Many years ago, I served on a jury for the trial of a man who was accused by his ex-wife of threatening to kill her.\u00a0 Now this is a serious felony that can land you in prison for a number of years.\u00a0 The prosecution produced the wife and she testified that after her two-year-old daughter returned from her weekly stay with her father the daughter told her that her ex-husband told the daughter that he was going to kill the ex-wife.\u00a0 She claimed that the daughter drew her finger across her neck to indicate that he planned to kill her.\u00a0 The only other witness was the two-year-old daughter.\u00a0 The tiny child was placed on the witness stand and as soon as the prosecutor approached the stand the child burst out crying hysterically.\u00a0 After a while, the jury was taken out of the courtroom to a conference room down the hall and waited.\u00a0 After about a half hour we returned to the jury box and the little girl was brought back to the witness stand and as soon as the prosecutor neared the stand, the little girl once again burst out crying.\u00a0 The whole process was repeated again and with the same result.\u00a0 After a third attempt the little girl was excused and was taken from the courtroom.\u00a0 While all of this was going on I watched the child\u2019s parents.\u00a0 Her mother was cajoling her from the seat in the front where she was sitting to stop crying and talk to the prosecutor.\u00a0 Her father, the defendant, looked visibly shaken by the spectacle and during the third attempt there were tears in his eyes.\u00a0 The defendant was Hispanic and the ex-wife was a blonde who might have been Irish-American.<\/p>\n
When we were brought back into the courtroom after the third failure the two lawyers made their closing remarks.\u00a0 We were given three different charges of lessening severity that the defendant could be charged with.\u00a0 The defense counsel stressed that the wife\u2019s statement had not been corroborated by any other evidence and that a reasonable doubt was all that was needed to conclude that not guilty was the correct verdict.<\/p>\n
The jury was made up of eight women and four men.\u00a0 We ranged in age from our thirties to forties.\u00a0 About half were dressed in business attire and the others more casually.\u00a0 One of the women was made foreman and we had some discussions.\u00a0 The woman given the lead thought that since we didn\u2019t have much evidence, we should just assign a guilty verdict to the charge that was intermediate in severity and call it a day.\u00a0 And much to my surprise every other person in that room but myself agreed.\u00a0 They were perfectly willing to give the defendant a guilty verdict on a crime that could give him five years in prison.\u00a0 For a minute I was shocked.\u00a0 When it was my turn to talk, I said, \u201cThat\u2019s crazy.\u00a0 If you have any reasonable doubt of his guilt you are compelled to vote not guilty.\u201d\u00a0 The answer the foreman gave me was, \u201cWell, he’s probably guilty of something so we won\u2019t be far off with the five-year charge.\u201d\u00a0 I wanted to say some pretty horrible things to her but instead I just said, \u201cIf that was you in there would you want us to just give you five years in prison just in case you were guilty?\u201d\u00a0 She just grimaced at me and said we should write out our votes.<\/p>\n
The first vote was eleven to one.\u00a0 We called for the court officer and told him the vote.\u00a0 He said we would have to spend a couple of more hours and try to reach a decision.\u00a0 We talked some more but no one changed his vote.\u00a0 We had three more vote and they were all exactly the same.<\/p>\n
After two hours the judge came into the jury room and told us he wasn\u2019t surprised that we couldn\u2019t come up with a verdict.\u00a0 He said it was very unusual to try to get a witness that young into court.\u00a0 Also, he let us know, now that the trial was finished by a hung jury, that there was a custody battle going on for the child and it was not unusual for spurious complaints to be filed against an ex-spouse to strengthen a custody case.<\/p>\n
The point I am making here is that it isn\u2019t likely that most of the jurors will follow the correct procedure for determining guilt.\u00a0 What Derek Chauvin is down to hoping is that at least one honest man is on that jury.\u00a0 And I don\u2019t think his chances are very good.\u00a0 Minnesota is much like New England and most of the inhabitants are very strong adherents of the civic religion that is known as social justice.\u00a0 They will think it is their duty to heal the racial divide by punishing the scape-goat and that is what Derek Chauvin has been designated.<\/p>\n
My guess is they will select the middle severity charge and declare him guilty.\u00a0 So that is the current state of race relations and justice in the Blue States.\u00a0 If Chauvin is found guilty of murder I would expect a huge exodus from the police departments across all of the blue states and the blue cities in the red states.\u00a0 After all, is a dangerous civil service job that pays pretty well worth the chance of spending twenty years in prison?\u00a0 I\u2019d say no.\u00a0 Good luck Derek Chauvin, you\u2019ll need it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Many years ago, I served on a jury for the trial of a man who was accused by his ex-wife of threatening to kill her.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[1252,3012,2513,3013,2990],"class_list":["post-14250","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","tag-anti-white-racism","tag-derek-chauvin","tag-george-floyd","tag-jury","tag-race-relations"],"yoast_head":"\n