read part 1: "picking the jury" here
and part 2: "the trial" here
please keep in mind this is all just from my perspective and is soley my opinion(s).
on thursday, shortly before 10 am we were given the trial and they announced the "alternate" jurors. there were 14 of us jurors in the trial but only 12 got to deliberate. 2 of us were alternates but we didn't get to know who those 2 were until after the trial. being number one juror, i was pretty confident it wasn't me but how much would that suck to see the whole trial and then not get to go in and discuss it with everyone? one guy had gotten sick and was "let go" towards the end of the trial so they really just had to announce one alternate. that person left before deliberations. also, during deliberations one man's wife was hospitalized with something pretty serious so he had to leave mid-deliberating. so it ended up being 11 of us to decide. and it had to be unanimous. each decision had to be absolutely unanimous and we couldn't stop until they were. there were 7 counts in this trial.
there had to be a "leader" amoungst us (they had a term for this person, but it escapes me at the present time; head juror, maybe?) and of course the "crazy" lady in our group raised her hand. she was to lead the discussions and attempt to keep us on track. so here i am thinking, ok this shouldn't take too long, shouldn't be too bad.
we get into our deliberation room, which is a small room with a large table in it surrounded by comfy chairs and we all take a seat. the room has a large white board in it. a large pad of paper stand. a sink with a coffee maker. a large-ish window that is placed relatively high (maybe to keep people from staring outside while deliberating?). and a small bathroom for each gender. we are given the guidelines for deliberations as well as the evidence from the case. we all got notepads to take notes on during the case so we got those of our own too. we were then essentially locked in.
so the "crazy" lady begins talking about the case and things and people are conversing a little with her. she then stops the talking and says something along the lines of "well, just to start off, no one thinks he's innocent, right?" GULP. um... what?!?!? my heart and my jaw sank to the floor. my mind was racing as was pulse. this is quite possibly the worst possible thing i could have heard at that moment. what do i do? do i speak up? do i hope that someone else is feeling like i do and will speak up? what is going on? i was sure that deliberations would be easy...
i waited a tiny bit while millions of thoughts ran through my head and we all looked around the room. no one said anything. so i did what i needed to do; i said, "i do." and so the real, unforeseen deliberations began...
the whole room looked at me. i could have sworn they were starring me down. that there was a large spot light pointed directly at me. i probably shrunk down in my chair a couple of inches. no one else spoke up that they thought he was innocent; they all were under the same thinking as crazy lady. this was not what i wanted. i didn't even want to be on the jury in the first place but then to come into the deliberation room being the only one thinking we couldn't find him guilty of anything? so i was going to have to speak up and say my side against 11 others (at that point). i and i alone was going to have to defend my stand point. i was not comfortable convicting this young boy of murder or manslaughter. i was not going to back down and let him go to jail for something we had no proof that he did or didn't do. i had SO many thoughts run through my head. were the rest of them all just racist? were they age-ists? or femenists? or what? how could they be thinking so differently than me? weren't we in the same exact trial, hearing the same exact things?
but i didn't have much time to think (which i hated; i'm a thinker. i need to think about things) when she shot back at me "ok. why?" i took a deep breath and told the outline of why i felt that way. i then asked if anyone else felt the way i did. there was one young girl (the youngest in our group) that said she wasn't sure what she felt; she was on the fence for both ways. and there was another girl somewhere around my age that said she kind of felt that way. that was it. and i could tell they weren't going to say much to help me out. ok, i guess i was going to have to fight for what i thought was right by myself...
after i had explained my side a little bit more, one of the men, tom, suggested we start over and write out a time line and who the main "players" were so we could go over the storyline and discuss important details together. at that point, i was so thankful for tom! and over the course of that day, i would become more and more thankful for tom! i needed to take what i felt like was the weight of the world off my shoulders for a bit and just breathe and think.
we laid it out and discussed a little bit of the story. but we still needed more structure to our deliberating. so we decided to start reading through the counts to see if we could eliminate any of them right off the bat. this turned out to be harder than we thought it might be. it also brought out "loud man"'s opinions. he was an ex-military guy who was very set in his ways and he spoke very loudly. he was the one in the empty court room that talked the entire time and everyone heard every part of his stories. in going over the counts, he came out and said that he 100% thought demetrius was guilty and there was no way he was backing down from that. ever. oh boy, so here we have loud, stubborn, military man versus quiet, doesn't-want-to-be-the-center-of-attention me on opposing sides. at this point i thought "this wasn't going to end well, if at all."
about this time we were to go to lunch. we were escorted by 2 deputies to and from lunch. lunch was on the court house and we weren't allowed to speak to anyone that wasn't on our jury and we couldn't talk about the trial while at lunch. so we tried to take our minds off the trial and make small talk with each other. i had had a couple of conversations with a girl about my age, sierra, and i was so thankful to have her to chat with. she had also just been to a bachelorette party a couple of weekends before so we joked that if we were sequested over the weekend, her and i would be having my bachelorette party together. i also enjoyed the company of a younger than me male who was in a band and liked pretty cool music. he was interesting to listen to. there was also an awesome and funny big black guy in the group. his name escapes me but he was always smiling and cracking jokes, making us laugh. i was also very thankful to have him in the group. he tried and usually succeeded in keeping things light-hearted.
lunch was a buffet and was cut short for a reason that we were never actually told. we were hustled back into the jury room and resumed deliberations. at this point i'll also mention mary. she was a tiny little lady about my mom's age or a little older and she was smart. so smart. and she was calm and collected and understood that i felt like i was in a pickle. she sat next to me in the jury room and was constantly re-assuring me and patting my leg under the table when i needed a boast of confidence. i looked to her to explain things to me and to make me feel better about things. mary, being the tiny little all of 95 pounds she was, was my rock. i know that deliberations would have been 10,000 times more horrible for me if i had not had her.
without going into too much detail about how i came to the conclusion i did, i will tell you that there were little things that other people picked up on that i didn't during the trial. there were some character flaws that i had overlooked (probably a partial explanation of why i'm such a bad judge of character). but here is what i eventually, probably around 2 pm, came to the conclusion of:
1. there is no way that julian was not hysterically crying and screaming in pain from his injuries. the doctors said many things to force that point home. that child would have been in tremedous amounts of pain. everyone in that house would have heard him screaming (all 4 of which said they didn't hear anything) and especially the 2 in the same room with him. anyone having been around children (his mother especially; i should also take this time to say that demetrius has a son as well that he sees once in a while and he has nephews/nieces that he's always around) would have known that this kid was in severe pain. and the fact that no one is saying he was screaming or even crying is suspicious.
2. both demetrius and jessica say they didn't know what happened to julian but we know that something had to have happened to him in that house and either one or both of them were in his presence all night long. so either only one of them knows something or they're both covering up for each other and they both hit julian. the likelihood being that they both hit him because neither were alone with him after 930 pm. if one of them saw the other hit him and they didn't hit him, why wouldn't they tell on the other and save themselves from jail and a trial and charges and such? suspicious.
i had come to the conclusion that demetrius had to have either done something to julian or knew what happened to julian or both. at this point, i looked to mary and asked her if, her being a mother and a kind-hearted person, she honestly believed that demetrius had a part in this. i asked her this even after everyone else had said they believed it. and she looked me in the eye and said yes. she was very certain that he somehow had a part in it. and she thought that they both probably did.
ok, so i was convinced demetrius had something to do with it or knew something at least, but i still was not ok convicting him of murder or manslaughter. he did not go up to julian with intent to kill him and without solid proof i was never going to be ok with that. once i expressed my change in thoughts to my fellow jury-mates (after someone had to sssh the loud guy so i could talk) we started back with the counts. we decided to start at the bottom of the counts and see where that took us. the bottom/least count was manslaughter due to child neglect. the definition of this one said that a person was guilty of this count if they knew something was wrong with a child and neglected to do anything for the child or get any help for the child. in going around the room, we were all sure that he was guilty of this. that he (and jessica) had to have known that julian was hurting badly. and they did nothing. so we had that count taken care of.
at that point i felt good about the deliberations. i felt like i stood my ground while also being open enough to listen and process what the others had to say. and i felt like we were in a good place and all were on the same page. it seemed that everyone else felt the same way i did with regards to murder and manslaughter. that we had no proof or any evidence to convict him of these. i was hopeful that deliberations would be done before dinner.
enter once again: loud man. he was still not budging and was adament that he never would. "this boy (or someone) needs to pay for the death of the child." and such. ok. this was not going end before dinner and possibly not before the weekend. or ever....
we tried to talk with loud man for a while and then were called for dinner. we went to dinner and ate. it was delicious. i don't rememer where we went but we weren't rushed this time. i had grilled chicken and steamed broccoli. and immensly enjoyed my fountain diet coke! we may be in for the long haul (again, deliberations could go until 9 pm before they would sequester us in a hotel).
when we got back to the jury room and started doing more discussion with loud man, i realized tom hadn't said much at dinner and as i looked at him i could see the wheels turning. after a little while, he spoke up and took over the floor. he completely changed our tactic to get through to loud man and it made so much sense. he sort of played devils advocate by coming at the counts from a backwards angle. he was so smart! after an hour or so of this discussion, something in loud man's face changed and i could see that he had seen the light. that we couldn't convict him of murder or manslaughter. thank goodness for tom!!!
we went through the rest of the counts and all agreed to not guilty. the crazy lady wrote down our verdicts to the counts on the official sheet and went out to get our law clerk. we were then told to stay in our jury room. it was about 730 pm at that time and we had been in deliberations since maybe 9 am. we all breathed a little easier then until we realized we didn't know what was to happen now. it was so late. were they still going to sequester us until court the next morning? or what? we waited probably about half an hour when the law clerk came back in and told us the "they" were ready for us. huh? "they" were ready?
turns out everyone was there or able to get there quickly. everyone was ready to hear our verdict including a bunch of demetrius' family in the stands. we filed in, surprised at the amount of people that were there after 8 pm and unsure where to look. we took our seats and i found myself unable to look anyone but the judge and the law clerk. i couldn't believe i had to sit there while the lawyers, defendent and his family waited on pins and needles to find out our verdicts.
part 4: "the verdict and after" coming soon
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