supergg2k
Shared on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 09:04Last week I was called to appear for jury duty. Normally I wouldn't have minded so much, but my wife and all four kids were sick and I have a ton of work to do at the office.
If you have never been called to serve on a jury, let me explain how it works in Massachusetts.
You check in with the court officer and fill out a confidential juror questionaire. It has the usual questions, name, address, occupation. It also has a space where you can identify factors that would prevent you from serving on a jury...like not being a US citizen. Which is odd because I always thought they populated the jury pool with registered voters.
The jury pool gets brought into a courtroom and watches a video commending us for taking time to fulfill our civic duty and explains what we can expect to see in court if selected. It's nice to get a pat on the back for showing up, but when the alternative is a bench warrant for your arrest and a $2000 fine for not showing up...you're being volunteered.
The judge comes out and gives a high level overview of the case we are being selected for. Based on that overview we will be given another opportunity to be excused from service. We are escorted out back to the jury room while they set up for the case.
When we return to the courtroom, the attorneys are present along with the defendant, stenographer and court clerk. It's at this point I realize that I am going to be picked for the jury. Here's why:
In the US a big deal is made about trial by a jury of your peers. The make up of the jury should be a representation of the population of the region. The defendant for this case was a black male. I was one of two in a jury pool of 55 people. The other guy was excused from service.
After they pick the 14 jurors (12 and 2 alternates to be named later) the remainder of the pool is excused and the trial begins as soon as the jury pool leaves.
It was an interesting case revolving around possession of a firearm. Long story short, a 357 magnum was found in a field next to a public housing project after officers were chasing a trio of suspects. An officer testified that he saw one of the three make a throwing motion but he couldn't see what was thrown. There was only one viable print on the barrel of the gun. It matched the defendants fingerprint.
For the next two days I learned a lot more than I wanted to about fingerprint analysis and police procedure. But no one was able to tie the defendant to the gun beyond the fingerprint. In Massachusetts, just touching an object does not constitute possession. The trial wasn't moving well either; it seemed like the judge was calling the attorneys to the bench every 15 minutes. We were even sent home in the middle of the day on the second day. From our perspective neither attorney had their stuff together and we felt we were going to be jurors for a few days instead of one or two.
On the third day they presented their closing arguments. The defense attorney made his closing arguments and did well enough and then the DA dropped the bomb on us. For the course of the trial we were looking at the fingerprint in a particular orientation. We had begun to think the print was made while the defendants fingers were pointed to the sky; the defendant even testified to that idea. However the orientation of the prints matched up to the gun show that the defendant's fingers were pointing down.
While we were all of the opinion at first that there wasn't enough evidence to find him guilty beyond reasonable doubt; we agreed during deliberation that based on his own testimony we had to find him guilty. If he had testified that he couldn't remember how he pushed it away then we most likely would have found him not guilty.
Creepy things about this trial; a .357 magnum is huge and heavy. It is intimidating just to look at. The bullets are huge too. We weren't told that the gun was used in a crime, but apparently had we found him not guilty we would have had to have heard another set of charges against the defendant related to a crime committed with the gun. Which means I would still be in jury duty and not online.
If you have never been called to serve on a jury, let me explain how it works in Massachusetts.
You check in with the court officer and fill out a confidential juror questionaire. It has the usual questions, name, address, occupation. It also has a space where you can identify factors that would prevent you from serving on a jury...like not being a US citizen. Which is odd because I always thought they populated the jury pool with registered voters.
The jury pool gets brought into a courtroom and watches a video commending us for taking time to fulfill our civic duty and explains what we can expect to see in court if selected. It's nice to get a pat on the back for showing up, but when the alternative is a bench warrant for your arrest and a $2000 fine for not showing up...you're being volunteered.
The judge comes out and gives a high level overview of the case we are being selected for. Based on that overview we will be given another opportunity to be excused from service. We are escorted out back to the jury room while they set up for the case.
When we return to the courtroom, the attorneys are present along with the defendant, stenographer and court clerk. It's at this point I realize that I am going to be picked for the jury. Here's why:
In the US a big deal is made about trial by a jury of your peers. The make up of the jury should be a representation of the population of the region. The defendant for this case was a black male. I was one of two in a jury pool of 55 people. The other guy was excused from service.
After they pick the 14 jurors (12 and 2 alternates to be named later) the remainder of the pool is excused and the trial begins as soon as the jury pool leaves.
It was an interesting case revolving around possession of a firearm. Long story short, a 357 magnum was found in a field next to a public housing project after officers were chasing a trio of suspects. An officer testified that he saw one of the three make a throwing motion but he couldn't see what was thrown. There was only one viable print on the barrel of the gun. It matched the defendants fingerprint.
For the next two days I learned a lot more than I wanted to about fingerprint analysis and police procedure. But no one was able to tie the defendant to the gun beyond the fingerprint. In Massachusetts, just touching an object does not constitute possession. The trial wasn't moving well either; it seemed like the judge was calling the attorneys to the bench every 15 minutes. We were even sent home in the middle of the day on the second day. From our perspective neither attorney had their stuff together and we felt we were going to be jurors for a few days instead of one or two.
On the third day they presented their closing arguments. The defense attorney made his closing arguments and did well enough and then the DA dropped the bomb on us. For the course of the trial we were looking at the fingerprint in a particular orientation. We had begun to think the print was made while the defendants fingers were pointed to the sky; the defendant even testified to that idea. However the orientation of the prints matched up to the gun show that the defendant's fingers were pointing down.
While we were all of the opinion at first that there wasn't enough evidence to find him guilty beyond reasonable doubt; we agreed during deliberation that based on his own testimony we had to find him guilty. If he had testified that he couldn't remember how he pushed it away then we most likely would have found him not guilty.
Creepy things about this trial; a .357 magnum is huge and heavy. It is intimidating just to look at. The bullets are huge too. We weren't told that the gun was used in a crime, but apparently had we found him not guilty we would have had to have heard another set of charges against the defendant related to a crime committed with the gun. Which means I would still be in jury duty and not online.
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Submitted by Anonymous (not verified) on Tue, 10/30/2007 - 09:17