it started out with the opening statements of the lawyers from both sides. i won't get into that here as lawyers are very good with words and implications, and i think it's more important to hear the story from the people that were actually there. they both tried to convince us their story was right, obviously, but i took it with a grain of salt until i heard/saw actual facts.
we had to see the autopsy pictures on the first day (the medical examiner was one of the first witnesses). the pictures were not fun to look at, but they weren't as bad as i had expected. we saw mostly just pictures of his dead body, one or two with his skin pulled back and a couple of the inside of him/his organs. the poor kid (2 year old, julian) had bruises everywhere! some big, most small. the medical examiner indicated that the small bruises were indicitive of hand or fist bruises. before i get into more of that, let's lay out the basic timeline of events of the night in question.
here's how the story goes from the point of the defendent:
it was about 830 pm in september of 2009. demetrius (the defendent) had a girlfriend but called over a "booty call" that night. that being jessica, who brought her 2 year old son julian with her. demetrius was not the father of julian and claims he hadn't seen him but a few times before. jessica and julian arrived at about 9 pm via the city bus. part of demetrius' story was that julian was sleeping when they arrived, but we saw a video tape from the bus in which he was clearly awake and moving and playing and seemingly acting like a normal 2 year old. shortly after they arrive jessica walks across the street to rainbow foods to grab something to eat leaving julian with demetrius and his mother and his mother's boyfriend. from what we could gather, julian was up in demetrius' mom, rose's room with all of them.
when jessica got back, her, demetrius and julian went downstairs to demetrius' room to watch a movie. they watched a movie and julian fell alseep. sometime in the time frame of the first movie, julian threw up. they supposedly cleaned up the vomit, demetrius got him a glass of water and laid him back down. and he went back to sleep. a bit later demetrius' friend, bo, came over for a bit. they watched part of another movie, smoked some, and after maybe an hour, bo left. we heard from bo; he said nothing that he noticed was out of the ordinary and he saw julian sleeping.
after bo left, jessica and demetrius fooled around. during their fooling around, julian woke up again and demetrius said he was really warm and sweating. so supposedly, demetrius laid him in front of a fan and went back to jessica. then they went to sleep. some parts of the story say julian threw up again, some don't. early in the morning they woke up and checked on julian. they found him not breathing so demetrius "tried" to do cpr even though he didn't know how, while jessica called 911. when the police/ambulance got there, demetrius ran julian upstairs and said he might have bonked julian's head against the wall. the paramedics took over and brought julian to the hospital where they were able to sustain him a bit on life support. by 2 pm the family decided to take him off life support after getting advice from the doctors. demetrius was then taken to the police station and interviewed; we got to watch his interview which is where we learned most of his side of the story. he seemed very uneasy (as someone should having had a 2 year old just die in your presence) and didn't say or do anything other than what you might expect. but he also just kept saying that he didn't know what happened. he reiterated it many times or he would say to ask jessica since she was the boy's mother. he gave us no information as to what happened to julian or where the bruises came from.
so the first couple of witnesses were the medical examiner that did the autopsy on julian as well as the children's specialist doctor that worked on julian while he was in the hospital. here's what we learned from them: amoungst the many bruises on his body, again mostly small bruises indicitive of hands/fists, there were a couple of slightly larger bruises on his side and some small and one large bruise on his head. internally, julian was much worse off. his pancreas was severed in half, completely in 2 parts. a large artery in the same area of the pancreas was severed in half. his kidney had large, deep lacerations in it. both doctors had previously seen injuries like this but they indicated that usually those sort of injuries came from a person who had been in a severe car accident. and both doctors agreed that had julian been brought in within a couple of hours of these injuries happening, he could have been saved. julian ended up dying from internal bleeding mostly out of the severed artery. we also learned that julian could not have lived with that type of injury for very long, 5-8 hours maximum so this told us that something had to have happened after jessica and julian got to demetrius' house. they also said that julian would have been in excrutiating pain. tremendous amounts of pain. there would be no way that child wasn't screaming and crying his head off in pain. something had to have happened in that house.
on friday, we had been in the court room for only about an hour, took our 15 minute morning break and were not called back into the court room for quite a while. when we were called back in, we were told that they had "work" to do and we were dismissed for the day. very strange. we had counted all day friday into the time line of the trial (which we thought we would start deliberations on wednesday of the following week) so taking almost a whole day off was worrisome. i was afriad of 2 things: 1. that it was going be called a mistrial and we wouldn't get to see the outcome or finish what we started. and 2. that it would push the trial back and we'd be sequestered over the weekend which was the date for my bachelorette party! so i got to add those 2 worries onto all the other worries i had, for the whole weekend.
we came back in on monday, waited for a bit, and were called back into the court room and the trial proceeded. we were not told until the end of day monday that the reason we got friday off was because a new witness was discovered and the police and lawyers had to interview her.
we heard from a bunch of witnesses but i won't go into each one in depth (partly because i can't remember them all, partly because i came sum up what they said in smaller detail than the 4 days it took us to hear them all). i will give brief overviews below:
-a couple of police officers/sergants that dealt with demetrius: they said he was distraught but didn't have much of a story for them. his story stayed relatively the same, but wasn't helpful because he said he "didn't know" when asked what happened to julian. they also told us that jessica's reaction, both in the interviews and in the hospital, was strange. they didn't see her cry. they actually saw her laughing multiple times. she didn't seem distraught or grieving or really even sad, more irritated.
-jessica's family: not much info we got there as they didn't see julian after about 4 pm that day but did indicate that he didn't seem sick and seemed normal when they saw him. we did learn that jessica's brother who was 14ish had previously hit Julian but it wasn't anything the family worried about.
-daycare lady: she basically was just able to further solidify that julian was fine and was without bruises the day of the night in question. she had been with him, he'd acted normal and she'd changed his diapers and saw no bruises.
-rose, demetrius' mom: we basically learned that she has/had no idea what's going on. nothing she said made much sense or aligned with anything. she was kind of a strange lady and we basically couldn't take anything she said as real or factual. also, that she was likely pretty drunk or high the night this happened and she's a very light sleeper (someone who would have heard a child screaming/crying but claimed to not hear anything).
-tone, rose's boyfriend/fiance: not much here either. he was also home the night in question but was sleeping most of the night. he was able to say he saw julian when they arrived and didn't notice anything funny.
-nicole, the new witness: nicole was/is a jailmate of jessica's. they had been friends for most of jessica's stay and jessica started to trust nicole and confide in her. jessica was asked twice about the night of julian's death in nicole's presence. the first time people were talking negatively to jessica about her killing her kid and she supposedly fought back in saying "no, my boyfriend killed him." her "boyfriend" being demetrius. the second time, nicole asked jessica about it when they were alone and just talking and jessica said that after julian had thrown up at demetrius' house, she took him up to the bathroom and slammed him against the toilet and told him to throw up in there if he needed to. all of this is according to nicole.
things to note:
1. we didn't get to hear from demetrius. he never took the stand. he just sat next to his lawyers the entire trial. i didn't like this fact. i like to draw conclusions from people; i like to see their reactions and how they answer questions. i like to hear both sides. but this was kind of hinted at in the pre-trial questioning so we were kind of expecting that.
2. once a jury is given the case for deliberations, we were not allowed to talk to anyone other than our jury mates (we had not been allowed to even talk to them about the case up until deliberations and holding it all in was really tough!). in deliberations, we weren't allowed to have our cellphones or computers or anything. and if we didn't come to a decision by the end of the day (the end of the day for deliberations could be as late as 9 pm) we would have to be sequestered in a hotel over night with again no contact with anyone in any form. they had talked about the possibility of being sequestered multiple times throughout the weeks because since we were on a longer trial, it could very well happen.
3. i am a horrible judge of character. i trust and like people way too easily. i basis my decisions of other people off of current mood/actions and just assume that is the main/typical personality of the person in front of me. this, unfortunately is not always the case. i'll say it again, i am a horrible judge of character. (my brother happens to be a great judge of character; looking back, i wish my brother could have been there with me. i would like to have gotten his take on demetrius and a few others before the end of the trial and extra info came out). i was aware of this flaw in me going into the trial. but i held my head high and knew what i believed going into deliberations. just about from the start of that second week, i was sure that demetrius was innocent. or at least that we had no facts to find him guilty on. especially when the charges were as large as manslaughter and murder. by wednesday (the last full day of the trial) i was sure that deliberations were going to be easy and quick because we wouldn't be able to convict him of anything. i mean, we had just heard, from nicole, that jessica had slammed julian into the toilet which could possibly have been the source of the internal damage.
we were given the case early on thursday and i would soon find out i was in a whole different ballpark than i ever expected....
part 3: "deliberations" coming soon.
read part 1: "picking the jury" here
things to note:
1. we didn't get to hear from demetrius. he never took the stand. he just sat next to his lawyers the entire trial. i didn't like this fact. i like to draw conclusions from people; i like to see their reactions and how they answer questions. i like to hear both sides. but this was kind of hinted at in the pre-trial questioning so we were kind of expecting that.
2. once a jury is given the case for deliberations, we were not allowed to talk to anyone other than our jury mates (we had not been allowed to even talk to them about the case up until deliberations and holding it all in was really tough!). in deliberations, we weren't allowed to have our cellphones or computers or anything. and if we didn't come to a decision by the end of the day (the end of the day for deliberations could be as late as 9 pm) we would have to be sequestered in a hotel over night with again no contact with anyone in any form. they had talked about the possibility of being sequestered multiple times throughout the weeks because since we were on a longer trial, it could very well happen.
3. i am a horrible judge of character. i trust and like people way too easily. i basis my decisions of other people off of current mood/actions and just assume that is the main/typical personality of the person in front of me. this, unfortunately is not always the case. i'll say it again, i am a horrible judge of character. (my brother happens to be a great judge of character; looking back, i wish my brother could have been there with me. i would like to have gotten his take on demetrius and a few others before the end of the trial and extra info came out). i was aware of this flaw in me going into the trial. but i held my head high and knew what i believed going into deliberations. just about from the start of that second week, i was sure that demetrius was innocent. or at least that we had no facts to find him guilty on. especially when the charges were as large as manslaughter and murder. by wednesday (the last full day of the trial) i was sure that deliberations were going to be easy and quick because we wouldn't be able to convict him of anything. i mean, we had just heard, from nicole, that jessica had slammed julian into the toilet which could possibly have been the source of the internal damage.
we were given the case early on thursday and i would soon find out i was in a whole different ballpark than i ever expected....
part 3: "deliberations" coming soon.
read part 1: "picking the jury" here
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