Jury Duty Done

Well, I'm back, and I'm done. And I have to say that that was one of the most difficult and horrible experiences of my life.

Not because I was forced to serve on a jury. Doing that was actually not bad. It was interesting to see how our court system works. And it was a good break from work.

But when we started deliberating, I went home every day with a headache. By the last day, I was going home with a stomachache too. Right now I think I have a little heartache too.

I won't go into all the details unless everyone is interested. The defendant was a man in his early 30's, and was a pastor. He was accused of molesting and raping a 16 year old girl back in 2000. We heard from the girl, who is now 20. It was clear (to me at least) that she was not of normal emotional intelligence. This was a slow, naive girl, who didn't understand a lot of normal every day things.

There wasn't a lot of physical evidence. Some boxer shorts with a little sperm, but not enough to do DNA typing. A poem she wrote to the defendant to express her pain, but in which she didn't mention his name, in case anyone else found it. It wasn't reported to the police until 6 days after the rape, so there was no physical bodily injury left (that area can heal in 3 days).

There were two incidents, and she told people after the first one, but the people she told were all people who were related to or connected to the defendant. She told the defendant's mom, who simply told her that she would "pray for her, and then decide" what to do. She did nothing. (We only found this out afterwards.)

The guy was accused of rape by another woman in 2002, but this was a woman who was having a consensual sexual relationship with him. He admitted to using her for sex; she admitted to sleeping with him again in 2004 (while he was engaged to his current wife). We were told that he was convicted of a felony in 1991 for "moral turpitude," defined as, "a readiness to do evil." But we weren't told for what.

It was SUCH a difficult case. Most of the jurors had reasonable doubt because they didn't understand why she didn't cry out (they were in a house full of people - she said she didn't because she didn't want the defendant's daughter to see what her dad was doing). They didn't understand why she went back to the house an hour after the rape, and then took the defendant's daughter to McDonalds.

My feelings were that you just never know how different people are going to act or react. Especially someone who basically has the mind of a child. But it was difficult for everyone to understand that. I think I probably empathized with her the most. I was pretty much the last holdout. People also didn't believe that this guy could possibly rape this girl while his children were in the room next door, and the door was open. I think my cynicism of how people are capable of doing anything gave me the least doubt about this.

In the end, there were a few niggling doubts for me. I believed her, but I didn't know that I could rely on her, because she was so easily confused. It was very hard to say "not guilty" because I knew he'd done something to her. Many of us didn't even want to go down to the courtroom, to see the guy hug his lawyer when he heard the verdict. We even asked to be allowed to make a statement, because we felt like we had to justify our verdict, that the guy couldn't be allowed to think that we believed him.

We got to talk to the attorneys afterwards. A lot of us wanted to tell the DA that we thought she'd done a great job with what she had, and that it wasn't any shortcoming of hers that resulted in the verdict. I could barely talk, my voice kept cracking. The defense attorney said that her client was willing to talk to us - none of us wanted to talk to him.

We heard about the things this girl has gone through - mom is a crack addict, dad molested her when she was 8, then split, uncle raped her when she was 18. She talked to the DA about Winnie the Pooh, and told the DA that she reminded her of Tigger because she was so bouncy. She graduated from high school at 19, thanks to the Oakland school system that basically just pushed her through, even though she had no business graduating. She didn't know what a "cross street" was. She didn't know what "ejaculation" was (the attorney had to ask her if it was "wet or dry"). And the girl's crack-addicted mother disappeared last friday, so now she's staying at her grandmother's nursing home. Her 12-year-old brother was put in a foster home, but he and two other kids broke out, stole a car, and tried to steal guns, and now he's in police custody.

We found out that the felony the defendant was convicted for was for statutory rape (the DA said it was actually forcible as well). They couldn't tell us that during the trial because it would be too prejudicial. The DA said that the day of jury selection he was in the courthouse with his wife pressed up face against the wall, while he was kissing all over her. I don't understand how this guy is still a pastor. He said in court that the church forgives his crime(s) and his adultery and his using a woman for sex. I just don't get that. I'm not even going to get into how I feel about that.

One juror said to me afterwards that this trial taught him a lot about humanity, because he just didn't understand before how people could act so differently from how we'd imagine ourselves acting. I think it was like that for a lot of people, myself included. I also don't think I'll ever be picked to serve on this kind of case again, because of how I feel about this whole thing.

It's just not fair.