Post by duke on Feb 24, 2013 17:50:40 GMT -5
Food for Thought
February 18th, 2013 brownandlittlelaw.com/2013/02/18/food-for-thought/
A few Fridays ago, I spent the day in a very short jury trial. In that one short day, I was given more food for thought than I ever could have imagined. Between dawn and dusk, I strengthened a few existing beliefs, reconsidered many more, and even managed to drink a beer or two afterwards while trying to make sense of what happened. Here's what I learned…
Ignorant People Love Authority Figures
It's funny how happy people are to please authority. Actually, I take that back. It's terrifying how happy people are to please authority.
After trial, I was part of what has to be one of the weirdest group discussions I've ever had. The jurors, the prosecutor and his supervisor (it takes two of them for each of us at trial, I've found), the citing officer, and my client and I all spoke afterwards.
The jurors were clearly eager to please the armed officer, the man who decided to cite my client with a criminal complaint in the first place – the charge they unanimously rejected after a remarkably short period of deliberations. They told him what a fine public servant he was. They said how they believed him, and then they scolded my client. If they could have taken my poor client's transportation and license right then and there to show how serious they were about pleasing the guy in uniform, I have no doubt they would have.
Stick an earnest-looking authority figure in front of a group of citizens, and they'll do anything to make him happy. A jury that knew for sure my client was not guilty when they were by themselves seemed almost ashamed of its verdict when confronted by authority. I have no doubt some of them might have confessed to something themselves had they thought it might have ingratiated themselves with him even a tiny bit.
I thought about all the clients I've had over the years who've bared their souls to officers hoping for sort of validation from someone who seems to matter. The vast majority of them found themselves behind bars, convicted in large part due to their desire to please those with authority. Jurors, it seems, are no different.
Don't assume you won because you're good
Although I 'won' the trial, I can't really brag about it. Not that I would anyway, but I know for a fact that I may have had very little to do with this verdict because one juror told me so. None of them disagreed. It was humbling.
My theme was the old idiom about making a mountain out of a molehill. I pointed out the crackerjack legal team at the prosecutor's table and the officer taking a day off work, the duly-empanelled jury, and my client missing college because he crossed a few lanes of traffic. I stressed the severity of charging a young man with a criminal offense.
One juror, the guy who thanked the officer most profusely for his service as a Marine and now as an officer, told me he 'didn't buy that junk one bit.' His rationale for a not guilty verdict?
'It just wasn't a crime.'
Part of me thinks that was my whole point, of course. In the end, he might have thought I was minimizing, but he agreed it was overcharged. It was.
What I took from the jury was that people rarely understand the origin of their ideas. I'd like to think it was my theme that convinced him and that he just wanted to the please authority by castigating me about my poor performance, but all I really know is that something about the case convinced him the charge did not fit the conduct. I have absolutely no clue what that was, even after speaking with him.
Interestingly, no one once recognized my argument that recklessness has a specific legal definition and that there was no evidence whatsoever that my client was aware of and consciously disregarded any sort of risk. That much was damn near conceded by the state. The jury instruction on that element didn't seem to matter either.
What mattered may have been something I never said but that resonated based on the facts. It could've been my cross-examination too, which consumed most of trial and tied in with my theme without ever making it explicit. It also could've just been dumb luck.
brownandlittlelaw.com/2013/02/18/food-for-thought/
February 18th, 2013 brownandlittlelaw.com/2013/02/18/food-for-thought/
A few Fridays ago, I spent the day in a very short jury trial. In that one short day, I was given more food for thought than I ever could have imagined. Between dawn and dusk, I strengthened a few existing beliefs, reconsidered many more, and even managed to drink a beer or two afterwards while trying to make sense of what happened. Here's what I learned…
Ignorant People Love Authority Figures
It's funny how happy people are to please authority. Actually, I take that back. It's terrifying how happy people are to please authority.
After trial, I was part of what has to be one of the weirdest group discussions I've ever had. The jurors, the prosecutor and his supervisor (it takes two of them for each of us at trial, I've found), the citing officer, and my client and I all spoke afterwards.
The jurors were clearly eager to please the armed officer, the man who decided to cite my client with a criminal complaint in the first place – the charge they unanimously rejected after a remarkably short period of deliberations. They told him what a fine public servant he was. They said how they believed him, and then they scolded my client. If they could have taken my poor client's transportation and license right then and there to show how serious they were about pleasing the guy in uniform, I have no doubt they would have.
Stick an earnest-looking authority figure in front of a group of citizens, and they'll do anything to make him happy. A jury that knew for sure my client was not guilty when they were by themselves seemed almost ashamed of its verdict when confronted by authority. I have no doubt some of them might have confessed to something themselves had they thought it might have ingratiated themselves with him even a tiny bit.
I thought about all the clients I've had over the years who've bared their souls to officers hoping for sort of validation from someone who seems to matter. The vast majority of them found themselves behind bars, convicted in large part due to their desire to please those with authority. Jurors, it seems, are no different.
Don't assume you won because you're good
Although I 'won' the trial, I can't really brag about it. Not that I would anyway, but I know for a fact that I may have had very little to do with this verdict because one juror told me so. None of them disagreed. It was humbling.
My theme was the old idiom about making a mountain out of a molehill. I pointed out the crackerjack legal team at the prosecutor's table and the officer taking a day off work, the duly-empanelled jury, and my client missing college because he crossed a few lanes of traffic. I stressed the severity of charging a young man with a criminal offense.
One juror, the guy who thanked the officer most profusely for his service as a Marine and now as an officer, told me he 'didn't buy that junk one bit.' His rationale for a not guilty verdict?
'It just wasn't a crime.'
Part of me thinks that was my whole point, of course. In the end, he might have thought I was minimizing, but he agreed it was overcharged. It was.
What I took from the jury was that people rarely understand the origin of their ideas. I'd like to think it was my theme that convinced him and that he just wanted to the please authority by castigating me about my poor performance, but all I really know is that something about the case convinced him the charge did not fit the conduct. I have absolutely no clue what that was, even after speaking with him.
Interestingly, no one once recognized my argument that recklessness has a specific legal definition and that there was no evidence whatsoever that my client was aware of and consciously disregarded any sort of risk. That much was damn near conceded by the state. The jury instruction on that element didn't seem to matter either.
What mattered may have been something I never said but that resonated based on the facts. It could've been my cross-examination too, which consumed most of trial and tied in with my theme without ever making it explicit. It also could've just been dumb luck.
brownandlittlelaw.com/2013/02/18/food-for-thought/