Another WTF in the public sector

[kib]

I'm not a lawyer and don't have any experience with criminal law, but I'm not making sense of this, anyone, anyone?

A friend of mine called yesterday, incensed. I don't know what to tell him except have a beer, but I don't really blame him.

He was called to jury duty, and empaneled along with 11 other men (already weird). He says they were carefully questioned about their knowledge or experience with domestic abuse, the less the better, and they were asked not to go online looking for any info about it in their time off.

Officials filed suit against the husband, against the wife's wishes. So the wife is subpoena'd and the husband gives testimony and their stories are a lovely symphony ala Jerry Springer, but they're actually pretty much in agreement with one glaring difference: she claims he leaned across the couch and choked her til she was nearly unconscious, he claims he did no such thing.

The jury is handed this steaming pile, and given photos of the wife's neck. They all feel reasonable doubt after seeing a neck that's got maybe a little bruise and a couple of small scratches, all the other evidence is cancelling testimony of the defendant and the wife, so they wind up acquitting the husband.

In the post trial interview, the prosecuting attorney says the husband's been arrested for domestic abuse before, and the judge casually asks them if they are aware that the bruises shown in the photo are consistent with choking. :0!


Now ... WTF? They intentionally pick a panel of people who don't know jack about abuse, bizarrely all men, and then somehow forget to mention what it looks like or provide any expert testimony about it? The county itself prosecutes this guy and then does such a piss poor job of presenting a case that there's no choice but to acquit him? I understand they can't bring the defendant's past record into evidence, but the rest of it is unfathomable and infuriating. Waste of time, waste of taxpayer money, waste of mental health of both the defendant and his wife,, not to mention making six innocent citizens feel angry and upset and guilty.

Is there wrongdoing on the part of the court here, or am I missing something? Do you have an explanation of why this went down like it did?

[iris lilies]

So, the prosecution didn't emphasize strongly enough that the wife's injuries were proof of the strangling attempt? I don't know that I'd take your friend's word that minimal or no discussion of the injury took place in presenting evidence. He wants a hired "expert?" Hmmm, that would be more tax money and the prosecution has limited budget.

Look, your friend did his job, assure him of that. If there was was not reasonable evidence to convict, so be it. Or else the husband had a really good attorney.

As far as picking a jury that "doesn't know jack about abuse" I believe that in my city, for criminal charges, one side picks 6 jurors and the other side picks 6 and both have veto powers, or something similar. If the defense deliberately chose "men" that's on them. I wouldn't make any of the assumptions you are making about gender and serving on domestic abuse cases.

The last criminal jury I was on we didn't convict the perp for having drugs in the car. That's because the prosecutor didn't make the case. It was a tough case to make: 4 men in the car with the drugs and only one of them charged. I'm not sure that I would have brought it to trial anyway, but I suspect they wanted to get this guy since we learned, afterwards, that he had been up on drug charges several times, and this conviction would have put him away for a very long time.

I figured during deliberation that the accused had previous charges because that's why he was funding an expensive attorney to get him off, but it is always impossible to know.

But again, that's how these things turn out, it is the justice system. Your friend did his job.

[kib]

The only experience any of them had with either battered women's bodies or trials comes from television, in which 1. people who are abused look like they've fallen into trash mashers, and 2. evidence that might be controversial is hashed over by a long line of experts for the benefit of the jury. I think he expected that if there was no line of experts, the photo spoke for itself, and what it said to these laymen was, "so maybe she scratched herself taking off an earring".

Apparently the jury deliberation was pretty unanimous, basically, "the evidence is mixed but we thought this guy might be guilty, x y and z really do point to that, but no, from this picture it's clear he didn't try to strangle her." They based the acquittal on that assumption. My objection is not to lousy evidence, if she didn't bruise a lot, then she didn't, it's with the idea that no one told them people who get strangled don't always look like they were attacked by a rabid octopus.

My basic confusion is with the idea that they bothered to charge and prosecute this guy - remember it's the officials who brought suit, not the wife - and then they seemed to do everything they could to make sure he wasn't convicted of anything. Is there a county quota for bringing charges??

[catherine]

Huh, that does sound strange.

I was on a jury for a trial in which evidence lawfully was withheld + the prosecutor did a TERRIBLE job at linking A to B, which would have surely enabled us to convict the guy, but given the absence of the testimony and the bad connecting the dots by the prosecutor, we wound up acquitting him. I still feel bad about that--because of me, justice wasn't served. That may sound like I'm overstating my personal responsibility in this case, but that's how I feel.

I thought about writing a letter to the prosecutor (constructive criticism) but never did. It was a horrible experience.

So, yes, sometimes things don't get tied together in a trial the way they should and it makes all the difference. Maybe The Art of Storytelling should be a requirement in law school.