The Trial

If you think you have a lot of drama in your life, spend a day in a courtroom. No matter how up or down you think your life is, you may discover that anyone who has to sit in front of a judge or jury has a life that is likely more up/down/diagonal and sideways than yours.

I was Juror #2, seated in the front row of the jury box in a high-ceilinged courtroom so cold that my nose turned red, even though I was wearing my winter coat. The prosecuting attorney, a poised and confident young woman, assured me and the other jurors that she was going to prove that the defendant just couldn’t “follow the rules” and was guilty of 6 nasty charges: simple assault, terroristic threats, stalking, harassment, burglary and possession of marijuana. Before any witnesses came to the stand, she told us exactly what we were going to hear from the accuser and the police officers who had responded to three separate incidents at her home.

Within seconds, I suspected that this case was really about unrequited love, misery, abandonment, lack of self-control and stupidity that blew up into a court case of soap operatic proportions.

My instincts were right.

A skinny young woman, the plaintiff, stuck to the script and described exactly how terrified she was when her furious ex, the father of 2 of her 4 children, tried to choke her, said he was going to kill her, showed up at her apartment late at night to peer into her window, sent dozens of angry texts and voicemails despite a Protection From Abuse (PFA) order she got against him, and finally tore the screen off her bedroom window and fled into the woods, where the police found him so stoned that they had to drag him to the police car.

And all this, in my estimation, was because ultimately, she didn’t love him anymore and he just couldn’t bear it.

It’s one thing to listen to testimony in court and be mindful of your sworn duty as a juror. It’s another thing to simply take in the scene. I couldn’t help but notice an older woman sitting in the back row behind the defendant. She showed no emotion, not even a flicker of sadness, disappointment, anger, or fear.  Her face was a solid wall of impassivity. If this was his mother, I wondered if she had sat in criminal court behind him before or if this was the first time he was accused of going afoul of the law. I didn’t want to guess.

On the other side of the courtroom, a tall, intimidating, scowling man (who another juror later said looked “mean”) sat behind the plaintiff. As she testified on the stand, she kept making eye contact with him and once I saw him make a gesture with both hands that looked like he was telling her to calm down. The plaintiff’s current boyfriend scared me.

Several policemen testified. One verified that he saw scratches on her face and blood on her lip when he responded to her first 911 call. Another officer said that he had called the defendant to notify him that the plaintiff had been granted a temporary PFA and told him he could pick it up at the police station if wanted a copy. The officer who had arrested the stoned defendant and found marijuana in his pocket, also testified that he saw the window screen that had been torn from the bedroom window lying on the ground.

The most interesting thing I learned about being accused of a crime is that you don’t have to defend yourself if you don’t want to. At least, that’s what the frizzy-haired defense attorney informed us. She said that she and her client could sit there and not even say a word because it rested completely on the prosecution to convince 12 people beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused was guilty.

Another interesting thing is that the defense attorney did not once say that her client was innocent. In fact, I’m sure she thought he was a pretty messed up guy. But she made clear her job was not to prove him innocent, but to point out the holes and inconsistencies in the prosecution’s argument, which she did.

Where were all the harassing texts and voicemails the plaintiff claimed she received from her ex? There was no record since her phone was “conveniently lost.” In what seemed to me like a significant breach of protocol, the police officer who had telephoned the defendant about the PFA had signed the document indicating he had personally delivered it to him, although he clearly testified under oath that he did not. Were we supposed to take the plaintiff’s word that the defendant was stalking her late at night while she was home with her kids and new boyfriend when there was no evidence to prove it? And what was burgled? What evidence was there that he broke glass and started to climb into her bedroom before he ran into the woods? The police didn’t even look inside her apartment.

After the attorneys made their closing statements, the judge dismissed us. We filed out and climbed a flight of stairs to the jury room, where the tipstaff sent us to lunch, warning us not to talk about the case until we heard the judge’s final instructions later that afternoon.

I looked around the room. We were about as random a group as could be selected. We were young, old, black and white.  I had no idea what to expect.

What I didn’t know was that after lunch, the behavior of one of the jurors was going to shock me.

Next week: the VERDICT.

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Ann K. Howley is the award-winning author of Confessions of a Do-Gooder Gone Bad.

Please visit her website at http://annkhowley.com/#about-ann