Every single poster here is supposing, assuming, opining, guessing, estimating, asking, and hypothesizing. Your comments are no more facts than my own. I'd kindly ask you to ignore my posts if they are so upsetting to you.
Thanks, Less. Mind if I post my jury breakdown here? I have tried about ninety dozen times, but it always gets way too long and convoluted. So, here I go.
Several things to remember when it comes to the jury. It's a pool. So, randomness is where you start. But, the narrowing factors are what makes it interesting, particularly in a longer case ala State versus BC. (Ignored my sarcasm)
1. Some people are there because it's all of our civic duty and they want to be there, rearrange their schedules, etc.
2. Some people are there because they could not figure a legitimate way out.
3. Random to 1 and 2 gets mixed with all the things that could be involved in #2. Take potshots at will.
4. These are folks who either COULD rearrange their schedules for an eight week trial, OR had nothing better to do.
This jury is mostly female. Mostly AA. I am excluding those two points from the rest of what I type because I think we've all covered what race and gender mean here (diddly doo).
Now, bear in mind, I'm taking my notes on this from the back end of the courtroom. (Camera far left and offstage) My notes come from about eight partial days over the trial. Almost all prosecution. The jurors are well-identified and fairly close proximity to the witnesses, but fairly shadowed by the proceedings (on purpose, I assume) in terms of being a focal point. I am also being as VAGUE as possible (ident wise) so as not to draw ire.
1. We have about six sporadic note takers in the group. Only two of them seem to be taking notes at a pace that means they are trying to formulate something they can read and pull from later. (Man, I've always wanted to stay late and peek at juror's notebooks, FYI) This is an interesting sign to me. It means a little less than half the people are actually note-oriented unless I am just missing something. One of the men is just jealous that BC is a voracious writer and they both enrolled in the Novel In A Month club.
2. You CAN tell when they are paying attention and the main pros. witnesses I saw that "lost" their attention were DD and JY. I don't know why they did. By "lost" attention, I mean they looked glazed out, over three quarters of the jury were rightfully glazed out. (JY more in pros stuff, DD in both pros and defense stuff) I can only imagine this was similar during some of the tech stuff I did not see.
3. You can hear their reactions. They are smaller and less noticeable than what is going on. You can also see their reactions. Based on these two things, I think we have one or two techies in the bunch, or at least folks familiar with the concept of technology. Ironically, they are not two of the note-takers I have down.
4. When you get to four, you realize that it was probably JohnFear the judge was asking to stop staring. (I think the future defendant who sat down next to me on one day maybe decided that staring was fun, so he joined me. I kid.) The jury is reacting to two things when the witness is not talking. They are watching the judge and reacting. They are watching Kurtz and reacting. They have basically ignored Cummings altogether, but watched the witnesses he has questioned. They have ignored Trenkle altogether but they listen to the witnesses he has questioned. I do NOT think Daniels went over well with them. I do not know why other than there were a few smug looks at him through out. One or two of the women reacted as you guys did to JY, which is why I think the BB-gate thing bothered them more than us. He was engaging and forthcoming until that and the cross. Four of the jurors wear emotions on their sleeve for sure. I think one of them was the one that fainted. They were the furthest from me, but the most visible. One of them was clearly on Nancy's mom side. (I was on Nancy's mom's side too)
5. They do not like Zellinger for some reason. Body language changes when he talks. Kurtz gets some of the same reaction when he gets long, but from the moment Zell gets up, eyes look elsewhere, arms get crossed, people sit back and ignorance sets in. He is also the lest consistent lawyer, but perhaps the most talented, IMO.
6. They are still making eye contact with Brad. Several of them, at key moments are not afraid to check him out and gauge him.
7. I think they are split on who "likes" the judge and who doesn't. I think the men and a few women are in a position where they seriously respect him and I think a few of them are more "arm crossers" with him. I think I've picked out who might have had relatives in trouble with the law before and I think I've picked out two potential sympathizers for the defense. So, four folks could potentially sway what happens.
8. There is a whole LOT of BOREDOM going on. You can tell that about ten of these people are A) not used to being quiet and B) not used to sitting still this long. I would bet that my ability to baseline body language would have been about ten times as great if I could have sat in on the whole thing.
9. The guy yesterday (and today) who was probably NOT the key defense witness, but was important did several things right. The jury liked that he spoke directly and seemed to try and put a "laymans" spin on things. The second thing I noticed was he riled Boz up. That got their attention. They paid way more attention to Boz during that than him. There were more note takers yesterday than I had seen the whole time. No clue what that meant. He also seemed nervous but genuine and he was scared of the pros, so it made his answers seem more real.
10. I think we have ourselves some fun times ahead in Verdict Watch. I am betting if they want to convict, it will be SUPER quick. If they want to acquit, it'll be a day and change.
Thanks for letting me post. I know it's not much, but I couldn't decide how much to let in based on some of the individual ideas I had about jury members, and with all the hand-slapping going on, I decided not to include anything wholly identifiable at all. So, hope you don't think I was too vague.