Thoughts on juries, plausible deniability and the reasonable doubt concept

NPR broadcast a sad story yesterday about a parent (or sibling) of a 20-something woman who died from an overdose of fentanyl that was in some other drug (heroine?). The young woman was in daily phone contact with the parent but one day she didn’t call. The parent got worried and started searching. The next day, the found the body of the woman. She was killed by fentanyl in the drug. The police caught the drug dealer. He confessed to selling the bad drug to the dead woman. 

One member of a 12-person jury acquitted the drug dealer because they had a reasonable doubt about whether the drug dealer was one who actually sold the tainted drug to the dead woman. That one juror said they “reasonably” believed the dead woman could have bought the bad drug from someone else during the ~24 hour delay before her body was found. The drug dealer was released and faced no criminal liability in the incident.

That is how fragile and unpredictable it can be to find criminal guilt in court. All it takes is to create a “reasonable” doubt in the mind of just one person. All it took was for the drug dealer’s defense attorney to point out that it was possible that the dead woman bought some tainted drug from someone else, even though there was no evidence of another drug dealer. The belief in guilt of the other eleven jurors was irrelevant. Just that one person and their doubt let the drug dealer go free.

In the eyes of the law, justice was swerved. But was justice really served? Why did eleven people see guilt where just one did not? Exactly what does “reasonable doubt” mean?

Now, think about all the defenses that Trump will raise if he ever is indicted for anything related to his 1/6 coup attempt and the Republican Party’s culpability. It is hard and unpredictable to get criminal convictions for blue collar crimes and criminals. It is about ten times worse for white collar criminals like Trump or Republican elites. It is almost a miracle that Trump’s charity and university were found to be fraudulent criminal operations. But even there, Trump suffered no serious personal repercussions. He paid a pipsqueak fine and paid some stolen money back. Big deal. /s