Writer's Block: Jury Duty

[av8rmike]

(Writer's Block widgets can't cross-post, so I'm doing it manually. The question was, "Have you ever served on a jury? If yes, then what was the case and what was the verdict?")

Yep. I mentioned it last May, but didn't talk much about it. This was a guy who was accused of stealing a pickup truck belonging to a college professor, who, unfortunately for him, seemed to be a little absent-minded. The truck hadn't been broken into; it seemed the prof may have left the key inside it. The cops caught the defendant a few miles away in a Home Depot parking lot.

What was most interesting about the process was how different it is from the "Law & Order"-type shows. They kept stressing that it was the job of the District Attorney to establish the case and the job of the defense to call into doubt the state's case, not to present any alternative theories.

In the end, we the jury didn't buy it and found him guilty. It wouldn't seem to make any sense that they guy they arrested wasn't actually the one who had stolen the car. It also may have had something to do with the fact that it was 4 or 5 in the afternoon and we just wanted to get out of there. We didn't have to sentence him; the judge dismissed us before then. I checked one of the Baltimore City Justice Department pages a few weeks later to see what happened. I think he got 15 years or something.

Comments

[eva]

15 years for stealing a car? Wow. The maximum you can get for theft here (as long as you don't injure someone or similar) is 5 years, but they probably don't hand that out this often.

[av8rmike]

My brother made a similar comment on my LJ... I can't remember exactly, but I think the guy may have had prior convictions. I'm thankful it wasn't our responsibility to come up with a jail sentence.

[eva]

Oh yes. As a young woman, my mother was drafted as a lay judge in juvenile court (which is an appointment people do over several years, not just for one trial like in the US, and the lay judges and the real judges decide together on everything). She said that it was often hard to decide what would happen to these young people even though they had sometimes done quite awful things.