My experience as a Juror

So the last post was totally referring to being summoned to Jury Duty. My first in all my years, can you believe it? I have been so envious of other people over the years because they've been called mulitple times and me? Never!

So this was for my local courthouse, one that serves seven smaller Metro Detroit communities and they only needed six jurors plus an alternate. I was hoping for the whole experience but Friday was my daughters' 13th birthday and I had so much to do, so if I didn't get picked I was going to sit around until lunchtime and then take off to run my errands.

But guess what - I got picked (as evidenced by my post title). There were four of the original seven that were dismissed; one for her husband being an active police officer, one for her husband being a retired fire chief, one random guy who was an engineer (there's a standing joke that if you are an engineer, you're off the jury) and one lady who was removed for cause because her daughter had been abused by her boyfriend and she was just too emotional to be a juror of a domestic abuse case.

Yes, this was a criminal case, one in which a guy was being tried for domestic abuse on his girlfriend and in front of her daughter. It was such an amazing experience. I liked every part of it but the waiting and delivering the verdict. We waited about an hour before they even called us in for jury selection, it was another hour for the seven person jury to be picked (voir dire), then it was time for a lunch break and every time we had a recess or left we had to go in through the jury deliberation room. It was quite a lot like what you see on television, except a lot less drama and pretty people.

The evidence against this man, at first glance, was a little on the light side. He never hit this woman, drew blood, beat her. But, we all freely admitted to each other that we were inexperienced in this matter, so when the judge gave the actual definition of domestic abuse, we saw that quite a lot of his behavior did, in fact, seem to be domestic abuse. We also, in our discussions, determined that this woman seemed to have been setting this man up for prosecution. There was video of his behavior at one point in the altercation and we got to see about 30 seconds of it. All it consisted of was terrible language directed at her. She sustained a cut on her finger from his grabbing her laptop, bruises on her body from when she, herself, fell down the stairs while trying to video him, and some hurt feelings.

Somehow, I got picked to be our foreman. I hoped it only involved signing the paper, but no, it had to be just like tv and when the judge asked for the verdict, I had to stand and read it outloud! It ended up that we convicted him of the domestic abuse charge based on the legal definition. I can't remember the exact words of the law, in fact, we had to come back out of the jury deliberation room to have them re-read to us. But it amounted to he did intend her harm, he did touch her without her permission and he did cause her distress. These were all in the definition. To me it was mostly emotional abuse, which is clearly still abuse. He called her some horrific names and when she was on the stand, she started to cry when she had to repeat some of them.

We think that this incident was not the first and that someone, maybe the police because they were clearly on her side, instructed her to video if it happened again and to proceed with prosecution. At one point in the video she says "figures he would not be as bad this time when I'm recording it". He was a stupid drunk and she probably could have kicked his butt if she tried, but there should be consequences to that kind of behavior and I hope he is able to get help for it.

I got out of the courthouse at 4:20pm and rushed home to take care of Kaylen's party that was to start at 5pm! Poor girl didn't even have decorations up for when she came home. All in all, though, it was a crazy busy, interesting and then fun day.