IMO The jury was tired and wanted to go home. They were given a large stack of written instruction to digest and apply to the situation, morbid details mixed with lies before their very eyes and no ability to research and fact find on their own. And if they never lost their naivete that people lie in court, well then...
I was the 12th juror for a second degree murder case (they only allow first degree murder in a couple of distinct cirmcumstances and no death
penalty here) last summer and:
we were not sequestered
we were in court proceedings for approximately 6 weeks
we took notes ( I'm told by the judge and his assistant that I took the most notes and they thought for sure I was going to be the floorperson, I'm glad I was not! This actually was due to my years of "websleuths" training-lol)
we were not allowed to "hear" that the defendant had made an attempt on a prison guard's life by stabbing him with a home made knife in prison, while we were on the case
we were not given nearly as much written instruction regarding the law as this jury was given-nor was there as much evidence
we were opposed from day one by a woman who stated she would not budge from her decision-her mind made up from the beginning...from "day one"
we deliberated for almost 4 days (also during a "holiday" time) and took the temperature of the jury every so often
It was very interesting to see the mercurial fluctuation at any given time. What people do not realize if they have not had the jury experience is it is comprised of a fine dance of facts, law, previous outcomes from previous cases, common sense, the differences of people and their opinions
and individual fact deduction, mixed with a lot of other things.
Most are amazed at the storytelling to paint one side of the case or another to prove points or facts. You are naively thinking you will only hear the truth in a court of law. Right? Yeah right.
No wonder they said they cannot charge for perjury. Too much of it.
We had to basically go over and over the evidence, listen to recordings over and over again, and finally towards the end, as dramatic as it may sound- we had to have a reinactment of the shooting using distances, timing of the gun shots in the 911 call and reasonable distance someone could have walked in that time given the dimensions of the rooms etc. In other words, we had to WORK.
Not stretch, not speculate, not try to convince someone else to think like we do, not give up.
We each looked at all the photographs over and over again. Then someone noticed something no one noticed before. Then after going over the evidence,
the charts, holding the bullets in our hands that killed someone, someone noticed something, we had not noticed before. After playing the 911 tapes
over and over again, someone heard something, we all hadn't heard before. 12 very different people of all ages and stages of life were solving this
"puzzle" and without each and everyone of our undivided steadfast attention we could not have done it.
Yes there were a couple of holes from one point to another- gun was thrown in ocean - so no murder weapon retrieved. The defendant said the deceased
had the weapon and he wrestled it and it was self defense. That he was an invited guest. There were four witnesses! They all told mixed stories.
Everyone came unglued at this murder scene.
If the DA had ALL the pieces, you might think THEY did it LOL
I think it would have taken us weeks to go through the evidence submitted in this case by both sides.
We went over the judge's written instructions over and over again until everyone understood them. When we took the time to allow everyone to state why they were coming to the conclusions they were coming to and understand the differences of how people problem solve etc. we were able to work cohesively towards a proper verdict. There are more than several ways to get to the same conclusion.
Finally, once "revealing itself" how it happened and it was NOT what the elaborate storytelling of the defense was (good try),we were able to see
things through the same vision. No one wanted the heaviness of convicting someone who was in fact innocent.Yet neither would you want someone capable of this murder out among us to do the same or worse.
You want to understand what needs to be proven so that the truly innocent do not get convicted. It wasn't until everyone in their heart of hearts, had
respectfully and individually come to their conclusion through "their own" methods of reasoning.
In order to be able to understand reasonable doubt and how to apply it's knowledge, one must first
REASON
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/reason
Our trial was rife with tales of love triangles, drugs, lies and all the other media sexy angles and tangles. We were also doubly screened for prior
knowledge of the case during jury selection.
A picture, a moment in time, is part of a puzzle-it is preceded by events and succeeded by events.
If you had 958 pieces of a 1000 piece puzzle put together, do you think you might be able to tell what it is?
The written instruction is fascinating. It is like those optical illusion posters that you get your friends to look at - to finally see a "different"
thing.It is written "both ways" so to speak which is why everyone always refers to it as legalese, legal jargon etc. - designed to confuse. Really it is designed to see it both ways (from both sides)- it is written for everyone TO
SEE- which way do you see it?