You probably won’t be able to keep the notes you take in the courtroom. Just an FYI.
It was meant more in jest. I’m waaaay past my days of pharmaceutical fun. Let alone going to bad neighborhoods to obtain it.
Whooshed again.
Actually, that worked for me, in case they ever did a background check for me (not that they would, but just in case). I don’t have a joke I need to excuse.
I sat for a case of statutory rape (stepfather on 15 y.o. stepdaughter, who ended up pregnant). The victim & her mother initially pressed the charges, but later had second thoughts and seemed to collude with the defense.
It appears that the family calculated that the stepfather was worth more to them as a free man and breadwinner paying child support than serving time, paying nothing to anybody. So they apparently colluded with the defense, became hostile witnesses, and cooked up the craziest story you could imagine to explain how she ended up giving birth to his child but he didn’t actually have sex with her. I wish I could go into detail, but it’s so uniquely specific that the case would be easily looked up (and maybe my identity as a juror). Rest assured, whatever you’re imagining, it’s even crazier than that.
Anyway, we didn’t buy it. Jury wasn’t involved in sentencing, the range was 10-20 years, I’d have given 10 total with 5 to serve, but the guy only got 2. I coincidentally ran into that DA years later and chatted with him about it, and he was still mad about all the lies and collusion and the short sentence after these people tried to make a mockery of the process.
In my experience, this is not at all how it works in the US. Counsel doesn’t just present the jury with evidence, they also instruct the jury on the relevant points of law as well as what constitutes guilt. The judge issues advice and instructions regarding the same, and answers any questions the jury may have. The jury uses that information to arrive at a verdict of guilty or innocent.
This is why they don’t want lawyers on the jury. The verdict is supposed to be based on the arguments presented in the courtroom, both the facts and points of law. That’s what they want you walking into the jury room with, those arguments and nothing else, certainly no extra stuff you picked up from law school.
There are basically no constraints on how the jury finds what it finds. If everyone in the room agrees that the defendant probably broke the law, but they want to ignore that and issue a “not guilty” finding, they can do that (perhaps b/c they find the law unjust). Judges really don’t like jury nullification, and they’ll sanction anyone they hear talking about it in the courthouse, but that’s about all they can do. It’s society’s last-ditch defense against unjust laws.
In our county, it’s a six month term.
About 35 years ago, I met the mother and younger daughter of one family in which their preacher had been raping their older daughter daughter weekly during counseling sessions since she was 15 or 16. It came to light when the mother picked up the telephone to make a call and heard the preacher trying to convince the girl in August of that year not to go to college because “he needed her”. I met them in early September.
As far as I know, the preacher was never charged.
It turned out that the preacher had been forced out at his previous church for doing the same thing there. The congregation of that church didn’t have the decency to warn their church about him. And then at their church, the congregation liked the preacher so much that they voted to keep him. The family switched to another church.
I don’t know if the father ever found out about it. At the time the mother found out, the father was working on contract in the Middle East. The mother said that she was afraid that if her husband found out, that he would kill the preacher so she vowed to never tell him. The last time I talked to the father was by telephone in July of 2011.