Why, you ask, would you ever want to serve on a jury? Why indeed, I asked myself that May Day as I viewed my latest jury summons. I had now been picked for a jury pool for the third time that year. Granted all were different courts, but surely I could find some reason to avoid serving or the selection process would take someone else. It was inconvenient, I lived at the far edge of the county, some twenty miles from the county courthouse, and I had to miss work for who knows how long. My wife had served on a murder trial shortly before and images and events still troubled her occasionally. My last three experiences were settled out of court after we had been empanelled and maybe this one would be as well, I told myself in resignation.
I arrived at the special parking lot to take the downtown jury bus that Monday morning and I noticed quickly the seats were full; yes it was standing room only. At least the sun was not out in full force. Texas late spring days are often humid, and well, I would simply just make do. I stood and clung to the rail. We disembarked in front of the courthouse and I noticed that the lines were long going through metal detectors at the top of the massive stairs. I recalled not that long ago there had been a shooting in a courtroom at that same building and I was glad only the bailiffs would carry guns inside.
Down the long hall and turning left, I entered the sign in and waiting rooms, there were two large almost filled rooms with television monitors, and a judge in front with armed bailiffs on either side of a place to announce your presence. I signed in, and then I found a spot in the far back of the second room where I would wait until lunchtime and listened to different courts and lists being called. The room was thinning in late afternoon, and I had hopes at about 3PM of not being picked, but alas, I heard my name being called. Report to the 6th floor 199 Criminal Court to Judge Wilson's bench, we heard and filed down the hall into the elevator.
I handed my paperwork to the bailiff and was assigned as Juror number 14. That was now my identity, I was now Juror 14. We went out into the hall outside the courtroom while the District Attorney and the Public Defender discussed the case with the Judge. Soon, they called out our numbers, Juror One then there was a long pause. Finally they resumed with Juror 2, he acknowledged his presence, and they then went down the list to Juror 50, and asked if everyone's number had been called. A tall large gentleman at the far end of the room said they had not called out his name, and told them his name. They said you are Juror number one. We then went inside the courtroom; Juror 1 and Juror 10 were dismissed, we got instructions, and learned that this was indeed a murder case that involved drug possession, possibly robbery, and other potential complications.
After I was selected for the jury, we were assigned to the jury room and called back out to the court, where we were dismissed for the day, and instructed to return to the same courtroom the next morning, which I did. We heard opening arguments, and discovered that the deceased had come over to the defendant's apartment to sell his girlfriend a used car for $2500. The defendant had been up on speed for three days straight and got the deceased high. The defendant grabbed the money back after the transaction and refused to pay the deceased. The deceased grabbed the one pound ball of amphetamines off the table and fled. The defendant called the other members of his alleged gang to come over. They had also been high for over three days.
The deceased called the defendant and told him he would exchange the dope for the money at an office complex park at midnight that day. Three days later, the unidentified body of a man who had been shot in the back of his head curled up in a fetal position was identified from dental records as the deceased. There had been no cars in the parking lot, no keys at the scene, no identification on the body, and the pockets of this Bermuda shorts had been turned inside out.
The District Attorney passed around the unforgettable crime scene photos around to the jury five times during the trial. To me, I had visions of a mafia hit out of some old gangster movie. The Defense Attorney said the defendant admitted he was there, but said he never left his car, and he never intended it to get out of hand. It was dark in that location; the deceased had been carrying the dope in his hand, but ran when his two friends pulled guns. In the darkness the dope slide across the parking lot and was covered up in the tall grass near a guard rail and not discovered for three days as well.
The Jury was instructed that we could acquit, find for Capital Murder only if a crime in addition to murder had been committed, or find for murder, and there would be a penalty phase at the end to the trial. We went back to the jury room and debated for 5 hours. We were deadlocked two for capital murder, five for murder, and five for acquittal. Never before had I seen the same people see and hear the same facts and arrive at completely different conclusions as this. One young lady who was a social services case worker said the twenty two year old defendant reminded her of one of her socially deprived youngsters. The Marine next to me said Capital Murder, I concurred. They stole his life, his identity, his keys, and his car. Others decided to ignore the picture and said the defendant did not pull the trigger. On and on we went, I suggested we request the pictures again and view them for clues, it was eleven against me, including the FBI Agent as we agreed to not do that. Finally we were called out to the court room and instructed to go home for the night and come back to deliberations in the morning.
The next morning was a revelation and we all we in a much better frame of clarity. We decided to set aside what we disagreed with and focus on what we could agree to. We set to a list of potential verdicts and finally decided that a murder had been committed. Now we set a sentencing time from 0 to 99 years. The motion for guilty and 25 years was even agreed to by the Marine, the Social Worker, the Lexus saleswoman, and me. We had reached a verdict. It was unanimous.
The newspapers told the story after six and one half hours, the jury in the capital murder trial had delivered the verdict and found the defendant guilty of murder on what would have been the twenty eighth birthday of the deceased. He had first been reported as a John Doe after being located in an office parking lot. It did not say that the defendant had already been found guilty of felony possession of firearms and one pound of meth-amphetamine and was serving forty five years in the state prison. They also did not state that the defendant whose mother committed suicide had lived on the streets his whole life, that he claimed a religious conversion in prison, that he got up in front of the court and told the deceased parents he never meant their son harm, that they prayed with him, and he put them on his visitation list. Afterward, the Judge met with us in chambers and thanked us for the verdict.
About three months later, I received another jury summons in the mail. I found myself relieving the same events with a somewhat different scenario, this time the defendant was a man with 16 prior DWI convictions and as I looked at the sweat stained cowboy hat on his head, his plaid cowboy shirt, and his western jeans, I told the court he looked disturbing familiar. He waived his arms as if to say no I don't know you. As I walked from the courtroom hurriedly excused, I thought there was a Juror 14 somewhere in the courtroom, lost in thought, and trapped in the American Jury System.
This story is true
by Tom love
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