Truth Detector
Your Humble Observer
- Joined
- Nov 29, 2012
- Messages
- 5,392
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No, their job is to deliberate. Think about it. They were first told the retrial would be over in mid-December. It's almost March. They were provided a one week review of the first trial waaaaay back in October. Many posters here have forgotten what was covered in that week it was so long ago. Why would the jury be expected to not only remember, but to agree on what 12 jurors may have heard or remembered differently?
And that was the last normal week of this thing until a few weeks ago. They saw the defendant appear on the stand in an empty courtroom, start to tell a story, then came back the next day after a lunchbreak to find her off the stand, the room full again, all without any explanation whatsoever. They STILL don't know what happened on that one. I bet most if not all expected to see her back again and are baffled why she poofed, mid-story.
Think about what they must make of the weeks and weeks and weeks of computer *advertiser censored* stuff. I mean, WTH. We could barely make sense of it or why it was allowed to go on and on, and again, they didn't and don't yet have any context for that. Only guesses.
Toss in weeks and weeks of psych experts talking about tests and diagnoses and diagnostic impressions,and the hints and suggestions made by both the DT and State to investigate or discuss. And not least, consider that they have to sort out lies and maybe not lies by JA- on the stand, in prior testimony, in her journals, and in every communication she had with Travis.
Time consuming, all of it. And their responsibility to sort it out enough to understand the mitigators, decide individually and and as a group if they're mitigating, and reach a decision.
Like premeditation, deliberation doesn't have a time minimum.
The jury was seeing and hearing the evidence and testimony presented -- with all the dynamic nuances -- as we were reduced to reading short snippets [mis-]communicating an imperfect shadow-smidgen of same. But it all added up to the same thing which JM hammered home.
He told the jury plainly what they can all see for themselves: not one of the nine stated mitigation factors was met.
There is no mitigation. JM told them so with the truth, and the Defense told them so with lies. By her own admission LKN even explained to JA that she has no mitigators.
To the contrary, by waging war on her victim, she engaged in a campaign of anti-mitigation against her own case.
Even with 140-character tweets any thinking person could see it. Think about it. After slaughtering an undeserving man three times over, she then branded him a pedophile and violent domestic abuser using the fraudulent affidavit of an absent liar.
Mitigation?
Instead of proving mitigation, she actually compounded her especially cruel aggravator!
Those autopsy photos aren't going to change in an hour, a day, a week, or five months.
JM charged the jury as the judge and the law do: The jurors agreed that absent mitigation they could render a just verdict of death. That's how they made the cut.
I will concede that this judge did little to aid them in the faithful performance of their duty. But discharge it they must. The jury must render the just verdict they said they could and would.
The silver lining on the length of jury deliberations to date is that they don't yet appear to have an intractable foreman.
We have no way of knowing today precisely what they're doing or how they're doing it. But they're whiling away the hours somehow. I, for one, hope they aren't larking around for non-existent mitigation. That's what gave the previous foreman the cover he sought to derail justice.
Their civic duty includes no obligation to engage in lengthy deliberations for deliberation's sake.
They should punch her ticket and sleep peacefully.