Blog of Chris

I’ve spent the weekend cooling down in the woods of the Patapsco Valley, so I’ll calmly explain how a Baltimore city jury was unable to reach a unanimous verdict in a case that involved a young inner-city crack dealer. Sorry, an alleged young inner-city crack dealer.

There were members of our jury who were too young or immature to take their civic duty seriously, and did not understand the oath they took stating they would be unbiased, and reach a conclusion based on reasonable arguments and the evidence that was presented.

After a little bit of back and forth, the more reasonable members of the jury convinced most of them that they were not applying reason when coming to their conclusion, and they joined the majority who desired to submit a guilty verdict.

One juror, who was busy text messaging through most of the deliberations, not participating in the discussions, and who was particularly guarded when asked any question, or asked to argue his side of the case, simply refused to call the defendent guilty on the grounds that he does not trust the police.

Despite his defiance, he was willing to go along with a unanimous guilty verdict because it would end the trial and get him off of jury duty so he could get back to his life.  (truly virtuous, right?)

So, when we deliver our verdict, a “polling of the jury” is requested, where each juror is individually asked if he or she is in agreement with the verdict, and of course, our rogue juror stated that he was not.  He told the rest of us that he could not bring himself to convict the defendant when they asked him the question directly like that.  This led to another full day of deliberations where he sat in the corner playing with his phone and trying to ignore our arguments for him to change his mind. Searching for “Hung Jury” on Wikipedia led me to the Allen Charge, which I found pretty interesting.  It basically says in nice words “If you are in the extreme minority on a hung jury, then you are probably not thinking reasonably.”

Here’s an excerpt from the Allen Charge:

If a substantial majority of your number are in favor of a conviction, those of you who disagree should reconsider whether your doubt is a reasonable one since it appears to make no effective impression upon the minds of the others. On the other hand, if a majority or even a lesser number of you are in favor of an acquittal, the rest of you should ask yourselves again, and most thoughtfully, whether you should accept the weight and sufficiency of evidence which fails to convince your fellow jurors beyond a reasonable doubt.

Apparently, judges are supposed to give this text to a hung jury if they are unable to reach a verdict (in some jurisdictions).  Our judge did not cite the Allen Charge, but I found it on my own in hopes that it might help.  It did not.

Thus, we were unable to come to a unanimous decision, and the judge sent us home after 3 days of trial that probably cost taxpayers a LOT of money and accomplished absolutely nothing… all because they let unreasonable people participate in a process that requires and open and reasonable mind.  It’s ok, it’s just crack cocaine in Baltimore.

I would like to think that this can’t possibly happen again if they retry the case… the more I think about it, it seems that the lawyers know exactly what they are doing when they select a jury.  The defense needs this type of idiocy.

-C

This entry was posted on Sunday, October 12th, 2008 at 4:51 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.