political campaigns, congressional debates; C-SPAN was most effective in convincing me that what the U.S. really needs is a benevolent dictatorial monarch. And I’m stumping for Morgan Freeman to accept the office, because I’m sure he’d give a hell of a royal address.

Stranger

6

Why? What could you have done to change things? How is the outcome your responsibility?

7

While I agree to this cliche, the devil is in the details…
Define benevolent :slight_smile:

If we could come up with a way to pick em, an all-powerful monarch would be great.

8

It’s the same system that would convict me if I touched you. Or you, if you touched me. That’s the booger all of it, you (or I or her) can’t just go around invading another’s person. At all.

Maybe a good cite, maybe not but:

Don’t like it? Get the definition of “battery” changed.

9

Im pretty sure touching a police officer is considered assault so technically the veredict would be right.

10

I hated jury duty, but I’d have loved to be on that one with you and vote innocent.

11

But it’s pretty clear (at least to me) that she did not touch him. At the very least there is reasonable doubt.
(my comment that simply touching equates to assault was there to add onto how absurd the entire proceeding was)

The officer testified that she grabbed his arm and he swung back against her to push her off him. Her injuries are on her face and the back of her hands. How does someone push someone backwards and get the result to be injuries to the face? It just doesn’t make sense to me.

The people who ended up on the jury were split on the decision but ultimately believed the officer simply because he was a cop.

I’m sorry, I see that I didn’t actually list all the things wrong with the cop testimony. In my opinion they were numerous including:

  • implausible recount of how the defendant sustained her injuries
  • contradictory statements by the two officers
  • the ER doctor testifying that the cop (#2) invaded her privacy with the defendant at the hospital
  • the ER doctor testifying that the cop (#2) yelled at the defendant “not to talk to her like that,” which she found inappropriate, baffling, and made the doctor feel uncomfortable.

I guess I’ll have to live by the old standby of ‘there’s nothing else better’ but that seems like little comfort for the wrongly convicted. It’s also clear to me that had the other alternate and/or I been on the jury instead of alternates the verdict would have been different. Her fate was determined by lady luck, which deeply disturbs me as well.
I can’t even fall asleep tonight.

12

Are you really disappointed in the “system” or is it the members of this particular jury you’re disappointed in?

The “system” allows for a jury of one’s peers. Should we change that? Should a single person be empowered to decide guilt or innocence? What would be a better system?

I’m not trying to be flip or sarcastic. You think the 6 people empowered to make that decision made an egregious mistake. You’re very probably correct.

But what is it about the “system” that caused this faulty result? What was wrong with the procedure? If those 6 people made the wrong call, couldn’t the problem be with one or more of them?

How would you have improved the “system” to have prevented this result?

If the jurors did something stupid, is that the “system’s” fault or theirs?

13

We’re getting into details and we’ve got only your recollection of them but this sounds completely plausible to me - you grab my arm, I shove you off and the back of your hand goes into your own face.

This is part of being on a jury, you may have to decide which witnesses you think are credible and which are not. Obviously you found the defendant more credible but the other jurors disagreed.

The first point didn’t ring “implausible” to me.

What were the contradictory statements? If one officer said “She grabbed me” and the other one said “I was watching her and she never touched him” that’s one thing, if on the other hand they disagreed about what time the incident took place that’s another.

I don’t see on the face of it what the ER doctor’s statements have to do with whether the defendant grabbed the police officer or not, unless this took place in the ER itself.

It sounds like her fate was determined by a jury that listened to the evidence and arrived at a different conclusion than you did. While you don’t agree with the outcome that doesn’t mean that it was wrong.

I’m really not getting the sense that there was a horrible miscarriage of justice here. Please understand that I’m not picking on you, just saying that all we are getting is your opinions and partial recollection of what was presented at trial.

Frankly it sounds to me like the police arrived at some kind of incident and the defendant was trying to intervene (perhaps with the best of intentions, calming some friends down and attempting to avoid someone getting arrested). At some point she put her hands on a cop who is trying to do his job and that doesn’t strike me as a very good thing to do - shaking a cop’s hand after he brings your stolen wallet back is one thing, putting a hand on his shoulder during a domestic dispute call is another. If this made their job harder or made the situation potentially more dangerous, especially if they had told her to step back/get out of the way/don’t interfere, then it could reasonably lead to her being arrested and charged.

Obviously I don’t know for sure, but I can see some perfectly logical sequence of events that would result in the defendant being busted. What was the lady’s story of what happened? What do the police say happened?

Stranger On A Train, my opinion as to the effectiveness of the jury system increased dramatically after I served on one. If I’m ever in court and there’s a group of people like the ones I served with deciding my fate, I will feel that I’m in intelligent, honest hands.

14

Can I ask one more thing? It sounds like you were an alternate and thus not present for jury deliberation, is that correct?

15

Presumably, the judge read the jury an instruction explaining exactly what constitutes “assault” in your jurisdiction, so you know what the actual law is better than I do. I’m not going to look up MA’s criminal assault statute, but I will say that when I took Torts, I was surprised to learn just how little can happen and still constitute assault.

I’m looking at a model penal code definition for assault. Check this out:

And…

…so simply attempting to touch someone could constitute “criminal assault,” depending on your jurisdiction. The touch doesn’t even have to happen.

It’s been said upthread, but your distress here doesn’t seem to be with the judicial system; it’s with the legislature who passes such a silly law.[sup]1[/sup] The judicial system is merely enforcing it.
In general, I’d say this kind of case is exactly where the jury system comes in handy. A judge will generally stick with the letter of the law. He sees hundreds and hundreds of cases a year, and when the defendant waives a jury trial, the judge will try to apply the law to the case coldly and rationally. Based on the possibly erroneous definiton of assault that I have, and the tiny amount of information about the case that I gleaned from your posts, I’d say that a judge would probably have found the defendant guilty anyway. A jury is a lot more likely to diverge from absurdly strict applications of the law, and instead decide based on how they think a case ought to turn out. A jury is more result-oriented while a judge is more process-oriented.

It just happened to be an unusual jury in this case, I guess. Often, a jury will decide for a defendant in a case like this, even if she technically violated the statute.
[sup]1[/sup] (Of course, you won’t think that law is silly when some guy starts dry humping your leg on the subway. That’s battery, folks.)

16

I guess I really am more disappointed with the jurists rather than ‘the system’ (possibly, maybe). But it bothers me that the jurists were split and the two alternates were emphatically pro- not guilty.

All parties testified that the injuries were due to her face and back of her hands hitting the sidewalk (visible scrapes and stuff). One side said that pushing her off (backwards) resulted in her face hitting the sidewalk. The other side said that she was thrown down by the officer.

I thought there would be a perfectly logical sequence of events too. This is part of why I’ve lost faith. In opening remarks, the prosecution did outline a perfectly reasonable sequence of events. The problem is, the officer’s own testimony didn’t match that wonderfully logical sequence of events.

The contradictions weren’t as egregious as that. But contradictions in who was where at what time. Where the passenger was when the second officer arrived. When pepper spray was used. These contradictions are no smoking gun, but to me they lend credence to the possibility that the officers are lying.

Correct. Which is part of what eats me up. I didn’t get to hear everything they said, but after the trial we talked. They asked us what we thought. A few of them got defensive, and a few started feeling really bad about their decision.

Note: I don’t think a discussion of the definition of assault is all that necessary. While I found the notion preposterous, the illogical definition is not my main concern or trouble. I probably should have kept that tidbit out of the discussion.

Thanks for the comments.

17

I’m puzzled by a 6-person jury. I’ve never been called for jury duty, but somehow I’ve got it in my head that a jury is always composed of 12 people.

18

The defendent clearly smashed her face against the officers fist. Repeatedly.

19

Valgard’s question about being present for the deliberations is an important point. The jury is not six individuals, acting separately - the six individuals must reach a joint decision which they all agree upon. The deliberations phase is the most important part of the jury process, and is why jurors are normally instructed not to begin deliberations or discussing the evidence until they’ve heard the entire case. The system assumes that a group of people may have initial disagreements or opinions about the evidence, but that by going over the evidence together and working it though, they can reach a unanimous result.

If sachertort had been involved in the deliberations, he/she might have contributed in a way that led to a different outcome - but it’s also possible that during the deliberations, he/she may have been persuaded by the other jurors to reach the same result.

20

Or that sachertorte plus the other jurors would have ended up as a hung jury.

I’ve been on one of those, and it was not fun. We had a dingbat who should never have been allowed to serve on a jury, an arrogant idiot, someone who slept through part of the trial (me), and 9 reasonable people.

In fairness, the part I slept through, which was right after lunch, was part of the prosecution’s part. I heard the whole defense–which struck me as incredibly stupid. The defendant and his lawyer claimed that he started running when he saw a police officer due to fear of being arrested for public drunkenness. Unfortunately for him, the police officer in question saw the guy running, and made a mental note of it. Then, when a few minutes later there was a call put out for a young white man accused of attempted rape, the police officer tracked the guy down. He was then identified by his victim, and later turned up in court.

Dingbat claimed that “cops lie” and the jails are full of “innocent people”. Arrogant jerk apparently believed he could look at a defendent across a crowded courtroom and determine guilt or innocence. The rest of us believed the victim, her identification of the culprit, and wanted to put the guy in jail for a long time.

An hour or two later, we were stuck. Two people who would not be convinced, and had failed to convince the rest of us. The judge was mad at us–hung juries waste money because cases have to be retried, but when people won’t budge, what can you do?

The other two juries I was on that month had deliberations which progressed in the natural order to guilty verdicts. And in each case, we were appalled by the list of priors which showed up in the penalty phase of the trial.