Sidebar at the bench
Perry: You're crazy!
Judge: I want another opinion
Perry: OK, and you're ugly too!
This kerfuffle could have come from one of those impossibly bizarre domestic squabbles that Judge Judy decides all the time on TV. What a toxic domestic mess this couple was and still is. Married last December, marriage lasted 5 weeks then it blew up at the end of January. That was a couple of days after husband finds out his lovely bride was allegedly cheating on him with five different guys. He looked at the emails on her phone and his head exploded. That caused a serious drop in IQ and some really dumb behavior.
The elephant in the room was the beyond a reasonable doubt standard of evidence the prosecution had to provide. The prosecuting attorney honestly believed there was plenty of evidence to convict, but it just wasn't there according to those pesky jurors.
Did he beat her up as alleged? Maybe a little, but not by beyond a reasonable doubt. The alleged punch in the eye? The medical report said no physical damage. The eyeball photo showed no physical damage. The body bruises in the other photos were hard to see unless the lights in the courtroom got turned way down, and then by golly, there were some mild bruises sort of where the lovely bride, her sister and mom said they sort of should have been, kind of, maybe.
My contribution to the case and justice generally was me complaining to the bailiff at the first break after the prosecution started that the court room lights to too bright. Us jurors could not see what was being shown very well. After that first break, it got lots darker in the room when evidence slides were being shown. Germaine struck a huge blow for justice!! Germaine wondered why this issue had not come up in prior cases in that court room.
There was lots of he said-she said stuff in evidence. He allegedly beat her up multiple times. She allegedly tried to strangle him in public at the JC Penny jewelry counter when the happy couple were looking to buy their wedding rings. She allegedly flew into a snit when he wanted to buy a lower cost ring and she wanted a big rock. She allegedly was falling down drunk at a night club where the lovely bride's mom and dad were to be told that the toxic couple were married. Surprise mom and dad, he's not my boyfriend, he's my husband!
At the club that same night, the husband allegedly lost his wedding ring when he kept catching her as she was falling down due to allegedly waaaay too much alcohol in the lovely bride. The lovely bride and her mom both testified she only had one or two regular margaritas. Singles, mind you, not doubles. Allegedly.
There were some shocking gaps in the evidence. Well, shocking to me at least. One was how far from the apartment window was the car where the alleged domestic violence happened? The sister testified that she saw him hit her from that window. The question was, could she really see in that car from the apartment window? All that had to be done was effing measure the damned distance to give some idea of the distance. Instead we got incoherent blither from the judge, and one or both attorneys about how far away the car was. I had no idea and neither did any other juror. It was pure speculation. We were told that we could not speculate, so how were we to weigh the sister's assertion that she saw the defendant hit her sister?
Another evidence gap arose from bias. The cops assumed the male was the "dominant attacker" and the female was the victim. They did not pursue the defendant's side of the story. The testimony from the husband was that he was the victim. All in all, that sounded like it might be true. Both could have been domestic abusers of each other. This truly was a toxic couple in a toxic marriage, allegedly (because the marriage certificate was not in evidence and everyone kept calling the husband the boyfriend - my God this case was confusing out the wazoo).
There were some other things in play that us jurors absolutely, positively could not speculate about in deciding, so we didn't. One was, who among the people involved in or close to this drama, were legal residents. There was very little testimony on this at all, only one comment in passing by the accused husband. Nonetheless, it was pretty clear that most everyone involved or close here were probably not US citizens and probably not legal residents. Only the lovely bride and her sister appeared to probably be US citizens. Maybe.
Four thoughts stand out:
1. Circumstantial evidence is just as good as direct evidence. The judge said so and that's that.
2. In he said-she said type criminal cases, the beyond a reasonable doubt evidence standard is a real monster. Now I see why it is so freaking hard to convict rapists, domestic violence perpetrators and the like.
3. I'll probably call the judge and ask him to consider putting a suggestion box in the jury deliberation rooms (that we were locked into). Some things really need to be done a lot better than they are being done. For example, when the attorneys questioned the mom (who could not speak English), the translator was translating at the same time the attorney was still talking. It was confusing as hell with two people talking two different languages at once. In my opinion, that is fubar.*
* Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition
4. California state law forbids jurors from selling their stories for at least 90 days after the end of a trial. So sorry, I can't sell this yet, so I am just giving it away. Well, most of it. There's still a lot of bizarre that's not mentioned above.
Legal argument helps persuade jurors
No comments:
Post a Comment