I finished serving on a jury a few days ago - I was foreperson of a jury in a fairly serious criminal trial - and I wanted to give you my impressions and thoughts while still fresh in my mind. This was my first time on a jury of any kin...
I finished serving on a jury a few days ago - I was foreperson of a jury in a fairly serious criminal trial - and I wanted to give you my impressions and thoughts while still fresh in my mind. This was my first time on a jury of any kind. I was one of some 400 people who received a summons. I have no idea why I was chosen to be on a criminal case (there were several civil cases that also required jurors). I assume my being called up to sit in the jury seats where I was questioned by the judge, prosecutor, and defense attorney was similarly coincidental, and I apparently passed muster. The jury was informed by the judge before our jury started deliberations that I was to be foreperson. Neither I nor anyone else on the 12-person jury objected. But enough about me. Let's get to the case. The following are the agreed-upon facts, unless otherwise indicated. The FactsIn the summer of 2012, in a city a little north of New York, a couple were arguing in their apartment. The man, African-American, was in his 40s. His girlfriend, 20 years younger, was Caucasian. (I am not revealing any names, to protect the not-guilty). At some point before two in the morning, the man left. His girlfriend followed him into the street.At this point, an unmarked police car, with two officers in plain clothes, drove by on the street. They were on car-jacking and auto-theft patrol - seeking to stop people from breaking into and stealing cars. Noticing the woman standing in the street, they slowed down. They then noticed a man (her boyfriend) on the sidewalk - who, they said, briefly ducked down behind a car when he saw them. This resulted in the officers stopping in their car.Accounts differed slightly as to the words exchanged at this point. The officers say that the man said to them, "What the fuck are you looking at?" (Note that cursing a police officer is not illegal in this jurisdiction.) In any case, this was enough to get the officers out of their car. They approached the man, who then allegedly said, "What the fuck do you want?"Although the officers were dressed in plain clothes, they claimed that they had badges on lanyards around their necks which were clearly visible. They claimed they identified themselves as police officers. They noticed that the man had a gym bag in one hand and a small packet in the other, and dropped both on the ground. He started to walk away. Suspecting, the police officers said, that the small bag contained an illicit drug, they told the man he was under arrest. The police say they no longer suspected a car jacking or auto theft at this point.The man kept walking. One of the officers ran up to him and grabbed his arm in a effort to handcuff him. In the brief struggle that ensued, the officer sustained a broken nose - allegedly the result of the suspect's elbow, which the suspect swung behind him - and his partner sustained a broken hand. This was acknowledged by that officer to have been caused by his punching the suspect's head, in an effort to subdue him.The suspect was charged with Assaulting a Police Officer (a felony), and three misdemeanors, Obstructing Governmental Administration, Resisting Arrest, and Possession of Marijuana (which was found to be in the tiny packet).The only tangible evidence presented in the course of the trial were stipulations by a doctor that the officer's nose had been broken, and by a forensic lab that the contents of the dime-bag were marijuana. The rest was testimony by the two police officers, testimony by two additional officers who arrived on the scene after or just as the man was handcuffed, and testimony from the man's girlfriend. My Assessment of the FactsMy thoughts before we commenced deliberation: A man and his girlfriend are having an argument, he leaves, she follows him out to the street, and, their bad luck, an
