Jury Duty redux

I thought I would finish up my jury duty experience.

The case was murder - a drugs for sex deal that didn't work out. After the drugs and the sex, the victim said she also wanted money, and the other participant didn't want to pay. His story was that she came at him with a knife, he tried to take it away from her, and in the struggle she was stabbed. She fell down and went into convulsions and he panicked and choked her to death.

The difficulty was that there was a confession to the police - ON VIDEO. However, the accused originally went in to talk to the police about a different question, a misdemeanor warrant. The questioning turned to the murder and after some discussion (but not the confession), the accused said he wanted a lawyer. The detective stopped the questioning and left the room (as he was required to do), but after about twenty minutes returned and started asking questions of the accused in order to fill out a booking sheet on the misdemeanor warrant. It was in the course of that questioning that the confession was obtained.

After all the evidence was presented, we were given the charge of the court, which says, "If you find that the prosecution showed [this], then you must find the defendant guilty," etc. It also mentions that the defendant must have been properly Mirandized, and that if he asked for an attorney he must have one before any further questioning or interrogation can take place. The charge does not say, "except for questions for the booking sheet," or "except for questions about another alleged infraction," or anything else. It says, "before any further questioning or interrogation".

To one other juror and me, that meant that the confession had to be thrown out, since it had been obtained after he asked for an attorney, and would never have happened if the detective had not returned to the room to start asking questions again. The rest of the jury (except one woman who sort of felt sorry for the accused because he was homeless and seemed to be mildly retarded) thought we were crazy and kept saying, "What if the detective came back and asked if he wanted a drink of water?" We sent question after question out to the judge about this point, and got back only "You have all the evidence and information necessary to render a verdict." We deliberated five hours the first day after we got the case, and when we finished up I went home and cried.

Jury deliberations took a total of seven hours, after which we found him guilty of manslaughter, not murder, because without the confession the evidence wasn't strong enough.

I amazed myself. My adamant stance on the inadmissability of the confession took me completely by surprise. I have always been furious when I read news stories about criminals being released on a "technicality". If they were guilty, they were guilty and should be punished, and never mind the small details. Walking into the jury room at the beginning of the trial, I would have expected myself to be a "hanging juror." I still don't know where my attitude about the confession came from, but it showed up completely formed and deeply rooted.