So, a few weeks ago, I get a jury summons. First, I am a little apprehensive – I knew we were going on vacation around that time, but I wasn’t quite sure which week it was. Once I verified that there was no conflict there, I wasn’t too worried. First, a lot of trials get called off before you go. Second, there is a fair chance of not even getting to the jury box for consideration by the parties. Third, the folk wisdom about such things is that nobody wants a lawyer on their panel.
From the title, I presume you can tell that I cleared the gauntlet of 1 through 3. I called the court the night before and the recorded message told me to report the next morning. Since I work and park downtown, I had one less hassle than most jurors — parking can be a drag. Especially this week – I heard the county had three jury trials. When you report, the bailiff takes attendance and then not too long after shows a little prepared film on jury duty. (I had brought a book, prepared for a lot of downtime, but there just wasn’t much in my case.)
The dynamic in the jury room is initially a little awkward. Lots of strangers not knowing whether to talk to each other or what to say. There is sporadic small talk broken by stretches of awkward silences. Amusingly, the judge of the court we were in had actually turned up on the jury list for that day. He had reviewed the file and had to excuse himself. I wonder if the dynamic would have been different with him in there.
I think we were mostly glad for the informational video they showed us. It was informative and fairly well done, but just a little hokey for my tastes. There is a scene where your host is standing with his suit coat slung over his shoulder. What? Couldn’t find a place to put your coat for the scene?
When it was time to go into the court room, they had us line up. I was the 7th person in line. Turned out it was a criminal trial (meaning 12 jurors instead of 6), so I was in the jury box right away. Voir dire is, again, a social situation nobody really has any background for. The judge goes through some minimum requirements to serve. When that didn’t disqualify anyone, they turned it over to the lawyers.
Ostensibly, the process is to discover and eliminate bias among jurors. And, while it’s used for that, lawyers are also trying to take advantage by framing their case, making you receptive to their view of things, and, if they’re lucky, discover favorable bias. Maybe I’m not that good of a lawyer, but in my opinion, jury selection strategies are mostly voodoo. It might make you feel good thinking you are working to hedge your bets, but I don’t think there is a reliable way of using that process to get far enough into a juror’s head to know how they are going to react to the evidence that comes out in a trial.
Certainly I had a lot of my fellow jurors all wrong. Ones I thought were likely to be sympathetic probably could have been hanging judges in the wild-west, and those I thought would be eager to convict were looking high and low for reasonable doubt.
They asked me some questions. My chronic inability to see just one side of an issue must have allayed some fears. (“On the one hand . . . but on the other hand . . .”) We found out that this was a marijuana case. I allowed as how, left to my own devices, I’d probably support decriminalizing or legalizing marijuana, but on the other hand, that’s not how I saw my role in this process. The General Assembly had ruled on the legality of the action, my job was just going to be to determine whether the State had proved the elements of the crime defined by the General Assembly. In this case – possession of marijuana, dealing marijuana, and possession of amphetamine.
The potential jurors were excused while the court and lawyers discussed something and went through strikes. (Jurors can be stricken for cause and each side gets three peremptory strikes — you can get rid of someone just because you don’t like their haircut.) I was surprised to find that I had moved up from juror 7 to juror 4 and I was on the panel. They got 9 seated during the first round. Two more rounds got us to 12 jurors and an alternate. And, might I say, bless the alternate juror! This guy had opinions and very much wanted to get into the mix, but his role in the process is to watch everything and shut up. Only if one of the original 12 is dismissed can he get involved in the discussions. When the matter was concluded, he was fairly bursting with observations.
The case itself was pretty simple. I got lucky inasmuch as I always wanted to participate on a jury, but, while it is a core civic duty, it is always a big old monkey wrench in your day-to-day life. During one of the breaks on the first day, I got a text message from my wife that she’d been in a car crash. Nothing major – some guy rear ended our car while she was stopped at a stop sign. Rear vehicle damage, but everybody was ok. Being in the middle of a jury trial, I couldn’t do much more than verify that everyone was alright. I also got behind on some work – which isn’t as awful for me because I work in the system; pretty much everyone I come into contact with fully understands about having to be a juror. (I had to cancel being a pro tem judge in one of the other courts.) But down the hall, I heard that there was a murder trial, expected to go a couple of weeks. Ours lasted two days. Getting my jury experience in a two day dose was just about right for me.
Like I said, the case was relatively simple. Some officers had been called to a local apartment complex with a lot of section 8 housing. Place has a lot of problems and, consequently, the police spend a lot of time keeping an eye on the place. I don’t feel like using real names, so let’s just say that Abe had a history of domestic violence with Bea. A restraining order prohibiting Abe from being there was in place. An officer who had seen Abe get into a particular Impala the night of the domestic dispute saw that vehicle at the apartment on a different night. One officer went around to the back, the other officer knocked on the door. Carl answered. The officer around back had a view of the apartment through the back glass door. Carl had been laying on an air mattress in the living room when he got up and walked to the door. When the door opened, there was a strong smell of marijuana coming out. The trespass investigation had just turned into a drug investigation.
Carl said no one else was home. Then he changed his mind a bit and said that Bea was home. Then there was a bit of unpleasantness where Carl was either slow or reluctant to put his beer bottle down and sit on the ground. But, without any force on anyone’s part, Carl was sat down and detained with handcuffs. The officer in the back came around to the front. (These are long apartment buildings and it takes a bit to get from one side to the other.) Bea came out – it was her apartment, and the officers got her permission to search. It was just chock full of marijuana. There were tupperware containers next to the couch with something like 100+ grams, a couple of scales, and a lot of baggies of the sort used to distribute.
It didn’t end up mattering a lot to our consideration, but one of the more disturbing images was a picture of a bunch of weed out on the counter, kind of sitting askew on top of a kid’s doll. Bea had 3 kids living there. Downstairs the odor was strong. Upstairs, it was fairly weak. In a downstairs closet, there was a pair of pants with Carl’s ID. There was another pair of pants in the closet with amphetamine.
Carl’s story about why he was there didn’t really hold up. He said it was all Abe’s. Abe (who initially he had said wasn’t there) must have slipped out at the exact right time when the police weren’t watching the back door and couldn’t see him moving around the apartment.
Anyway, given evidence including the location of the marijuana at the time of the arrest, the fact that the odor was pretty strong downstairs, and the fact that no one else was downstairs and Carl had said Abe wasn’t there and that Carl’s proffered reason for being there didn’t hold up, I felt like the State got beyond reasonable doubt on the possession charge. And, while it was pretty clear someone was dealing and while I thought it was awfully likely Carl was dealing, I didn’t think the State got beyond reasonable doubt. It was at least reasonable to think maybe Carl was just using his dealer-buddy’s stuff without being a dealer himself. As for the amphetamines, I didn’t think the State had enough evidence that they were Carl’s pants. Being in a closet underneath pants with Carl’s ID made it a distinct possibility, but that was about it.
The lawyers were pretty good about keeping on track, but they digressed into Carl’s background and personal life. Didn’t make a bit of difference to me as to whether he was guilty of the charges in question, and I got the feeling that these digressions were pretty irrelevant to my fellow jurors as well.
The lawyers were a pretty good contrast in styles – you had the young deputy prosecutor using the court’s snazzy technology versus the grizzled defense lawyer using his trusty legal pads. Both had their advantages. (I was mentally taking notes about how to improve my own presentations.)
When the case was given to the jury, I knew there was a pretty good chance I was going to wind up being foreman. It’s kind of natural to stick the lawyer with the job. I sort of begged off, suggesting that I’d do it if no one else wanted the job, but saying I’d gladly defer to anyone else who had interest. No one did, so I was foreman.
First off, we had to learn each other’s names; so we sat ourselves in our juror number order and gave our names. Next, I wrote down the three charges and identified the elements in each that were in dispute. (For example, one element was that the item be in question be marijuana – but no one was suggesting that the substance was anything else.) Really what we had to determine was whether Carl possessed the marijuana and/or the amphetamines and, if he possessed the marijuana, whether he did so with intent to distribute. We went around the circle and had everyone offer their thoughts on the three counts.
There was mostly agreement on what had happened, where the gaps were in the evidence, and who was credible and who wasn’t. But, even so, we discovered that the concept of reasonable doubt is awfully slippery. The jury instructions articulate it for you, but since absolute certainty isn’t required and isn’t usually possible about anything, it’s tough to know when that glimmer of a potential doubt grows big enough to cross over to “reasonable.” Still, the jurors I worked with were diligent; no one got mad or frustrated or disagreeable.
Occasionally, we’d talk a relevant point to death – not having persuaded one another as to whether a doubt was reasonable or unreasonable, and we’d sort of stray off to interesting aspects of the case that weren’t, strictly speaking, relevant to the elements in question. (“I wonder why this or that . . . ; Oh well, guess it doesn’t matter.”) When we’d sort of looked away from a point of disagreement for awhile and then returned, we’d found that a juror or two had come around on this point or that. And so it went until we were unanimous on guilty for possession of marijuana and not guilty on the other charges.
We reported our verdict to the court, and then we were dismissed. The judge did a nice job of debriefing us a bit in his chambers after we’d been dismissed; making a point to emphasize how important the role of the juror is and to make sure the jurors knew their participation was appreciated.
I’ve written this all in one take, feeling it was maybe better to get it all out before my memory faded rather than spending much effort making it pretty or fluid. I might go back later and try to clean it up.
Thanks for sharing the experience. I’m 46. I’ve been on a preliminary federal jury list once (and told I didn’t need to show up). I’ve never been called for a state court jury. Not even once. I’ve always wondered what it would really be like, especially for a lawyer.
Query: How much did the other jurors look to you to explain the law or anything else?
I’m not sure how “it’s the way the system works” is a justification for being an accessory to injustice.
I am so envious. I have always wanted to be on a jury. Since I’ve become an attorney I’ve been pretty automatically stricken from jury pools no matter how much I try to appear open-minded and fair in voir dire.
Isn’t that weird, Paul, since I know neither of us know anything about the law,* we shouldn’t be excluded just for having a license…
*Terrible thing when old friends bust your chops on the Internet for no reason, eh?
I’m also envious. Thanks for the long form account! Thoroughly enjoyed it.
I’ve been notified many times but never actually called in. I’m sure being either a candidate or county chair of a political party has gotten me tossed every time. I’m not either right now, so I’m hopeful that I will at last get my turn also.
Have to say, though- the smart ass in me would be dying to do the ol’ George Carlin routine, “I’d make a great juror because I know guilty people (snap fingers) just like that!”
“The General Assembly had ruled on the legality of the action, my job was just going to be to determine whether the State had proved the elements of the crime defined by the General Assembly.”
So you willfully ignored one of the traditional duties of a juror, sit in judgment of the law itself.
And in the end, you convicted a guy of possessing a plant and some drugs that the state has arbitrarily decided should be illegal. And you didn’t convict for dealing, so it’s not like you can even make a “for the good of other people” defense.
You convicted someone of a consensual crime. Good job?
The jurors take an oath to apply the law of the state of Indiana. Doug and the jury did exactly what they were required to do.
Damn good job.
I also fail to see how “I took an oath” is a justification for being accessory to injustice.
One is always obligated to do the right thing. A promise to do the wrong thing is void from the start.
For my part, I don’t think it’s an injustice. While my opinion is that marijuana should not be criminalized, that doesn’t mean it’s unjust to penalize someone who is fully aware that an activity is illegal and chooses to disregard the law simply because he or she disagrees with it or finds it inconvenient.
A system where every individual or juror is a law unto him or herself would be stupid and awful.
Wow, either you’re entirely ignorant of the actual history of your system, Doug, or you just want to ignore it because you want to make it as easy as possible on yourself. You are, after all, a part of it.
“To begin, the American Revolutionaries thought juries were an important check on the power of government. Thomas Jefferson said, “I consider trial by jury as the only anchor yet imagined by man, by which a government can be held to the principles of its constitution.” The denial of the right to trial by jury was among the grievances enumerated in the Declaration of Independence. So it shouldn’t surprise that, to guard against future oppression, the jury trial procedure is explicitly set forth in the American Bill of Rights. During this period, no one spoke of “jury nullification” and that’s because that concept (no one gets convicted unless all the jurors, in good conscience, agree with the outcome) was viewed as part and parcel of what a jury trial was all about. Here’s John Adams, “It is not only [the juror’s] right, but his duty … to find the verdict according to his own best understanding, judgment, and conscience, *though in direct opposition to the direction of the court.”* (emphasis added). That idea–that juries can render verdicts according to conscience–became very unpopular in legal circles as the years passed.
“Government officials around the country are very hostile to independent verdicts from juries and so employ several methods to exercise more control. First, plea bargaining powers are used to get persons accused of crimes to “waive” their right to a jury trial. Second, defense attorneys are typically instructed not to mention ‘jury nullification’ in the courtoom–lest the trial judge hold him/her in contempt and declare a mistrial. Third, the court will tell the jurors that “their job” is to find the facts (for example, which witnesses do you believe?), but it is the “job of the court” to decide the law and the jury must accept the law as explained to them by the judge, *whatever their own view of that law might be.* Prosecutors are so determined to drill this state-of-affairs into people’s heads that they actually arrested an elderly man who was distributing pamphlets outside a courthouse in New York City. Needless to say, Jefferson and Adams would be utterly astounded by all this.”
http://www.policemisconduct.net/jury-nullification-law-signed-new-hampshire-governor/
You screwed up, Doug.
I don’t find your appeal to a decontextualized intellectual position very convincing either.
The right thing is the right thing because it’s the right thing right now, not because a bunch of people 200+ years ago thought it was the right thing given the intellectual context of their time.
I’m pointing out that Doug’s statement:
“A system where every individual or juror is a law unto him or herself would be stupid and awful.”
Is specifically ignorant of the system he works in.
Why did he answer the door? Why did the woman consent to a search? I do not understand peoiple
What is the injustice? Marijuanna laws may be misguided, but they remain an enforceable law.
Are you suggesting that you would lie when taking an oath fully intending to violate that promise?
The oath itself violates the juror’s expected duties and responsibilities.
The oath is a creation of the judges and the courts to make their lives easier, that is all.
Taking a bullshit oath the judges and prosecutors want for making their lives easier doesn’t mean the juror has to give up their traditional duty.
In fact, stupid oaths like that are why New Hampshire just passed its “Jury Nullification” law.
An “oath” doesn’t make something right.
A rational legl system cannot exist with jury nullification as a routine model of the dispensation of justice.
In this instance, Carlito is exactly right. Unless a law is unconscionable to the juror, it is the juries responsibility to uphold the law. While marijuana laws may be considered misguided by a minority of the population, that is not quite the same thing.
A *minority*?
You’re out of touch with reality, aren’t you?
And yeah, I don’t get this weasel-wording “misguided” thing you guys are engaging in; either man up and say you think the law is wrong, or admit you support it.
A *majority* of voters have decided to put people in office who do not promise to repeal laws regarding marijuana.
Therefore, it would appear that either there is minority support for repealing them, or the majority that wants them repealed won’t get off their butt and vote on the issue.
In either case, there isn’t enough support to justify ignoring the law when acting as a juror.
There’s plenty of reason: it’s wrong.
Popular will is also not an excuse for being accessory to an injustice.
Oh, of course Jason. Because that was the only reason to vote for someone or not, as there are no other items on their platform.
The “majority” of voters don’t even get decriminalization as an *option.*
Like Paul, I always wanted to serve on a jury, then it finally happened. Like yours, it was a criminal trial, but child molestation, not drugs. Like yours, it went two days, which is longer than the county likes trials to go. But, what I learned in there made me sorry I’d ever been called that week. The absolute worst part? The defendant was not the only guilty party (and he was guilty) in the courtroom. It had become quite clear (to me) that the mother had pushed the girl towards the defendant so she could get rides to work, thus avoiding having to ride a bus. The parents had been separated, and had he figured that fact out, he would have likely been involved in the legal system himself soon enough.
Two other items of note. One, the defense attorney (who I was later told was one of the county’s “best”, he certainly charged high enough rates) must have been awfully distracted, because I could have beaten him during this trial. He allowed several statements to go unchallenged, even though I’m pretty sure they were not admissable, just because I don’t think he was listening all that closely.
Second, one of the other jurors was a trial in, and of, himself. His idea of “reasonable doubt” meant that if he didn’t witness whatever personally, he doubted it. His intransigence caused our foreman to attempt to call for a hung jury result, and(!) the judge took us severely to task about it. After a couple of more (unnecessary) hours of arguing, the holdout finally relented.
Now, I hope to avoid being called again for jury duty as the whole thing left me with a bitter taste.
It’s the justice system. Justice is the faithful application of that system; not some arbitrary application of my personal policy preferences; be those policies about marijuana or something else. Maybe I think it’s unjust to require the prosecution to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt instead of simply by a preponderance of the evidence. Should I go all jury nullification on the burden of proof? Absolutely not.
I don’t think one defendant should receive better or worse treatment simply because of the policy preferences of the jury he or she happens to draw. That’s not justice. That’s a lottery.
Brings to mind one of my favorite passages:
“Jury nullification, in which jurors refuse to convict defendants under laws they find objectionable or inappropriately applied, is a favored tactic of many libertarians who, rightly or wrongly perceive individual liberty as, at best, a minority taste among their neighbors. They like the idea of a tool that can be wielded on the spot to shield people from powerful control freaks without first having to win a popularity contest. But nullification is useful only if people know about. And last week, New Hampshire’s governor signed a law requiring the state’s judges to permit defense attorneys to inform jurors of their right to nullify the law.”
http://reason.com/blog/2012/06/29/new-hampshire-adopts-jury-nullification
Pesky damn citizen rights/way system was actually designed.
I mean, I can see why YOU would hate people being aware of this, Doug. It makes your job less certain and just a bit harder.
But then, the idea isn’t to make your life easier, is it?
So, if I didn’t think you committed the crime you were charged with but I thought you were an asshole who should rot in jail, I should nullify the instructions and convict you of murder? You’re fucking nuts if you think that’s a good idea.
Wow, way to miss the point there Doug.
One juror voting his conscience can prevent someone being convicted by an unjust law.
You seem to think that has something to do with the opposite, an entire jury deciding to vote someone guilty of a crime because they don’t like them… which can and has happened regardless of jury nullification, because these are two different things.
I’d have to say *you’re* fucking nuts if you think we really believe you’re simply this ignorant about this nonsense comparison or what juries have always been meant to do.
The law is the law until it’s not the law. Until then, it’s the law. Follow it or pay the penalty. I may not always agree with the law, but that doesn’t mean I get to ignore it because I don’t like it. Doug’s toddler reference was dead on. Wah.
And this isn’t the case of some stoner who had a doobie in his bedroom, this case involved a large quantity of a illegal drugs (disagree with the law if you want, it’s still the law) with supplementary materials involved in dealing the drug. There’s a big difference between someone lighting up a fatty in their living room and someone flagrantly flaunting disregard for the law by preparing the drugs for sale.
And even if this guy wasn’t dealing, he made poor decisions that led him to this conviction. If I walked into someone’s house and saw a crap load of drugs being divvied up for sale, I’m pretty sure I’d turn around and get the hell out of there. Because I know it’s illegal and I don’t want busted and I’m not a moron. And considering that there were children asleep in the house while all this was going on, I don’t have a lot of sympathy for this guy.
I think the key to going with nullification is if a law violates someone’s basic human rights.
I might disagree with the speed limit being 70 instead of 90. I might think this is just a way to get more non-tax revenue. Still, I would convict someone going 75 of speeding. I might disagree with the law, but that law doesn’t violate someone’s basic human rights.
However, if we decided that a black man couldn’t vote, and that was THE LAW, I’d feel a moral obligation to vote “not guilty” if that black man was on trial for voting.
Race or sex discrimination written into the law as OK doesn’t make it OK, and that is the time for jurors to nullify. Choice of recreational drug doesn’t come close.
On the contrary, it very much is a violation of basic human rights.
For some reason it doesn’t let me reply to steelydanfan, so this comment goes there:
I can’t change my sex, or my age, or my skin color. It is part of who I am.
I CAN slow down, not use drugs, and lose weight.
Your point seems to be that anything that interferes with my recreation is blocking a basic human right, and I disagree. I think the key word here is “basic”. Yes, I might have the right to go as fast as I darn well please on the interstate or smoke whatever I want. But, my right to live, vote and earn a living are much more *basic* than what I do for fun.
Amy: so your position boils down to “It’s THE LAW quit making me think about it” and totally ignoring that Doug is full of shit in his comparison. Good job.
Amy is smart, bold, and married to Doug.
If there was an opportunity to call Doug out on being full of shit, I’m sure she would jump on it. I know my wife would. :)
Luckily I know my husband can hold his own, so I don’t have any need to jump in here and yell at all these people who think not being able to smoke marijuana is the same as slavery, bigotry, and discrimination. It’s not. Maybe you’re all high and can’t tell difference?
“…these people who think not being able to smoke marijuana is the same as slavery, bigotry, and discrimination.”
I never said that, and that’s a false premise anyway; it doesn’t have to be as bad as those things. Just bad enough on its own, period.
The one and only time I served jury duty was for a civil case. Someone was re-ended and suing for damages. It was a fascinating process. But what I liked the most, at the end, the judge came in to talk to us and brought the two attorneys as well. I enjoyed the debriefing. They shared info that wasn’t permitted in the trial. The defendant in the trial was not really the individual as much as it was her insurance company and the lawyer was the insurance company’s lawyer.
I know how it can screw up your personal and professional life, but serving on a jury really is a fascinating experience and it gives most people a chance to look behind the curtain, if you will.
So did the bailiff collect cell phones from the jurors before the trial?
Or as an attorney, were you the only one allowed to bring a cellphone into the CourtHouse, since the security guards are familiar with you?
This is an excellent question, given how in Allen County Fran Gull and her friends have decided mere citizens don’t get to have access to contemporary technology within their entire courthouse.
Lawyers and police do, of course, but they’re of a different class.
I’m an out-of-county attorney who had to take a cellphone across the street to Salin Bank customer service to hold for me, before I went into the Allen County CourtHouse.
I also noticed on other trips there that on-duty police officers (other than Sheriff’s security at the metal detector and in the Sheriff’s Civil Service room) cannot bring their weapons into the CourtHouse but must check their weapons in. I suppose this is to prevent cops who are going through a divorce or eviction from reacting angrily by pulling a gun on someone, at least inside the CourtHouse.
(I couldn’t leave my cell phone inside my car because my car door had somehow gotten unhinged and the door wouldn’t lock).
The bit about jurors not being in a position to make decisions regarding the law is in indirect contradiction to the Indiana Constitution, Article 1, Sec. 19, “In all criminal cases whatever, the jury shall have the right to determine the law and the facts.” This is essentially jury nullification.
The best resource for learning about jury nullification in Indiana seems to be a law review article by Robert D. Rucker, then an appellate court judge and now a Supreme Court Justice: The Right to Ignore the Law: Constitutional Entitlement Versus Judicial Interpretation, 33 Val. U. L. Rev. 449 (1999).
Available at: http://scholar.valpo.edu/vulr/vol33/iss2/2
By refusing to vote one’s conscience, one neglects to exercise a constitutionally-enshrined check on the power of the General Assembly, and fails to transmit the emergent moral conscience of the community through the judicial system. If a juror believes that laws against marijuana are unjust, then that juror has both an obligation and the power to refuse to enforce those laws.
For myself, I don’t think marijuana laws are immoral or unjust, but I do think they’re bad policy. Maybe if we were dealing with something like the Fugitive Slave Act.
So you think it’s just to saddle someone with a criminal record due to a bad policy.
Do they get their conviction erased when the “policy” gets “corrected?”
No, they follow the damn law until and unless it’s changed. It’s really not that hard in the case of marijuana. You don’t act like a child who isn’t getting his way and throw a tantrum by ignoring the rules because you don’t agree with them and then cry if you get punished when you know the rules but don’t follow them.
And certainly not if you don’t confront it head on. If you want jury nullification, you’ll have to admit that you, in fact, did what the State accuses you of doing. That didn’t happen here. He said he had nothing to do with the marijuana. I didn’t believe him.
Or, in some cases, you die. Like Peter McWilliams did:
Peter McWilliams is dead.
Age? Fifty.
Profession? Author, poet, publisher.
Particular focus of interest? A federal judge in California (George King) would decide in a few weeks how long a sentence to hand down, and whether to send McWilliams to prison or let him serve his sentence at home.
What was his offense? He collaborated in growing marijuana plants.
What was his defense? Well, the judge wouldn’t allow him to plead his defense to the jury. If given a chance, the defense would have argued that under Proposition 215, passed into California constitutional law in 1996, infirm Californians who got medical relief from marijuana were permitted to use it. The judge also forbade any mention that McWilliams suffered from AIDS and cancer, and got relief from the marijuana.
What was he doing when he died? Vomiting. The vomiting hit him while in his bathtub, and he choked to death. Was there nothing he might have done to still the impulse to vomit? Yes, he could have taken marijuana; but the judge’s bail terms forbade him to do so, and he submitted to weekly urine tests to confirm that he was living up to the terms of his bail.
Did anybody take note of the risk he was undergoing? He took Marinol — a proffered, legal substitute, but reported after using it that it worked for him only about one-third of the time. When it didn’t work, he vomited.
http://www.rense.com/general2/pm.htm
“If you want jury nullification, you’ll have to admit that you, in fact, did what the State accuses you of doing.”
You really don’t understand the concept, do you?
How the defendant pleads doesn’t have any bearing whatsoever on whether a law is just or not.
And therein lies the problem, and it’s interesting that you’ve picked the very example I’ve used for years. If you find it acceptable to condemn someone for “breaking the law,” then you have to condemn the conductors on the Underground Railroad too.
Most people, I think, would (quite rightly) be uncomfortable with this. So that means we must be able to provide an independent justification for why a certain action is condemnable without reference to the law.
A law can be bad policy without being immoral or unjust. I think marijuana laws fall on that side of things.
Having a juror be a law unto themselves for each and every policy they disliked would be a disaster; the cure worse than the disease. I’m not sure the jury nullifcation advocates have dealt with that fact in anything like a realistic fashion.
Yes, you can’t legislate human decency. The system won’t always work perfectly.
That’s still preferable to an unthinking, robotic system that we know is also wrong, but without the capacity for correction that was always intended.
As a practicing attorney of nearly 35 years, I have always wanted to have this experience! I have only been called twice, sat thru voire dire once, and dismissed. Almost every attorney I know would love to have this experience as invaluable perspective.
I even got a certificate for being a juror! I’m totally framing it, because you’re right, it’s an experience that, as an attorney, I never expected to be able to have.
Greg, obviously criminal attorneys apparently have a different perspective on the whole. This is the kind of stuff that the Indiana Bar might want to provide education for, since several of you attorney types have mentioned your interest in the process.
I was waiting through part of a murder trial this afternoon, waiting for the judge to have time to hear a motion. It was also educational – occurred to me that there should be (maybe there are?) CLEs available for just sitting through trials. Watching other attorneys work is very useful, in my opinion.
Background: not an attorney, an older senior citizen type, have never served on regular jury but did serve on grand jury where jury did not hand down finding that prosecutor was asking for—–but some of the comments here are beyond scary. Have often wondered if the citizen jury system is really the best system of justice, but reading some of the comments that assume are from attorneys not sure whether to trust the legally trained to handle things any better–just plain scary.
I was on a three-week wrongful death civil trial jury when I was 7 months pregnant and still trying to work a full-time job before and after being in the courtroom all day (my office was 3 blocks from the courthouse). One of my fellow jurors could easily have qualified for inpatient psychiatric services with her paranoiac views on government, so discussions went on far longer and were far more combative than anyone hoped.
At the time, it sucked. Completely. But in retrospect I’m very glad I had that exposure to the justice system and the energy of a dozen random citizens making an important decision together. It’s critically important that we all take on the burden of being on juries when called.
That said, I’m still hoping juror karma will prevent me from ever being called again (though a one- or two-day service would be fun).
Served on a jury when I was nineteen – the lawyers tried hard to strike anyone under twenty-five because of the age of the plaintiff and defendant, but ended up with three college students, I think because we had all dressed up and took selection very seriously.
It was a fascinating process – we all desperately wanted to believe the plaintiff and just didn’t; we were not entirely sure that the prosecutor believed her, either.
Thanks for this write-up; good to hear the voice of someone who has seen several sides of the system.
I’d note that people who broke the FSL of 1850 did so knowingly and that they saw the legal consequences as an acceptable risk.
Wow! I was expecting there to be about five comments on this post. A very interesting story. Doug. It’s neat to get to experience being a juror.
I was called for jury duty almost exactly 20 years ago. At the time, I still had my license to practice law, so I thought I’d be stricken during voir dire. To my utter shock, I was chosen as the alternate. It was a fascinating experience.
There were some funny moments during the selection process. As it turned out, all the people who went through voir dire knew the police officer who had been called to the scene. The officer was and is well-known in the community, so it was impossible to strike jurors on that basis. At least one person said that his knowledge of the police officer would make him have a negative view of the officer’s testimony. Everyone laughed at that. Naturally, that guy was not selected. The jury was chosen in the morning, and the trial started the same afternoon and then concluded a day later.
The case was a criminal trial for assault and battery. The defendant had an air-tight alibi and had somehow managed to hire an attorney from Indianapolis. Neither the defendant nor his family appeared to be very prosperous, so I guessed the defense attorney either took the case pro bono or substantially lowered her usual fee. She made the local prosecutor look like a complete bozo, I hate to say. She was sharp in both her dress and demeanor and did an excellent job establishing her client’s alibi.
I had to sit silently while the jury deliberated, but I remember being really impressed with how everyone took their duty seriously. Although the defendant was no angel, the jury voted to acquit based on the alibi, which is what I would have done.
I was called for jury duty again about 12 years ago. I was stricken, which is just as well. I had some knowledge of the case because it involved a fatal car accident that had been reported in the local paper. The accident had taken place along a stretch of road that I’d driven many times. I had barely missed being hit several times due to negligent drivers not paying attention to turn signals and slowed traffic. Barring some startling revelation at trial, I would have voted to convict. I think the defense attorney sensed I had no sympathy for his client.
Doug,
I understand your stand with regard to jury nullification, but what is that point when it’s ok?
Jury nullification won’t result in folks going to jail. It may result in some obviously guilty folks going free, but isn’t that the point almost?
I would say the drug laws in this country are mostly ridiculous and draconian. They aren’t solving the problem and arguably poisoning our country. Between mandatory minimums and asset seizure that seems to corrupt police departments, that alone warrants jury nullification.
I do agree a nation of laws is better than a nation of men, but where does one draw the line?
Madison toed the Tory line for a long time until even he had to join with the Revolutionaries.
If all the jury nullification folks could convince the electorate to not vote for prosecutors and attorneys general to be “tough on crime” then maybe we can get some movement on our drug laws and policy.
http://www.policemisconduct.net/growing-evidence-citizen-resistance-marijuana-law-enforcement/
Two plants and ten officers? Really? Evidently aware of the inherent stupidity of the case, the local prosecutor feared jury nullification. The Hook reports how he attempted to forestall that problem:
Before the jury was selected, prosecutor Matthew Quatrara read the opening paragraph of a New York Times Paul Butler op-ed calling for jury nullification: “If you are ever on a jury in a marijuana case, I recommend that you vote ‘not guilty’– even if you think the defendant actually smoked pot, or sold it to another consenting adult. As a juror, you have this power under the Bill of Rights; if you exercise it, you become part of a proud tradition of American jurors who helped make our laws fairer.”
That, instructed Quatrara, would not be the proper attitude for those chosen to serve on the jury.
Nevertheless, the judge and prosecutor had a tough time actually seating a jury in this case. The Hook interviewed several people who had been cut from the jury pool on the grounds that they disapproved of criminalizing marijuana use:
“I think this whole thing is a waste of time,” said Richard Merkel, a psychiatrist and potential juror in today’s marijuana possession trial against an Albemarle County man.
Merkel was among five people struck from the first group of 13 – all because they had a problem with this country’s criminalization of people using marijuana.
Aware that this attitude is growing among citizens, the judge ordered up a larger than usual jury pool:
This isn’t the first time Albemarle has had trouble seating a jury in a pot case. Judge Cheryl Higgins, who, during a break, chatted with a visiting gaggle of Rutherford Institute interns told them, “The last marijuana case we tried, we couldn’t even seat a jury because they were so biased against the marijuana laws.”
In any case, the jury decided to let Cobbs go on the grounds that while the plants may have been on his property there was reasonable doubt that he had “dominion” over them and so did not “possess” them.