Dog Days

August. Last post, (I know, I'm sorry) was last June. Perhaps I can claim that July doesn't exist, since there's no blogging proof... ;-)

It's been a weird and difficult thunderstorm season at work. I've done little writing as a result, though I will admit to some wool-gathering about storyline ideas for Imperfect Hope. I've not given up on it, just sidelined it for a time. Same with Ole the Weatherman, ran into time issues. September will be better. I promise myself...

I did get selected to appear for jury duty. Conventional wisdom here at denver center is that Air traffic controllers never get past the first round of questions, assuming you even get selected. I can't think of another controller here that has actually served on a jury. So, summons in hand, I showed up at the courthouse, expecting a "thanks, we don't need your type here".

Surprise.

I ended up serving on a 4 day criminal trial. It was an eye-opener. At first (and probably like every other person on the jury) I felt like "Oh, great, what a burden. Lets get this over with"... Opening statements painted the defendant in a very bad light, and at first, it seemed like it was going to be easy. After all, the prosecution had numerous witnesses, a 911 call, police reports, and cell phone tapes to back up their claims. However, I was careful to not prejudge (even though the defendant "looked" like a thug...

My optimism for an easy verdict fell to pieces as the prosecutions first, "star" witness began to open her mouth.

In a nutshell, she contradicted herself several times in the first few minutes. She contradicted her statements to police minutes after the crime, she contradicted her later statements to investigators months later, and she even began disparaging the next upcoming prosecution witness before she even got to the stand.

There followed witness after witness whose statements the day of the "event" matched statements made to investigators over the next few months only rarely. The most believable testimony came from a 16 year old girl, who basically said to police the day of the event, and on the stand last week, "I didn't see a bat, there was a lot of chaos". She did tell investigators about a bat 6 months back, which backed up her mom's (Star witness #1) claims.

The 911 call was odd, in that for the first 30 seconds of the recording, the witness was calling everything out in real time... "He's chasing us with a bat... He just ran his car into a house... He's attacking my husband with his car..." The next 2 and a half minutes were a past-tense narrative. There was no vocal transition between the two stages of the call. Initial police reports, told of the witness claiming she made the call from the dead end street where the assault was taking place. She told investigators she made the call when the defendant first pulled out a bat. On the stand, her husband contradicted her statement by stating that "they made the call from the house".

There were many other discrepencies.

Defense witnesses, amusingly enough, consisted of police officers called to the scene.

Unfortunately, the DA (or ADA) was very articulate, and the public defender was much less so. When we the jury got the case, there were only two of us who had "reasonable doubt" about the prosecutions version of events that night.

Two days of logic presentation, argument, and discussion later, we found the defendant not guilty of the 5 most serious charges (including 3 felonious assault), and guilty of one count of "reckless endangerment" (Police found tire tracks of his car cutting across a lawn at high speed).

The "thug" began to cry when the 4th not-guilty verdict was read.

During the pre-trial brief, the judge defined reasonable doubt for us. Among the legal descriptions, she included the observation. "You can be assured that reasonable doubt exists when, two days after the trial, you wonder to yourself what really happened, or you have a bad "feeling" about your decision. (odd commentary from a judge at the time)".

I feel good about our decision. And, interestingly, I came away with a sense of accomplishment.

I won't discuss my feelings about the legal system in general, however. I'm still a cynic. Most of the time...

Clear skies,
Jim