Letters to the Editor
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Jury Duty
This is my last letter on the topic.
I know a lot of you have civics lessons in school, but I think that relatively few have had experience on a jury (which I have.)
A theory that some people have posted here is:
1) The main prosecution evidence is from two alleged co-conspirators who fingered the defendant.
It is argued that this kind of evidence is inherently invalid, so there is no case to answer.
2) Because the prosecution alleged the defendant was in Seattle at 8:00 p.m. (a few hours prior to the firebombing). However a bank card receipt shows she made an unspecified purchase at an unspecified location in Olympia (65 miles away) at 7:12.
This, it is argued is fatal to the prosecution case.
Let me explain something about court cases.
There is a process called jury selection in which jurors are asked questions that suss out their suitability for the case. For example if you could never sentence someone to death for personal ethical reasons, then you cannot be a juror in a death penalty case. If you could not make a determination of the truth or falseness of testimony of a co-conspirator, believing that all such testimony is inherently invalid, then you could not be seated on the jury in this case (unless you lied in jury selection.)
This deals with argument 1).
On argument 2), all I can say is that a jury has to look at the totality of all the evidence taken as a whole. Memories of distant events are never perfect. 8:00 p.m. or 8:15 p.m., does it really matter?
Now let us go back into the jury room and eavesdrop on the discussion. "This woman has no memory of the day in question," says one juror, "and yet there is documented evidence of her having borrowed a rental car from a relative."
"So," another juror chips in, "does she borrow rental cars so often that she cannot remember anything about this occasion?"
"No," says juror number three, "she just doesn't remember. Funny isn't it?"...
And so the dialectic goes on until the jury start to agree on something.
It is a real pity that there seems to be no detailed report of the testimony in this case readily found on the Web, because it would be fascinating to know what was said, but I can't find any.
Incidentally, this may be of interest. I was foreman of the jury I was on. I tried to pass the buck off to other jurors, but naturally charisma won the day and I was press ganged into service.
My first and only speech as foreman went like this:
"Thank you ladies and gentlemen of the jury. What I propose is this. We will not yet take a vote, but each person in turn will have a chance to comment on any aspect they choose of the evidence we have heard, and only when everyone has said what they feel needs to be said will we move to a vote. This way we will hopefully avoid anyone being afraid to say what they think just so as to go with the program."
This worked very well, everyone had their say, and within 25 minutes we had a unanimous verdict.