“I SHOULD HAVE KILLED HIM when I had the chance. Now I’m f–d!” said the man as he was driven away in a squad car. He used to spend his mornings at a methadone clinic, but not any more. Not after being charged with stabbing a man in the thigh. He claims the reason he was carrying a knife in his “hoody” the day of the crime was to protect himself from a guy who had threatened the day before to “get my Gat!”
No, this isn’t a scene from “Belly,” and the two men are not DMX and Mos Def. This is a true story. I heard it the other day in a District of Columbia courtroom. If you live in D.C., you know that every two years you’ll get called for jury duty. And somehow by the end of the voir dire, I found myself sitting in the jury box.
Great, I thought. This is the last thing I need–to worry about someone else’s problems. My fellow jurors shared the sentiment. The old man next to me shook his head and mumbled, “They always pick me.”
Yet as soon as the trial began, we were completely engrossed. The charge was assault with a deadly weapon. On the stand, the defendant admitted carrying a 10-inch kitchen knife the day of the crime. The victim had suffered a 12-inch laceration to his thigh. A police officer testified that the alleged stabber had said after his arrest that he should have killed the victim when he’d had the chance.
But the prosecution’s witnesses were unconvincing. The victim and a buddy of his contradicted each other several times. We learned that the defendant had shared an apartment with the victim and had kicked him out for failing to pay his share of the rent. Was the victim giving the defendant’s girlfriend crack cocaine in lieu of rent? Some testimony suggested as much, but was stricken from the record, though not from our memories.
Through all of this, I kept comparing these real court proceedings with those I’d seen in movies and on television. No one cross-examined like Sam Waterston. Not once did either attorney yell, “I want the truth!” “This whole court is out of order!” or “Here endeth the lesson!” In fact, the U.S. attorney kept stopping abruptly mid-sentence and begging the court’s indulgence. The defense attorney mistook a police officer for a detective and repeatedly asked to approach the bench, until the judge said, “No, ask your next question.” The lawyers kept objecting without providing a reason like “Counsel is leading the witness” or “The question is irrelevant.” The attorneys objected to each other’s closing statements, which annoyed the judge, who, incidentally, had no gavel.
What impressed me most was the attentiveness of the jurors. Many of us took notes, which we used during deliberations–the one scene almost never shown in courtroom dramas. After a thorough discussion of the lack of credible testimony for the prosecution, most of us agreed there was room for reasonable doubt as to the defendant’s guilt. Why couldn’t the victim and his friend tell a straight story? Why had they falsely denied having jobs? Why didn’t a doctor take the stand? Why was the knife itself not placed in evidence? Was the injury deliberate, or did it happen in the scuffle? (Only once did I hear a juror cite a precedent from “Judge Judy.”)
One juror held out, convinced the defendant had acted intentionally. He asked for time to think about it overnight. When we reconvened the next day and took another vote, he looked down, exhaled, and said, “Not guilty.” We all thought it was over. But then a blonde girl who had previously voted with the rest of us suddenly announced she thought the defendant was guilty, “but I just want to get out of here, so I say not guilty.” We stared at her in disbelief. The trial had lasted too long, she griped. “Do I care what happens to him?” she asked, and, “What about O.J.?”
Then came the Oscar moment, straight out of “Twelve Angry Men.” An elderly black man wearing tinted glasses spoke up for the first time. Turning to the blonde, he said: “Young lady, you cannot decide on another man’s life just out of convenience. You have to make the decision based on your conscience. And what you decide now, you are going to have to live with for the rest of your life.” (She stuck to her “not guilty” vote, though what she really thought we’ll never know.)
A few days later I received an e-mail from our forewoman. She said she still wondered if we’d done the right thing. I told her I thought about it, too. By letting the defendant back out on the street, were we only inviting his victim to seek street justice?
“I think we did our best,” I said. And there endeth the lesson.
–Victorino Matus
