jury duty part 2 - The Prosecution's case...

Wednesday morning I was there early again and sat on the bench outside - striking up a conversation with another juror about traffic and weather. We were all fairly early and were escorted into the jury room again to wait for the start. I think there was the very real fear of contempt of court to get us motivated in a timely fashion.

The case was essentially this:

The accused was charged in a robbery. There was also possession of a gun and of gang activity.

The defense claimed that the prosecution didn't have a case. The prosecution said they did. It was interesting - the defense was very focused on "innocent until proven guilty" and "burden of proof" through the whole trial. He had tried to teach us the law related to the case in his opening statement - which was the basis for many objections since that was the judge's job at the end of the case.

First witness for the prosecution was the victim - who placed the accused at the scene and was certain that he passed a gun to the actual robber. His story was this:

He was at a club with some friends and dropped them off at the front of a BP station on the way home. He tried to find a place to park and found a spot at the car wash behind the BP station. He parked, got out and started to walk to the entrance of the station. He came up diagonally behind and to the side of a car where the defendant was standing with an open door - and a gun. The defendant asked the victim who he was and the victim didn't say but just said he was looking for this friends. The defendant got into the car, passed the gun to the person in the driver's seat - who then promptly got out of the car and robbed the victim at gun point. He got away unhurt, filed a police report, and eventually got his stuff back.

It was kinda strange - like we were missing a big chunk of the trial. The actual robber was charged separately and wasn't part of this trial. So we had this other guy who may have done something wrong, but all we had was a potentially unreliable witness. The victim had convictions in his past but seemed to have put that behind him and was working long shifts to support his three children.

The prosecution called several police officers - and the defense objected to most of them since they generally testified on previous offenses that the accused had committed. Not really relevant to this case - but more for character - or, as it turned out, a connection to gang activity.

We broke for lunch and I headed to campus to grab some sweet & sour chicken - since the cafeteria seemed a little low end at the court house. I got a fortune cookie with the meal and it said:

"you will reach high levels of intelligence"

Not sure if that's a promise or a standard I have to live up to - and I'm not sure the time frame. In any case, I shared the fortune with my fellow jurors and we had a laugh about it.

Anyway, back in the court room and more witnesses. The first one - the victim - really got badgered since most of the case rested on his testimony, but the rest were officers and they weren't really as relevant to the actual incident. The victim has some discrepancies between his story and the original police report - but they seemed pretty minor to me. The defense tried to get him to break - but he didn't and maintained a viable and consistent story. This was something the prosecutor really focused on in her closing argument later - the strength of character for the victim and his story.

Another break and this time we were in the room past when it was time for us to go back - at least according to the time frame the judge gave us. So, we just lined up to get ready. We heard the judge say from the court room -since he could see us - "well, I guess the jury is ready."

Apparently, we were the first jury to line ourselves up - much to the amazement and delight of the judge and the bailiff. There was a bit more testimony on the prosecution's side and they were about to call their "gang expert" - but we ran out of time for the day. In the jury room before we left for the day, I said that I thought the judge should spring for doughnuts and we all laughed. We broke for the day at about 4:00 and I went on home. No stop into work for me - I was beat.