Letters to the Editor
-
@Amerigo
I've been on a jury. I was pressured to convict even though the evidence was minimal. I am not proud to say that I caved to peer pressure, but there was another person on the jury who held out and we ended up with a hung jury. In retrospect, I should have joined her.
The prosecution has a lot of power, especially in conservative (authoritarian) areas where jurors tend to assume that the authorities are always right - they wouldn't be bringing the charges if they weren't sure of the defendent's guilt, now would they? (On the jury in which I sat, I had a debate with a woman over whether a police officer could lie or even get facts wrong - she would not believe the officer could be wrong). The fact that the jury did not convice on the more serious charges is telling. If this woman was guilty of participatin in this serious crime, why did they not convict her of everything? I suspect that the jury was compromising. They weren't sure of her guilt, but they didn't want to let a possible terrorist out onto the street, so they compromised and found her partially guilty. She will be punished, but not as seriously. This isn't right, but it's the way human's think.