The Hanover Collaboration

This post is quite a bit after the fact, but it’s something that I wanted to share. As you might have guessed, I was called for jury duty recently and ended up serving on the jury. It was a fairly interesting experience and raised more than a few questions in my mind about our justice system.

This could turn out fairly long, so be warned. But I thought it might be interesting to people who’ve never served on jury duty before.

It all started at the courthouse, at about 9am…

It starts pretty much as you’d expect: they take attendence, make sure everyone (~35 people or so) is there and seat you all in some order. What determined the order was unclear to me.

Then comes Voir Dire. Basically, both lawyers get to ask questions of the top 24 potential jurors. The questions ranged from the inane to the subtle from both sides…

“Has anyone had a significant issue with a police officer that would prevent you from fairly weighing the testimony of a PO?”

“Have you ever been accused of something you didn’t do?”

to

“What’s the difference between direct and circumstantial evidence?”

“Do you believe that one can have enough circumstantial evidence to prove guilt beyond a reasonable doubt?”

It felt very much like an early morning high school English class with a teacher intent on using the Socratic method. Only one old guy was trying deliberately to avoid jury duty. He succeeded, but I’m convinced it was because he was being unresponsive and annoying, not because he had a good excuse (His daughter was leaving town and he had to take care of her dog!).

Then the defense and prosecution passed a paper back and forth alternately removing potential jurors until they were down to 12. They had the 12 of us sit in the jury box, and let everyone else go.

Skipping some of the formalities, I’ll get right down to it. One defendant, male, ~28 years old. The charges were:

11 counts burglary
1 count attempted burglary
1 count misdemeanor theft

One thing I learned is that (at least in Montana) robbery differs from burglary in the commission of or threat of violence. So breaking into someone’s house when they’re out and stealing a PC is burglary. Doing the same thing while holding an occupant at gunpoint is robbery.

Here is the prosecution’s case:

Last June, over the course of ~2.5 weeks, a local car wash was repeatedly burglarized (10 times). Basically, someone would break into the “office” and steal quarters from the change machine and occasionally stuff from the vending machines, making off with ~$50-$100 each time. The owner reported these crimes for a while, but the police weren’t able to do much. He set up a cheap camera (that only taped for 4 hours at a time) and caught the guy on three occasions. His face was not visible (baseball cap and hankerchief over face) but other than that you got a pretty good look at him. It was clearly the same guy on each of the three videos. His clothes were the same each time.

The owner became really pissed and decided to hang out and wait for the guy. The guy was entering through a hole in the roof (accessible via an overhanging awning apparently), so the owner waited and sure enough the guy showed up again. The owner emptied a serious amount of pepper spray on the guy, who proceeded to flee rapidly outside, jump on his bike and take off. The owner didn’t get a good look at him. This was the attempted burglary.

Soon after this, the police received an anonymous tip that they ought to speak to the defendant about the car wash burglaries. Two detectives go to his house one morning at ~9:30am. He agrees to come meet them at the police station to “talk”. The detectives did not tell him about what. The defendant says he’ll meet them after he takes a shower.

The detectives walk back to their (unmarked) car right past the defendant’s work van (i.e. PVC pipe and ladder on top) with a small trailer. One of them happened to notice about 4 mountain bikes stuffed in the trailer. She peers in for a closer look and can clearly see (they had good photos of this) 4 new looking mountain bikes that still had the price tags on them from a local shop, Big Sky Cyclery. She looked in the window of the van and saw another 4 mountain bikes.

They continue to their car and wait to see what the defendant will do. He spends about 15 minutes walking back and forth from his house and his van, and finally gets in the van and starts driving in the opposite direction from the police station.

The detectives attempt to pull him over (honking, flashing headlights), the defendant ignores them. They eventually pull him over with the help of a police cruiser. Turns out the bikes were reported stolen that morning at 8am. An employee from Big Sky Cyclery came up to the van and ID’d the bikes right down to the serial numbers. (I forget the brand, but Big Sky Cyclery is the only authorized dealer in Missoula.)

The detectives got search warrants for the defendant’s van and home. They found…

Various cycling parphenalia also reported stolen from Big Sky, including about 30-40 Oakley sunglasses. 40-50 car air fresheners, the type only sold in vending machines, the same brand and aromas sold by the car wash. A pair of shorts, very similar in appearance to those worn by the guy in the video that (according to the detectives) smelled very strongly of pepper spray, with orangish stains on them (again, similar color as what happens with pepper spray).

Lots of power tools that the prosecution claimed could be used for breaking into both places. The bike store was broken into by someone who cut a hole in the wall through corrugated metal, and a similar type of entry was necessary in the car wash. So the prosection trotted out a reticulating saw, a hammer drill, big ass pliers, big ass plumbers wrench etc.

Also, a laptop computer with a login name matching that of a local physician who had several weeks earlier reported that his laptop had been stolen from his office.

Odds and ends to the prosecution’s case: the defendant matched the general appearance of the guy in the three car wash videos (about my height, but lanky and thin, probably 20lbs lighter). The car wash burglaries stopped and had not recurred since the defendant was arrested.

This all took the better part of a day via ~4-5 witnesses. The longest of which was one of the detectives going through all the crap they found at the defendant’s place. Everything was in paper bags and apparently not very well labeled, because it was always a bit of a surprise to everyone when they opened a new one.

1.) Lawyer hands detective a paper bag.
2.) Detective opens bag, looks inside, but doesn’t remove contents. Describes contents to the court.
3.) Defense lawyer objects (usually something about relevence)
4.) If the judge overrules, the stuff comes out of the bag. Otherwise it gets wrapped up again and put away.

The judge probably only sustained 10-15% of the defense’s objections. You have to understand that the prosecution had literally emptied the guys’ van of tools and was simply going to enter them into evidence one at a time. So the judge had to decide as we went what was relevent to the mode of entry. He also excluded a bag of “dark colored clothing; sweatshirts, dark gloves etc.” that was in the van.

This part of the trial felt very much like watching the opening gifts portion of a very serious, somber birthday party. It went on way too long.

The defense’s case:

Nothing. Seriously, they didn’t present a case. The lawyer made a closing statement, but that’s it. He (correctly, I guess) pointed out that it was the prosecution’s burden to prove the defendant guilty, and they were under no obligation to present a defense. He made some points about how not presenting evidence in one’s defense should not be thought of as evidence of guilt, harangued on the dual use nature of all the power tools, pointed out that there was no direct evidence that the defendent had committed these crimes (i.e. finger prints, eyewitnesses etc.).

And that was it. 10 of the burglary counts were for the car wash, 1 for the mountain bikes. The laptop was the misdemeanor theft and the attempted burglary was the pepper spray incident.

My only other observation on the trial itself was that it definitely had a theatrical feel to it. Nothing approaching Law&Order, but I definitely had the urge to give polite applause on several occasions. It didn’t reflect my feelings on guilt/innocence, rather it was like you were at a really boring middle school talent show, and every time you noticed the curtain going down you clapped, purely out of reflex. Very weird.

Deliberation:
Wow. This was the scary part. Everyone was immediately certain that the defendent was clearly guilty on all counts. There were some serious disagreements about whether the prosecution had proved anything “beyond a reasonable doubt”.

Three camps quickly emerged. Two people thought there was reasonable doubt on all counts and wanted to vote innocent across the board. Two people were equally certain that the burden of proof had been met on all counts and wanted to vote guilty on all counts. I was among the remaining 8 that felt more certain about some counts than others.

The innocent camp was having a really hard time with circumstantial evidence. They were insistant that unless some actually saw the guy enter Big Sky Cyclery, then the prosecution hadn’t met its burden of proof. Some heated argument followed wherein we emphasized that circumstantial evidence can become so convincing as to constitute adequate proof. The clincher seemed to be the timing: he was found with the bikes no more than a few hours after they were stolen.

So we voted guilty on the mountain bikes, but it took us like 1.5 hours(!). The laptop was much easier, since it only required the proof of possession of stolen property. Guilty again.

The car wash. Yikes. These were freakin hard. My initial sense was that I was comfortable voting guilty for the three corresponding to the dates on which the owner had video, and the attempted burglary/pepper spray one. But I didn’t see much evidence connecting the defendant to the remaining 7 car wash burglaries.

This was a serious problem, though. The innocent camp dug in their heels on all of the car wash burglaries, and the guilty camp was equally adamant that they would only vote guilty on all the remaining counts.

Lots of tangential arguing ensues. Lots of fruitless discussions of whether there’s enough circumstantial evidence. Lots of open consideration of things that (to my mind) should not have been relevent: Won’t you feel guilty letting this guy go? I’ve been robbed, I know what it feels like! What if it’s your house he breaks into next? Open discussion of the fact that the defendant presented no defense, and how that makes him look guilty. More discussion about how the defendant looked sullen and bored for the entire trial, and how nobody spotted any family members there to support him.

The one interesting (to me) argument that surfaced was aimed at the middle ground group. Did I really believe that the defendant burglarized the car wash on the 21st, someone else did it on the 22nd, the defendant again on the 23rd, someone else on the 25th and then the defendant again on the 28th? Was that reasonable?

We weren’t really getting anywhere though. So you know what ended up happening? We compromised! Yes, nothing like horse trading burglary counts like baseball cards to make one feel good about jury trials!

Look, I’ll vote guilty on those dates, if you vote innocent on these dates, etc. We finally settled on the rather arbitrary conclusion that he was innocent on the first two car wash burglaries (chronologically) and guilty on everything else.

Anyway, we went back up to the courtroom, the clerk read the verdicts on each count (the prosecution looked like they’d pissed themselves at first because the the two innocent counts were first on the list!). The defense lawyer asked that the jury be polled, so we each had to yes, this was our verdict one at a time. And then we were dismissed, and we simply walked out of the courthouse. That was that. I don’t know what he was sentenced to, I didn’t stick around.

I still feel sorta bad about the whole process. I’m convinced that at least a few people voted a certain way simply because they were tired of arguing, not because they were convinced the burden of proof had been met.

I felt overwhelmingly that the guy was guilty. I certainly tried my best to set that aside in evaluating the prosecution’s case, but I honestly don’t know how well I succeeded. I’m also torn about the issue of considering each count separately: that was one of our instructions. But I do feel like our belief of built on some counts was used as evidence to argue for guilt on other counts (i.e. the pattern of burglaries at the car wash). Was that wrong? Sigh.

Anyway, as I warned, that was really long. But I’m curious what other people think about this whole process, particularly if you have any legal credentials.