Trial Experience Part 2

So since it was the end of the day Thursday when the verdict was turned in, we were told to come back Friday morning for sentencing. Seriously, here was BIG FAT SURPRISE number 2. We (the jury) thought sentencing would include some character witnesses, wrap up, decide on punishment, and go home. WRONG! Turns out our defendant while out on bond for the drug deal got into a little more trouble revoking his bond. Although, this cleared up one thing for us. On the stand he had stated he got his car back from the police all torn up, but he had been in the same clothes and had a jail bracelet on in the courtroom and we were confused earlier in the trial.

But ultimately, Friday for me was the day everything went downhill. The crime our defendant was suspected in was another "rip" but this time not on the cops. All day Friday we got to hear and see the pictures of how he and two others stormed an apartment and beat the crap out of the two people inside, neither of which lived there as their buddy the resident had gone out and they were playing xbox and waiting for him. During the beat down they were demanding the key to the safe which of course they didn't know about. The apartment is probably owned by someone that deals pot from what we were hearing in the implications from the still awful defense attorney, but even if it was that doesn't "justify" the violent, armed assault and aggravated robbery. The beat down of the two guys included being pistol whipped numerous times and ended as the left with our defendant shooting one of them. The only consolation here is that he is such a terrible shot, from only a foot away the bullet only grazed the forehead of the victim.

The jury was all pretty upset by this, we really had tried to give the defendant the benefit of the doubt during the drug trial, but it was obvious now he is a really, really bad guy. The defense, if you can believe this again, was the defendant again taking the stand and saying "it wasn't me, these guys are trying to set me up." Ummm... again we couldn't believe him at all. The prosecutor once again ripped him apart in cross and also produced a picture from his myspace page in gang colors and pose.

After closing, the jury was sent in again to basically decide guilt or innocence in this charge although technically we were deciding "beyond a reasonable doubt" if the extra charge was "true" or "not true" since the trail was really about the drug deal. It took us in the jury all of about 30min to decide "true" and then an hour and a half to figure out how many years to sentence him for. Since we determined the aggravated assault to be "true" the punishment went from 5-life to 15-life, all with the possibility of parole which means he will in all likelihood serve much less than we actually give him. We threw out the minimum because we all agreed he had increasingly violent crimes and couldn't stand to let him out too soon, we threw out life because he still has a chance to change his life. We settled on 35 years and it is ridiculously hard to decide to send someone younger than me to prison for longer than we've been alive. Everyone on the jury was very emotional and no one is comfortable trying to decide these things.

It was this whole day that made me upset from beginning to end. I had previously been glad not to have to a "violent crime" case, only to find out it was. I wish no one had to do anything like this at all.