A thirtysomething woman hired a fortysomething man to repair her car with the aid of her teenage son. It had a flat tire and a water leak.
They repaired the tire with some fix-a-flat and threw some stop leak into the radiator. The radiator subsequently burst for some unexplained reason, so they then got a new radiator and installed it. While her son was starting the car after the repairs were ostensibly completed, the electrical wiring under the hood somehow caught fire. The fire department was called, but the accused managed to put it out before they arrived.
They then took out the new radiator and returned it to the store, because it looked like the car was unrepairable based on its apparent value, or lack thereof. They locked up the car. They argue about whether or not he deserves the $75 for doing all the work. She relents and pays him.
Her version of the story from there:
The accused then realized he had left a tool in the car and needed to retrieve it before it was to be towed away the next day, so he came over that night to get the keys. The plaintiff was sitting on her front porch in her "nightclothes" when he arrived.
He then allegedly forced his way into her house, grabbed her, and wrestled her to the couch where she found herself upside down with her head buried in the pillow making a "T" with the couch. He then moved her rammed two fingers into her vagina, all the time while she is pleading with him to stop. She hears him unzip his pants. A few minutes later, he gets up and suddenly leaves. She stays on the couch too stunned to move for a while.
Eventually she gets up and goes and sits on the bed. After 10 minutes or so of crying, she texts a friend telling her what had happened.
She didn't want the accused to have her keys, so she calls back and claims to talk to his girlfriend, who actually owns the house where the car was being repaired. She tells her that she wants her keys back, but she doesn't want the accused to be the one to do so.
The friend she texted calls back. She and her hubband come over and convince her to call the police. She does so.
The accused then leaves a message on her phone that he will be over to return the keys, but one of his girfriend's daughters will give them to her instead of him. He says he is sorry for what happened. When we first listened to the recording, it wasn't very clear what was said because he has a very thick Spanish accent.
To make it even worse, the way they play the CD so we can hear it is to play the CD on the DA"s laptop wehre it is picked up by a mike on the DA's desk to be output from speakers built into the ceiling over our heads.
A detective sets up a "controlled call" where she gets the accused on the phone to try to get him to admit to what had just happened. Once again, it is very difficult to make out the details of the conversation. But it is clear the defendent repeatedly said "I'm sorry. It won't happen again" after being reassured that neither his girlfriend or her son will find out what happened.
We then get to hear the output from a digital recorder the detective has in his pants or shirt pocket as he confronts the suspect. This recording is almost completely unintelligible.
His version of the story from there:
When they returned from Auto Zone after returning the radiator, she invites him into the house to wash his hands at the kitchen sink while she gets the money to pay him. His hands are still wet when she returns so she stickes the money down the frint of his T-shrt and leaves them there. She then seduces him, takes his hand and puts it on her crotch, unzips his pants and starts "masturbating" him. He gets too excitied and prematurely ejaculates.
She runs from the room. He has semen on his hand so he wipes it on the couch. He sees some on the floor, scoops it up and wipes that on the couch as well.
He claims to have never gone back to the house to get the keys because he had them all the time instead of her.
He thinks the reason she didn't want to eee him again was because either because she blamed him for ruining the car or for not fulfilling her desires by prematurely ejaculating. He claims that during the controlled phone call conversation that he was confused about what was being said. That he thought he was apologizing for one of those two possibilities.
There wasn't much in the way of "forensic" evidence. They appaerntly didn't test for semen at the scene because she claims to not have even known that he had even exaculated. The medical exam showed that her vagina had some tenderness and that she had vaginosis, but that could have been there already or caused by other means.
The attorneys
The head defense attorney was a really sharp black woman in her 30s. She completely picked apart the details of alleged victim's story showing how she changed it over time. For example, she told her friend that she took a shower afterwards. But at the medical exam, she claimed she didn't take one. She claims to have opened her screen door when she doesn't have one. She badgered the plaintiff on the witness stand and gets her to to become aggressive by repeatedly having to deny that she was intentionally lying. And her closing argument was masterfully delivered.
OTOH the prosecuting attorney looked like he just gotten out of school, and he apparently didn't have all that much experience yet. But he is clearly a very bright guy. He always treated everybody with the greatest diffidence and respect. He didn't try to badger the defendent even though he probably could have. He merely highlighted the inconsistencies, asked him about them, and moved on.
So there was a contrast of both apparent experience as well as style between them.
The judge
Remember the recent case where the judge allowed the neo-Nazi who was on trial to conver up his tattoos at great taxpayer expense? Same guy, but I didn't know that until I googled his name last night. He was also appointed to the circuit court by none other than GWB.
As it turned out, he is extremely competent and obviously deserves his circuit judgeship. This guy is sharp.
The deliberation
One of the hardest aspects of being a juror is to not be able to discuss anything with anybody until you retire for deliberation. During the testimony, I found myself wising I could interrupt and say "Hey! Wait a minute here! What about this! And this! Please explain all thse apparent inconsistencies which we are hearing. But you can't. All you can do is try to take a note or two. And this particular judge would also allow us to ask quesitons after all the testimony. But most of the time, the questions came later on, and the person you could ask was the wrong person.
From my perspective, the most difficult aspect of the case were the inconsistencies in her story. If they weren't there, I thought it was pretty open and shut after having the opportunity to hear the controlled call a second time in the courtroom. We wouldn't have heard it another time, except that during questioning the defendent claimed to have thought the conversation was about the car or him not fulfilling her needs instead of being sexually assaulted.
So before we even went into deliberation, I checked with the bailff to find out if we would be able to play back the CDs. He stated that there was no equipment in the deliberation room to do so but that something could be worked out.
At first, the common consensus was that there was likely sufficient doubt about what had happened to acquit him. The inconsistencies in both their testimony, along with the other witnesses, made it really difficult to keep it all straight. There was also their previous criminal backgrounds to consider. She had been caught twice committing petty larceny ostensibly to feed or clothe her family. He had 3 previous unspecified felony convictions.
After arguing back and forth for about an hour over the various inconsisencies, I suggested that we really needed to hear the recordings again, this time not played over the courtroom PA system, but to listen to them at the PC itself so we could hear better. I also suggested that we construct a time line of what had occurred and when. Ironically, since the CDs were "evidence" we had them in the deliberation room with us, but there was no means of playing them.
When we asked the bailiff to arrange it for us, I suggested that we be able to huddle around the DA's PC to hear them better. This turned out to really be the crucial aspect. We also got key numbers for our timeline because the times of the various recordings were stated at the beginning.
When we got back from rehearing all the audio evidence much more clearly, we discussed what they mean to our collective understanding of the facts, and our timeline.
The defendent's accent and apparent lack of ability to understand Engilsh very well had lent a lot of credence to the idea that he may have just been confused when the controlled recording was made. Rehearing the audio showed that he had no difficulty following the discussion. He never asked for anything to be repeated and he didn't show any confusion over what was being said. It also made it clear that his demeanor completely changed during the controlled call once he got out of earshot of others. What we took for confusion was apparently because wanted to give the impression to others who were listening to his side that he was discussing the work on the car and her son.
Sp we voted for the first time. Five hands shot up. One didn't. One person still thought that all the inconsistencies in the plaintiff's testimony was sufficient reason to not vote for guilty.
While we reviewed the inconsistencies again, he read the definition of reasonable doubt which had previously been read to us by the judge. Unfortunately, I didn't keep the papers they gave us so I could quote it here. But basically it stated that reasonable doubt did not include the mere possiblilty that something may be true.
Serving on a jury has turned out to be one of the most difficult things I have ever done. The only thing that really tops it is watching my mother die in front of me in the hospital from terminal cancer.
I also have to mention our bailiff aka lead duck. Whenever we left the jury assembly room, we formed a line based on a fixed position behind him and dutifully walked in his wake to the second floor courtroom. At first there were 48 ducklkings all in a row. It then became 7. But that ritual never changed. We always lined up in our proper order. He explained everything to us about courtroom procedure before it happened. He even provided us all with peppermint candies during one of the all-too-frequent bench conferences. He frequently asked if we needed anything at all. When one of us had a previous committment in the evening of the first day, he arranged that procedings ended quicly enough for him to get there. He was our only contact with the judge and the court. And he did a masterful job of it.
I know you guys have a practice year before you can be licensed or something, which I think would be great to have here.
