Mother brought up a memory today. She told a story about one of her offspring and a neighborhood friend shooting out the windows of the Tenth Street house's garage apartment with BB guns. I know the name of the guilty party, but I will allow him/her to finish the story. An interesting detail that mother disclosed is that daddy removed the firing pin from the offenders/offenderette's weapon. Okay, come on fess up!
As you know, I was called for jury duty, and had to report last friday. My court assignment, along with 42 other potential jurors was the 213th District Court of Tarrant County. Friday, I was excused for the day after filling out a questionaire and was told to report back to the courtroom on Monday at 1:00PM. I felt fairly confident that I would not be seated as one of the twelve. We were seated in the courtroom in the order in which we were called on Friday. I was candidate number 18. One of the prosecutors gave a presentation and asked a bunch of questions. We saw the participants of the upcoming trial and learned the defendant's name and crime. His crime was felony assault on a public servant. The 42 of us were asked a bunch of questions. After the questioning period was completed, the judge asked us to exit the courtroom while the attorneys decided who would serve as the jury. When we returned, someone (I cannot remember who, possibly the judge) started to read the list of the twelve. Jurors one, two and three were chosen. A false sense of smugness began to set in my being. The next several were skipped. Uh oh! now my hope was that I would be skipped as had several people in the previous seventeen jurors. This was not to be the case. I was seated along with eleven other very nice residents of Tarrant County. We were sworn in as jurors and told that the trial was expected to be completed by Friday. The judge excused us and advised us to return the next day at 9AM.
The victim was a jailor for the city of Hurst. The defendant was a confessed meth user who admitted to having anger management issues and an inmate at the Hurst City jail. We listened to their testimonies and the testimony of another jailor who was present during the alleged assault. The prosecution entered two videos into evidence from cameras at the jail. There were alot of holes in the stories told. We knew that if we found the defendant guilty, he faced a minimum sentence of two years in the pen. We took a vote of the jury when we first entered the deliberations. The results were 3=guilty; 9=not guilty. I was in the minority. We talked and discussed and got pretty much nowhere. We asked to have one of the videos and equipment to view it delivered to us. We watched it, took another vote and the results were the same. At one point we sent a note to the judge asking what we should do if we could not agree. He replied; "keep deliberating." Finally, at about 6PM, the judge excused us for the day and told us to return the next day to continue the process. I was teetering between guilty/not guilty. We asked to see the other video along with the equipment to allow us to view it properly. When we saw this video, we felt that the Officer was greatly overstating the events. The testimony of the defendant seemed more in line with what we saw on the video. Which is really curious, because the defense attorney objected to the showing of both videos. It was the videos that decided the verdict for the panel. I really liked the judge. He seemed very fair and genuine. He came to the jury room to thank us for our time and consideration. He was very nice.