I, JUROR
I recently had the opportunity to "exercise my civic duty". All right, so they forced me. The female defendant was charged with Grand Theft Embezzlement for allegedly bilking approximately $72,000 from the company where she worked as Controller. She was alleged to have employed four separate means of accomplishing this, including overstating the amount of state and federal taxes withheld from her weekly paychecks, overstating her monthly 401K contributions, and taking more vacation pay than she was entitled to.
The case was bizarre from the start. During opening arguments, the Defense conceded that yes, all the documents the Prosecution would place into evidence were accurate. The defendant really did take all that money. But she took it with the blessing of the owner of the company - it was part of a secret "deal" the two had arranged in order to boost her salary without increasing Uncle Sam's piece of the pie. So why was the owner now bringing her up on charges, you ask? Because he had a vendetta against the owner of a competing firm, and the defendant was allegedly the married competitor's mistress. Days of Our Lives would be put to shame by this tale.
Because the Defense basically admitted the check stub alterations took place, the first half of the trial was spent proving to the jury something that neither side was actually contesting. Hour after hour of testimony was spent showing us how the check stub deductions from various checks issued to the defendant didn't add up. In some years, no federal or state taxes were deducted at all, yet the weekly Year-To-Date totals increased (albeit haphazardly). Other times the net check amount plus the total of the deductions exceeded the gross amount. The defense attributed it all to the "agreement", and some unfortunate (and unproven) "glitches" in the company's payroll computer program.
The evidence, in my opinion, was pretty damning. I found myself wondering why the Defense ever took this case to trial (little did I suspect what awaited in jury deliberations). I'm no legal expert, but it might be that the party pressing charges has some say in whether the Prosecution is allowed to accept a plea bargain, so pleading guilty might not have offered any benefit. But that's speculation, and we as jurors are not allowed to do that.
In spite of having all the evidence on his side, the prosecutor did his best to annoy the hell out of us. He repeatedly raised issues such as the defendant's supposedly flamboyant style of living (which I thought was wholly irrelevant, by the way), and then would object non-stop when the Defense asked questions to respond to his insinuations. And by "non-stop" I mean he'd object after every single frigging question for ten times in a row. I found myself wishing he'd just shut up and let the Defense be heard, and let the jury decide whether the point was relevant or not. Another of his bad habits was to ask witnesses the same question over and over while slightly rephrasing it each time, thus hammering home his point. The problem is you're technically not supposed to do this, and an ungracious opposing counsel can object on the grounds the question has already been "asked and answered". But while the defense attorney generally let him get away with it rather than disrupt the flow of the proceedings, the prosecutor never hesitated for a moment to object to a defense question on the very same grounds. In fact, it often seemed the prosecutor's repeated objections were based more on throwing the Defense out of its rhythm than on any serious legal concerns.
When it came time for the Defense to present its side of the case, they didn't call a single witness to refute the evidence or back up the defendant's story. Not a one. All the Defense witnesses were "character" witnesses - people who had known the defendant as an honest and trustworthy person for many years. The prosecutor's rebuttal was always the same: he'd grab the evidence binder containing the defendant's recent checks and W-2 forms, set it down in front of the witness, and ask in an intimidating voice, "When you formed your opinion of the defendant's honesty, you didn't take the time to examine the evidence in this case, did you, Mr. Smith? When you testified to the defendant's trustworthiness, you didn't speak with any of the employees of the company she's accused of embezzling seventy thousand dollars from, did you Mrs. Jones?" Okay, okay, we get the point. It got so that for the last couple of witnesses, I felt like standing up and saying, "Here, give me the binder - I'll do it." But things backfired a little during his cross-examination of the Defense's final witness - actor Burt Young (the guy from the "Rocky" movies). Not having seen the prosecutor's similar treatment of the previous character witnesses, Young took his insinuating questions personally, and became the proverbial stubborn mule. In spite of the prosecutor's continual admonishments to "just answer the question" (and a few similar orders from the judge), Young refused to concede the defendant could be anything but a paragon of virtue. "You're trying to lead me somewhere I don't want to go," he complained, and later added he'd trust a person before he'd trust a computer printout. Try as he might, the prosecutor just couldn't get Young to budge, and finally gave up in disgust. It was kind of funny, actually. But not as funny as when the prosecutor was berating a witness in classic Perry Mason fashion, then suddenly held up his hand in a "stop" gesture. "Excuse me," he mumbled, as he looked down and zipped his fly. The jury erupted in laughter, but when you've been sitting in a courtroom for hour after hour almost anything seems funny.
They have these things called "closing arguments" which, as far as I can tell, are meant only to discourage you from ever being on a jury again. "Anything either counsel says during their closing arguments," the judge repeatedly told us, "is not to be construed as evidence." So why are they even bothering? First the prosecutor droned on for over an hour, mindlessly rehashing the facts of the case for time number 1,537 and telling us we must act in the interests of justice (or some such rot). Then it was the defense counsel's turn to try our patience, as he spent the next 65 minutes telling us that "reasonable doubt" doesn't mean what we think it does, and parsing individual sentences of the jury instructions down to the molecular level and explaining his personal legal interpretation of each molecule. I think the whole idea is to place the juror into a stuporous frame of mind of "Okay, Okay, I'll vote whichever way you want - just PLEASE stop talking." Finally, when the two were done, the jury breathed a collective sigh of relief. Then the judge announced the prosecutor would take an additional hour to rebut what the defense attorney just said. And it was then I realized I was being punished for my sins.
THE JURY DELIBERATES
The instructions for the jury contained something interesting. Each method of embezzlement was not to be treated as a separate count, but instead all four were to be considered "acts" lumped together under a single count. In other words, we couldn't find the defendant guilty on more than one count of embezzlement total, but if all twelve of us agreed she was guilty of even one of the four acts (as long as we all agreed on the same act), she was automatically guilty of that single count of embezzlement. Although the jurors are instructed not to consider possible penalties in their decisions, this concept seemed a little disturbing. One single act (overreporting of the state and federal tax deductions) accounted for over $66,000 of the amount embezzled. The remaining three ranged from $1,000 to $3,500. The instructions specifically stated that our verdict "need not" explain which, if any, acts she had been found guilty of. Hence, the judge would be sentencing her without knowing whether we'd found her guilty of stealing $1,000 or of stealing $66,000. This just didn't seem right.
We took what brain cells had survived the mind-numbing closing arguments and began deliberations in the jury room for the final hour of the day. Since this was Friday, we would basically just be able to get an idea where everyone stood before we broke for the weekend. And it didn't look good. Frankly, I felt the evidence supported a guilty verdict "beyond a reasonable doubt" on three of the four acts. Only the issue of her vacation pay, if examined by itself and not in the light of the other alleged transgressions, could be reasonably assumed to be an innocent mistake. At least that was my opinion. Unfortunately, three of the twelve didn't think the defendant was guilty on any of the four acts, and they seemed pretty darned convinced of their viewpoint.
Several times within recent years, juries in widely-publicized cases have returned "innocent" verdicts despite seemingly overwhelming evidence to the contrary. Serving on a jury for a criminal trial gives you profound insight into how this can happen. No one wants to make a mistake and send an innocent person to jail. It was evident during deliberations that several jurors were already fearing the weeks and months ahead - wondering if they would be rehashing the trial over and over in their minds and regretting their verdict. Being that this was my second experience on a jury, I was probably a bit more stoic than most due to having been through it once before. But I've got to admit I'd have similar thoughts if I ever got stuck on a murder trial.
After further deliberations the following Monday, the lone remaining dissenter was a 70-ish man who ran his own antiques business. By his own account, he made a lot of his business decisions based on his readings of other people's characters, and he flat-out distrusted the company owner, the owner's wife, and the company's CPA - the three individuals who'd given the most damning testimony against the defendant. I'm the first one to admit I'm not a particularly astute judge of character; I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt until I learn otherwise, and several times during my life others have warned me about someone whom I considered okay but later found out was as shady as my friends predicted. I prefer to base my decisions on hard evidence that I can see before me, analyze, and quantify, and this evidence was telling me the defendant got caught with her hand in the cookie jar. It was interesting though, that someone with an entirely different approach was reaching a completely different conclusion. Probably why they put twelve of us on the jury.
In the end, we reached agreement of guilt on only one of the four alleged acts of embezzlement. Ironically, it was one of the lesser-valued acts, which I suppose means if the defendant had only stuck to pocketing the extra $66,000, she might have gotten away with it. In spite of the instructions strongly hinting not to divulge which act(s) she'd been found guilty of, we stated it in the verdict anyway.
Looking back now, it's possible the whole "four acts under one count of embezzlement" structure was a deal struck between the Prosecution and the Defense. From the Prosecution's standpoint, it meant that even conviction on one of the "lesser" charges would carry the same sentence as a conviction on the largest one. On the other hand, the Defense would be assured of a conviction on only a single count at most. Again, I'm not a lawyer, so my logic may be all wet, but this might be an explanation of what was going on. Which means our inclusion of the specific act on the guilty verdict served no purpose whatsoever, except possibly to irritate the judge. But I always say anytime you can irritate the judge in a court case, you're doing something right.
As the twelve of us filed out of the courthouse for the final time, the security guard smiled and said, "See you next year." That security guard has a sense of humor.
