IT'S HARD DECIDING A MAN'S LIFE

If you haven’t already, go read ON TRIAL FOR HIS LIFE, TWELVE ANGRY PEOPLE and THE VERDICT.

It is indeed hard deciding a man's life.

Tony stood up, and addressed the court. He said that he’d always maintained his innocence and that he would never hurt a child. He said he had three daughters of his own and he loved children.

Yeah, a little too much, I thought to myself. We had already come to a verdict at this point, and I had formed my opinion.

The judge said two things had stuck out to her during the trial. One was STUPID, she said she had never seen anything like that, and it was sad. She said the other thing was when the defendant said he had three daughters of his own. She said he had three daughters and he had done this.

She sentenced him to TWENTY years.

I have to admit, my heart sank just a bit. I did believe that Tony had done everything that Grace had said he’d done. One of the things that we had wanted to ask the judge was if Tony could get some counseling while he was in prison. We guessed that he had urges that he had problems dealing with and that maybe these two girls were the first time he had acted on them.

We were wrong.

After the court, the two lawyers spoke with us, asking us questions about the case.

The prosecutor said there was SO much that we didn’t know. He said that there were SIX children in Tony and STUPID’s house and there had been charges against him with two older daughters as well, but Kelly had been the only one he had plead guilty on. He said that Tony had been accused of raping STUPID’s sister before they had met, and she STILL went out with him.

The defense said that to be fair, the sister was a drug addict, so wouldn’t have made a creditable witness. He said, however, there was a “VERY POWERFUL” videotape of Grace at twelve, where she described what had happened to her in great detail. He asked the prosecution why he didn’t use it, and the man just shrugged.

In the end, I feel that the system did work for this man. We did everything we could to remain unbiased and fair. We looked at the evidence, and made judgments only on what was given us.

I walked out of the courthouse with two of the courtroom assistants. “It was hard, wasn’t it?” the man said to me, “deciding a man’s life.”

“It was,” I agreed.

“People think it’s easy. You go in there and just sit down and make a judgment. But you have twelve people with twelve different opinions. “ I nodded.

The women who had been there outside the jury door, helping us with anything we needed, the whole time, said: “Don’t feel bad. He would have gotten twenty years for one count or twenty for all three anyway. You did good.”

THE VERDICT

If you haven’t already, please read On Trial for his Life and Twelve Angry People.

And now for the verdict:

One person argued that maybe he was just angry with the mother and decided to talk to the girl about it. At 4 A.M. No one agreed with this.

So we decided to vote. Anonymously.

My vote was:

1) Guilty (breast)

2) Guilty (vagina)

3) Not Guilty (taking to the basement)

The reason I voted not guilty for the third, even though I believed it did happen, was because I didn’t think they had proven it. The police had barely even mentioned it in their reports. He wasn’t asked about it on the polygraph and he wasn’t asked about it on the stand. Therefore, to me, he didn’t have a chance to defend himself against the charges.

It wasn’t easy, but I don’t think judgments should be decided on people’s gut FEELINGS. The prosecution said, in his closing statement, “If I didn’t do my job, or if the police didn’t do theirs, then take it up with my boss, or take it up with the police department. But don’t let this man go free.” I don’t think this is fair. Our justice system was founded on the premise that someone must be found guilty on the evidence.

Then he went on to say, “Many jurors walk out saying I know he’s guilty, but they just didn’t prove it. We’ll that’s not right. If you know he did it, then find him GUILTY.”

I wouldn’t want someone walking into court, taking one look at me, and deciding whether I had committed a crime without hearing any evidence. What if everyone did this? Is everyone’s judgment so infallible that they have the ability to look at someone and guess right away as to their guilt? This is why you have to PROVE it with a preponderance of the evidence.

One juror said, “I know this guy is guilty. He’s just a slimy person. This is a guy who fathers three children, doesn’t marry the mother, doesn’t take care of them, cheats all over the place, and I don’t think he’s a productive member of society. I don’t care if they lock him up forever." Many people agreed.

Of course, he wasn’t being charged with “not being a productive member of society.”

One guy said he didn’t understand why the guy was being charged with TWO counts of child molestation. He walked into the girl’s room, and he molested her. He argued that when you fight with someone, and you hit them, and then kick them, you are not charged with battery for both the kick and the punch. No, you’re charged with ONE count of battery. Why is this guy being charged with touching her breast and vagina?

Hum? A very good point, I thought.

Besides, the man said, he wasn’t even asked it he’d touched her breast on the polygraph. There fore, they hadn’t proven it.

This was beginning to piss some people off. Why were we trying to let a child molester off?

Some wanted to just tell the judge that we were deadlocked, and let twelve other shmucks decide this mess out. I was against this. Hell, the guy was getting about as fair a jury as he was gonna get, as far as I was concerned.

There was a lot of down time. People sat in their chairs thinking about things.

One woman said, “Look, I can let him go on the enticement, but I KNOW they proved the other two.”

One man, who had been trying to decipher the polygraph results, said he worked with computers and he didn’t see how the expert had said the man had failed. People argued that the guy was considered an expert by the court, and that it wasn’t up to us read the results. Just accept that he had failed the test.

Finally, after a day and a half we reached our verdict.

We all piled back into the courtroom. I sat down, and handed the paper to the bailiff, who handed it to the judge.

She handed it back and I stood up and read it out to the courtroom:

“On count one of the indictment, we find the defendant NOT GUILTY, on the charge of Child Molestation.”

I looked at Tony. He sighed.

“On count two of the indictment, we find the defendant GUILTY, on the charge of Child Molestation.”

Tony deflated. I’ve never seen a shrink man so visibly—as if he was half the man he had been only moments before.

“ On count three of the indictment, we find the defendant NOT GUILTY, on the charge of Enticing a Minor for indecent purposes.”

The judge thanked us and told us that we could stick around for the sentencing, if we liked. A few of us did...