I just finished 3 days of jury duty on a case where a man was accused of running over his wife with a truck while she was out walking.
Story here.
I’ll post more details about the case and the trial later, if you want to hear about it, but I just wanted to share some of my thoughts about serving on a jury.
It’s not at all like you see on TV. You know the scenes where the opposing lawyers have an issue for the judge to decide, and both sides approach the bench, where they have a 30 second whispered conversation and then the judge makes a ruling. What really happens is that the judge will declare a “10 minute recess” and the jury files out to the waiting room. Then 10 minutes stretches into an hour and a half while both sides argue back and forth and the jury sits on their hands unable to talk about anything related to the case. In the 3 days of the trial (2 1/2 actually, because jury selection took the entire morning of the first day), we probably spent 5-6 hours waiting on the judge and lawyers.
Another thing that surprised me is that on TV you always see everyone rise when the judge comes in. What you don’t see is that every time the jury comes in or goes out everyone, including the judge, will rise.
It’s a huge responsibility to have to decide whether a person is guilty or innocent, knowing that whatever decision you make will impact a person’s life, as well as his friends and family for years to come. Also the impact on the victim’s friends and family. They tell you to put that aside and focus on the facts of the case, but it’s difficult to do that sometimes.
I’ll come back later and post some of the highlights of jury selection and the case as it was presented, but I wanted to get some of this off my chest without making the post read like War and Peace.
Yikes. So guy ran over his wife and got caught, you say. As someone who’s seen details of such a case in which the perp ended up in the barry place, I wonder if you might share some of those points that ended up working against him?
Kidding. Ok, not really, but don’t.
One of the exciting things about a jury trial is you never really can predict what sort of verdict they’ll return. So tell me, how long did it take y’all to decide he done it? And if there was some disagreement, how far apart were people going into deliberation?
We didn’t pick a foreman until we went into deliberation. In our case it was a pretty informal process. We basically asked if anyone wanted the job, and when no one spoke up the juror who was in the #1 seat during the trial said “I’ll do it if no one else wants to,” so we let him. The foreman has responsibility to conduct the voting and to fill out the jury form which is handed to the judge.
In this instance, the state had a pretty strong case, and the defense had nothing. Frankly, I’m surprised that it even went to trial. I think we could have come back with a guilty verdict in 5 minutes, but out of respect to the process and to make sure we weren’t rushing into things, we went over the evidence and discussed the possibilities for about an hour before we finally reached the verdict.
First, let me congratulate FatBaldGuy for not shirking his civic responsiblity- too many people try to find an out when it comes to jury duty.
Second- yeah, TV crime dramas never actually show the boring stuff that happens during a trial. I’ve covered too many murder cases and it is tedious stuff.
Jury selection is a long, slow death to those in the gallery, those bench conferences can drag on, especially when the judge calls a recess to retire to chambers with both sides and then there are all of the small, fine points of law that must be decided before things proceed. Get good defense council and watch the objections fly!
But running over the wife with a truck? Never seen that one court. Yet…
When I was on a jury, the judge basically just told me that he had decided I would be the foreman. I think it was because I was the only one dressed nicely.
Usually one guy pipes up, “So how do we pick a foreman?” Everybody else stares at him and says “We just did.” At least that’s how I was chosen foreman on the last jury I served on.
The foreman is just in charge of keeping track of any paperwork and handing it to the bailiff who gives it to the judge.
What convinced you he was guilty? Hiding the truck did it for me. If not for that (and the damage to the truck), I might have thought there was reasonable doubt. Except that cheating spouses are always guilty.
How could he have gotten away with it? Reporting the truck as stolen, maybe? Or stealing a truck and using that to hit her?
That poor woman. Jeebus, if you don’t want to stay married, get a divorce. What’s wrong with people!
Did you wonder why the prosecution didn’t produce the insurance policy?
Did the girlfriend testify? I can’t imagine how awful that must have been for her - dating a guy you thought was single, and it turns out that not only was he married, but he just murdered his wife! I can see someone giving up on the whole dating scene after that.
Also, what about the life insurance claim? How could the prosecutor claim that as a motive if they couldn’t produce a policy? Or was the defense bullshitting about that?
There are eight jurors because the Utah Constitution, Article I, section 10, says that there are eight jurors:
I don’t know as to the life insurance claim, but it’s likely that someone testified that there was a life insurance policy. Typically, there’s a jury instruction that says that neither side has to produce all available evidence, and another jury instruction that says that a single witness’s testimony can be sufficient for a jury to find a fact to be true. So if the prosecution had a witness testify to the existence of the life insurance policy, that would be sufficient. (And if the prosecution didn’t have anyone testify to the existence of a life insurance policy, or otherwise present evidence of its existence, the prosecution would not have been permitted to argue its existence.)
Sometimes it can be handled at sidebar, but you’re right – other times it can take much, much longer.
They rise because, although the judge is the trier of the law, you are the trier of facts. You determine what happened, and the judge then determines what the consequences of those facts are.
Good on you for doing jury duty; it really is the backbone of the judicial system.
Seriously. After watching TV news coverage of yet another spousal killing, my boyfriend and I solemnly promised we would have a “100% murder-free” relationship. It takes real commitment, but it’s worth it.
I was on a jury a couple of years ago, and this was one of the cool aspects of it. And unlike you, we were put out into the lobby when the judge ordered a recess. (Usually, though, they did these things over lunch or first thing in the morning or during a bathroom break, and just delayed restarting the trial.) And one juror was late coming back from a recess because the juror parking lot was full, and she had to feed a parking meter. The bailiff helpfully offered to fix any parking tickets we might get during the trial, so that the trial wouldn’t be delayed again. We joked about deliberately overstaying a meter just to enjoy the minor thrill of having our parking tickets fixed.
And once we had a “viewing of the scene” of the crime. It was very impressive to see how many police officers were there (including a sniper on the roof!), but mostly they were present to guard against a jailbreak since the defendant decided to go along (as was his right).
