Sunday, June 28, 2009

Document Jury Duty-I think I'm going to call this done.

I’ve documented everything that I want to. While it was really important to me and took over a lot of my life, the things I’ve found out from one of the attornies since the trial has been over has seriously damaged my sense of justice and fair play. The judge did not let in several things that, knowing now, would have changed the outcome. The verdict form led the jury to a verdict that they really didn’t want to go to (well a few did, but not the majority). The judge threw in a new verdict form at the last minute without explaining what it meant or how it would be applied. The judge ignored the jury’s determination that there should be no pre-trial interest (one of the very few things everyone on the jury agreed on). I believe the judge had already made up his mind and was going to go his own way. Sixteen people gave 11 weeks of their lives to this try, all of them taking it very seriously and truly trying to do the right thing. We compromised to come to a concensus because we felt that being a hung jury would be worse. No one was completely happy with the verdict but felt we could live with it. When the judge manipulated and ignored the jury, it felt like a betrayal since we were operating in good faith.

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