Being Inspired, maybe – 143
A picture paints ... well, as
many words as you like. For instance:
...
How often do we make a
judgment call simply on what we see?
I knew what I saw, and it
looked exactly like a situation that, if you asked any ten others who witnessed
it, they would agree with me.
And then there would
always be one that wouldn't.
The prosecution had made
a very good case, the defense counsel had woven a brilliant tale from start to
finish, and he delivered in an almost persuading tone, with the subliminal
message, the defendant was not guilty.
I felt sorry for the
prosecution because his delivery had been halting, filled with ums and ers and
in the end, everyone, from the judge down, wanted it to end.
As for the jury, it was
an odd assortment of characters, a lawyer, a builder, a plumber, a housewife,
two sales staff, two clerks, a janitor, two retirees, and a motor
mechanic. I thought it would be the
lawyer who would be the problem.
The trial had lasted 22
days, and over that time I noticed that groups would form, and discuss aspects
of the case, each of the groups forming a different opinion. Sometimes, the dynamics of the groups changed
as more evidence and testimony were revealed.
But, I think on those
first few days, opinions were made, and judgment was passed.
In my opinion, based on
looking at the defendant, it could be said that she didn't look like a
murderer, nor did she seem capable of committing such a heinous act. Having said that, as a throwaway first
assumption, the lawyer nixed it in a second.
Knowing something of how these trials worked, he said there would have
been a lot of careful grooming, dress down, but not to drab, look demure, not
aggressive, and speak in a modulated tone, like everyday conversation.
In other words, he was
basically telling us she was giving an academy award performance.
I certainly looked at her
in a different light after that, but the fact remained, for some of us, that
initial assessment said not guilty.
A few days before we had
to deliberate, a very damning piece of video was tendered and we all watched as
the defendant was shown talking to her alleged accomplice, the victim's current
girlfriend, and passing an enveloped which the defense claimed was the payoff
for helping her dispose of her husband.
It seemed odd to me that
someone had known she would be in that bar, perfectly placed under the CCTV
camera, both women so easily recognizable.
Of course, the woman in question could not be found, and the inference
was that she might also be one of the defendant's victims.
Several people were
called by the defense to assert a line of defense that the husband was a cruel
man, who had treated his wife very badly indeed, to the extent her best friend
remarked that she had turned up for work on several occasions with the results
of what looked like a beating, and another, an ER nurse, had confirmed the
defendant had visited the hospital on several occasions with lacerations
consistent with what was considered spousal abuse.
Those photographs were
quite confronting, but a question had to be asked, why had she not gone to the
police with that evidence and let them deal with the husband.
The fact she hadn't was
one weakness in her defense. The thing
there was why the defense introduced such testimony because, to me, it confused
the issue by pushing the jury into thinking she had killed him, but in
mitigating circumstances. Was she looking
for a verdict of justifiable homicide?
From day two, after the
lawyer had told us about how lawyers schooled their clients, I watched her
carefully, when sitting beside her lawyer, or when on the stand. There were interesting actions she made when
certain events occurred, like brushing a stray lock of hair back behind her
ear, teasing it out with a slight shake of the head, in a subtle but
obvious show of displeasure. Like
smoothing out the invisible wrinkles in her clothes, perfectly fitting and
obviously made for her, but understated in a sense that she would stand out in
a crown but not ostentatiously so. It
was almost a ritual when she came in at the start, and when she took the stand,
preparing herself.
Perfectionist,
maybe. Or trying to convey a certain
picture. Certainly, in the early days
before the trial began, the media had a field day with the case, whipped into
an even bigger frenzy when the police finally arrested the wife for the murder
of her husband. Almost all of them said
he had it coming, with page after page of revelations about a man who could not
have done half the things he was accused of.
The trial by newspaper
done, I suspect it was hard to find 12 unbiased men and women who could be
trusted to make the right decision. I
knew 100 would-be jurors had been called up.
Now, in the jury room for
the third day, trying to reach a verdict, it was the lawyer trying to wrap it
up. He had a job to go back to. So did everyone else, for that matter.
"So, in essence, we
are all agreed, that she is not guilty."
It had been an
interesting change in his position on the morning of day three of our
deliberation. Before that, he wanted to
hang her from the nearest yardarm.
Interestingly enough, that morning, after he had given us his reasons
for changing his mind, it would have been unanimous, and over.
The thing is, I didn't
like the way he changed sides so easily or for the reasons he spoke of.
So, in that vote, I
changed my decision to guilty, and watch a group of people who had been friendly
suddenly become enemies.
But in that moment, that
other ten didn't interest me, it was the expression on the lawyer's face. He hadn't expected the vote to go that
way. It was like he had been goading everyone
into voting not guilty and weathering the storm because of his stance. Had it been staged, had we been led down this
path, and then all of a sudden, the verdict he wanted was reached?
I had to find out.
I watched the eleven
raise their hands to vote not guilty. I
did not. And immediately felt the looks
of every one of those eleven on me.
"Why?" he
asked.
By this time he had taken
the lead, and the others had let him.
Now I suspect they would let him do the talking.
"You've got it all
wrong. The reasons are the same. There are two sides to that tale you came up
with this morning. The problem I have is
from being adamant she was guilty, and as you said, without a shadow of a
doubt, now all of a sudden you're having doubts."
"So, you don't think
she's guilty, you're just voting that way because you suspect my motives?"
"What I think is
irrelevant right now. You need to
convince me that you truly think she's not guilty. What is it you saw, heard, or know that
changed your mind? It certainly had
nothing to do with that so-called video in the bar being staged. It has nothing to do with the fact they can't
find that woman so they can either verify or dispel the accusations being made
she was an accomplice. It had nothing
to do with the fact you think she might have been goaded into it and was left
with no other option. In that case, it
might well be a case of manslaughter rather than murder. Is that what you're trying to suggest?"
"I think given the
evidence, or lack of concrete evidence against her, she is not guilty."
"But given everything
you have said, it seems to me you think she had some crime to answer for."
"Hasn't she suffered
enough?"
"That might well be
the case, but it doesn't give you an excuse to murder., and there's certainly
no forensic evidence that she was defending herself against an attack at the
time. She should have taken her case to
the police and had it investigated. She
chose not to, for reasons that were never fully explained."
"And didn't we hear
that the husband had links to various police that might have made such an
investigation a waste of time? This was
a woman trapped in a bad situation with no way out."
It was a long way from
where we, as jurors, were at the beginning of our deliberations. The first vote at the end of the first day
was four voted not guilty and eight voted guilty. In the following days, a lot of arguments
changed the decisions of those seven to vote not guilty, when they believed, in
their own minds the defendant was guilty.
In my mind, the first
instinct was usually correct. Over time
that decision was only changed because of expediency, not necessarily for the
right reasons. My first instinct was
that she was, in fact, not guilty for all the reasons the lawyer cited.
"Look," he
said. "We've been here for three
days. It's an open and shut case. Let's vote."
We did with the same
result. Eleven for not guilty and one
against.
A hung jury. I wasn't going to be moved on my position,
and so it went back to the court. It was
declared a mistrial and the defendant was returned to custody and a new trial
was to be scheduled.
I was reading the paper's
version of events, and speculation on the result. Several of the jurors had featured in the
discussion, but none were willing to talk about the result or who was
responsible for the hung jury, only that one juror had not agreed with the
majority. In some states, it was argued,
it only required a majority, but in this and other states, quite rightly, it
needed a unanimous decision to confer the death sentence.
Justice, it seemed to the
writer of the piece, had prevailed.
They also believed that
the plight of women trapped in marriages to violent men was a matter that
should be looked at and that such women should be treated better in the eyes of
the law. It was not a position that I disagreed
with. What I disagreed with was the
notion of jury tampering.
It was, apparently, the
fifth time that a case such as this had a similar track record, that the
deliberations of the jury had swung from an initial guilty verdict to not
guilty at the hands of a single juror.
In each of the five cases, the circumstances were similar, the wife had
endured violence by her husband, and then, in odd circumstances, the husband
had finished up dead.
Someone had discerned a
pattern, and this had been a test case.
In each of the other four cases, a not guilty verdict had been handed
down by a jury that had also started with a majority guilty verdict, only to be
worn down by a single juror with an agenda.
To get the defendant a not guilty verdict.
My job was to find out
which juror it was that was there to change minds. Then it was a case of finding links between
him and four other jurors who were equally instrumental in obtaining a not
guilty verdict. In each of the five
cases, there was irrefutable evidence that the defendant was, in fact, guilty
of the charge, and the expectation was the legal system would prosecute them.
And then, in each of the
cases, a weak prosecutor was selected, and a particular juror was selected by
that prosecutor. From there, the trail
led back to a particular assistant District Attorney who had overseen each of
the five cases. The fact was, justice
was not served, and four out of the five defendants had escaped justice.
Until now.
© Charles Heath 2022
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