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Jury duty is a solemn charge

My husband, I and two good friends have all sat on juries where we acquited or hung the jury. Maybe it's an Alaskan thing, but we feel it is the prosecution's job to prove the defendant guilty and that simply arresting someone is not proof of that. Jury nullification has a long history not just in Alaska but goes back to the second US Supreme Court case, when the SCOTUS agreed that jury nullification had its place in a fair and equitable legal system. Sometimes laws are just plain wrong and sometimes they are wrongly applied and juries are the last recourse for those who fall under their sway.

My husband and I have both sat murder one trials where the prosecution relied on questionable forensics, outright lying witnesses, and misleading judges' instructions for a guilty verdict. On the trial BJ was on, the man shot and killed an assailant who had already killed the defendant's wife and wounded the defendant. The nearest State Trooper was 120 miles away and the defendant would have been dead if he hadn't taken the action he took. Alaskans pretty much all go armed outside of the major towns and the eye witnesses agreed that the assailant shot without provocation from cover and that the defendant did not draw his weapon until after he himself had been shot. The judge's instructions were that the jury could only rule on the facts as based upon the law. Alaska statute allows us to protect ourselves in our own homes. The defendant was in the parking lot of a roadhouse, thus he'd violated that statute. However, he had no police back-up and he would have reasonably been dead in about 30 seconds if he'd not taken the action he did, when he did. The jury voted to acquit based on a common sense argument that you have a right to defend yourself anywhere if your life is in danger.

In my case, we found the defendant guilty of a lesser included charge of manslaughter because the two main witnesses were liars (later confirmed)and the forensic evidence disagreed with the eye witnesses for the prosecution, but supported the defendant's story. We felt the defendant deserved a conviction of negligent homicide, but a rule-following military wife insisted "the police know what happened and we ought to vote how they want (murder one)" and we could only talk her down to manslaughter. Rather than hang the jury and put the defendant through it a second time, we compromised. He was guilty of negligent or reckless behavior, but not of deliberately trying to kill someone. Later public events proved that one of the witnesses was an accomplished liar.

My good friend John sat a drunk driving trial where the "driver" was found sleeping it off in the back seat of his running automobile. He was outside the club where he'd partied too hard, in an area lacking hotels or cabs. He wisely made the choice to not drive, but it was 45 below zero outside, so he kept his car running so he wouldn't die. Technically, according to State statute, he was in control of the keys and therefore, driving drunk, but John and the rest of the jury agreed that he had acted responsibly by not driving and there is no law (yet) against drunken sleeping.

My good friend Kathy sat a rape trial (in another state) where the prosecution mounted a seemingly airtight DNA case corroborated by the victim's identification of the defendant. The defense attorney got up and presented (for the first time because the defense doesn't get to present a case until trial) that the client had a (albeit) shaky alibi and an identical twin brother. The jury hung because some jurors were unaware that identical twins are not distinguishable on a DNA level. Later events during the second trial resulted in a mistrial when the twin brother committed a rape while the defendant was still jailed and the DNA flagged the defendant as the perpetrator. He wasn't exactly proven innocent, but it sure seemed as if he hadn't committed the second rape, which brought the first rape into question.

I've been a newspaper reporter on the cop-shop beat and I can tell you that cops only want to convict people; they don't care if the accused is guilty or innocent. I've seen some police officers deliberately ignore evidence at a crime scene because it would aid the defense. The defense rarely gets to the evidence while it is still viable, so .... Yeah, I'm suspicious of police. The prosecutor and judge work for the same system the police work for. The defendant often has a public defender who works for the same system. Yeah, ethics and all that -- I'm skeptical.

Don't get me wrong. I have sat juries where I convicted without a second thought. The guy who combed his hair in the mirror hiding the ATM camera in the movie theater he'd just burglarized was an especially easy decision. I just always enter the courtroom with an attitude that the defendant has nobody on his side but the jury and that the prosecution only wants a conviction, so you have to listen to both sides very carefully and you have to apply common sense. Most of the time, conviction will be right, but not always. And, if the law is wrong or wrongly applied, the jury has a right to ignore the judge's instructions and nullify. This is one of the actions that citizens can exercise to prevent the formation of a police state. I don't think it should be used often, but I do think juries should be aware that they have the right to use it and that the right was sorted out by the Supreme Court back in 1802 or something like that.

We should always remember that the United States was based on governance of the people, for the people and by the people. The government is a great thing, but we should never trust it too much, especially when someone's individual freedom is at stake. Juries stand as the last line of defense in a criminal "justice" system gone wrong and they may be the only source of "justice" available.