I've been watching the Trayvon Martin case with interest for a number of reasons. I've also been reading the different diaries and discussions here on DK with interest, and I've been extremely disheartened by the amount of emotion poured into the belief of "what should happen" in the court of law.
To understand that, one needs to understand what I experienced as a juror. The story is beyond the fold.
I was selected as "Juror #7" in a misdemeanor DUI case in the city of San Francisco. As a juror I received a number of instructions regarding the presumption of innocence, the concept of reasonable doubt, and an exhortation to treat those concepts as seriously as we would a capital case.
So we did. We were selected on Monday. We heard evidence that afternoon. Tuesday we heard more evidence. We heard testimony from the two officers who had arrested the guy. We had heard testimony from their commanding officer, who had signed off on the forced blood draw. We heard from the guy who ran the tests. We heard from an expert on intoxication and its effects. Wednesday morning we were given more jury instructions, and began deliberation. From the onset we discussed the evidence presented in front of us. We went through every step to ensure that all of the proper procedures had been followed to statute, according to the instructions we were given as a jury. We went through the chain of possession of the evidence. We talked through all of the possible places where there were holes in the testimony.
We took a straw poll on Thursday morning, and found for one of the counts we were tied. We discussed some more, and after I decided to change my vote, we took another poll. It was tied again.
At 1pm on Thursday we realized we weren't going to get anywhere, and summoned the bailiff that we were done. When the judge asked us whether we had reached a decision, our answer was no. We had hung, and it was going to be a mistrial.
And that is precisely how the system is supposed to work.
The judge had made it clear from the beginning, prior to the case, that reasonable doubt was defined as being the situation where there were two equally plausible scenarios, then you must take the scenario under which the defendant is not guilty. The instructions for the interpretation of the DUI statute was also stated in this way: "The jury may, but is not required to, infer that the defendant had a blood alcohol level above .08% while driving due to the consumption of an alcoholic beverage if a test taken according to procedures shows that blood alcohol content within 3 hours."
Under that wording, and under the wording of the statute we were judging on, the defendant in my case could have done something incredibly stupid such as downing ten shots or so, and immediately gotten into the car and started driving, just prior to being pulled over. Until the alcohol entered his bloodstream, he'd still be legal to drive.
That was amongst the scenarios we were examining. Ultimately different jurors had different scenarios they felt were either for certain or more likely. A couple were absolutely sure he was over the legal limit and was caught for it. One juror just didn't trust the testimony from the cops as to whether the stop was legal or not. I personally was struggling with what constituted "reasonable" …the expert testimony brought in by the prosecution presented me with that doubt.
Luckily I didn't have to actually "decide" since the jury ended up being deadlocked, but in that particular situation, I was faced with a quandary: I was absolutely sure this guy had drank, and got behind the wheel. However, given the little amount of time he had driven, the fact he was stopped for a moving violation that many people in San Francisco do anyway, and the fact there was enough of a delay for his BAC to increase while he was stalling for time, it's entirely possible he was still sober "under the law" when he was pulled over, and slowly getting more drunk as time passed.
It's the prosecution's job to anticipate this scenario and demonstrate why it's not possible. They failed to do that in my particular case.
Did I like that particular fact? No. I think drinking and driving is one of those things that really we should be less tolerant of. However, the law, as written (and presumably includes case law encoded into the jury instructions) leaves an incredibly large alibi in regards to being certain someone is driving drunk. My job as a member of the jury is to make a determination as to whether the evidence presented to me shows guilt in the eyes of the law beyond a reasonable doubt.
So back to the beginning… why do I find some of the emotional discussion disheartening? It's because in order for us to have true justice we by necessity need to disambiguate between the "innocence in the eyes of the law" and what I like to call "moral innocence." I happen to personally believe, based on what I have seen from media reports and such that Zimmerman is guilty of shooting Trayvon Martin. I believe that he's a dangerous man who deserves to be punished for his actions. However, at this point the jury is still to presume his innocence in the eyes of the law under which he is charged, and I hope that they respect that until they go into deliberation.