Jury Duty

Too many people find it expedient to just shirk their responsibilities and send innocent people to prison, to death because "it's too much work" or "don't want conflict."

I'm someone who strongly believes, in theory anyway, in the presumption of innocence and that everyone is entitled to a strong defense. A prosecutor should have to earn a conviction. However I also feel strongly that perpetrators of some crimes, upon conviction, should face harsh punishments.

Earlier this week, we got a message from a defense attorney inquiring about our services to assist with a criminal case. There were no other details left, so we googled the attorney and found that this attorney is involved in a very high-profile criminal case defending someone accused of an extremely heinous crime. It's a Law and Order-type crime, and it happens to be in one of the category crimes that I find to be particularly egregious.

I'm torn. The part of me that believes in the right to a strong defense wants to assist, not necessarily because I support the defendant, but because the prosecutor shouldn't be a rubber stamp. The other part is wondering what happens if I help defendant get off and he hurts someone else.

We left a message with the attorney asking for more detail and haven't heard back. It may be that the attorney found someone else, decided our field won't help, or maybe just can't afford us. But if we do hear back, if we are able to assist, and if the attorney does want to retain us, I don't know how we'll respond.

I hope I have the courage to say yes. But I don't know that I do.

(throwaway account to mask my normal HN identity).

The author touches on it, but another interesting aspect of the criminal justice system is the funding, politics and police practices that motivate the prosecution of minor crimes that never see a court room. Many unnamed players in this story had vested financial and political interests in particular outcomes. In this case, the stakes were large enough that the jurors lost sleep and distressed over the details. One wonders if softening the charges to lesser charges would have weakened his resolve.

It's poetic that at trial, the defendant, the witnesses, the prosecutor, the defense attorney, the judge and the jury cannot lie. Police, however, are trained to do so during investigations as a best practice in pursuit of justice. That fact probably contributed to the author's initial distrust in the system, sewing the seeds of this mistrial.

In general no, in this specific case, yes, because the evidence is so overwhelming. Think "twenty dead bodies found buried in defendant's basement next to bloody knives with defendant's fingerprints." I know this might be an unsatisfactory response, but I really can't be more specific without pointing to the actual case and I don't want to get into specifics in case I do decide to assist.