I finished my trial as a juror tonight. Now that it's finished after 4 days, I'm allowed to research on the internet and discuss the case:
This happened right up the road from me, off Great Seneca Highway and Northwest High School! About 5-10 minutes away!
The actual charges we ended having to decide and our verdict:
Attempted Murder: Guilty, 2nd Degree Attempted Murder on Victim
Assault: Guilty, 2nd Degree Assault on Mom of Victim
Burglary: Guilty
Motor Vehicle Theft: Guilty
It took us about a bit over 4 hours to reach the verdicts, and since we only started deliberations around 5, we finished close to 10 PM. The judge was an excellent guide, and gave us a very organized way to help come to our verdicts, so while we had differing views at times, the jury members were always respectful and got along very well. My jury was diverse, with 3 african-american women, 1 hispanic woman, 5 white women, 1 man from Bosnia, 1 Hispanic male, and 1 Vietnamese/French/American guy. Of course, it was the Vietnamese guy who was designated as the reader in going over many times out loud the charges and the list of factors that have to be present for a guilty verdict. The fore-person was the African-American lady who works as a professional and was very articulate. We also had a teacher from Blair high school who teaches science magnet kids, so she was very good in framing the questions in the appropriate form to allow us to vote yes/no.
Also, with the new technology on the police like hi-def body cams and car dash cams, we got to view exciting car chase footage, the victim being treated by EMT, colorful (and by colorful I mean shady) witnesses, a red herring baseball bat, the arrest scene with guns drawn by the police, joking between suspect and old police sergeant, K-9 doggies and an innocent pit-bull puppy, and basically all the elements of a great police movie!
I also learned that if you have any sort of serious trauma requiring Emergency Room, GO TO SUBURBAN HOSPITAL!!!! The victim had multiple stab wounds on his jugular neck, temple, mouth, and back. He had no pulse for 12 minutes and was in a coma for about a week. Yet, due to the care received at Suburban he survived and was able to testify at the trial. In fact, he ended up as the most reliable witness because his mom, her friend, and the other State witnesses involved except for the cops/EMTs/etc. were very unreliable. But in the end, the defense couldn't provide enough doubt on the charges above to convince us on giving "Not Guilty", but we downgraded the 2 first charges from the more serious 1st Degree charge to 2nd Degree according to our findings of the conditions met.
After the verdict, our judge came in and gave a briefing. He congratulated us on the great work we did and said that our verdicts were what he would have expected. He also kindly provided police escort to walk with us to the parking lot at the late night time.
Overall, it was a very enlightening and positive experience for me, but I'm glad I won't have to do this for at least 3 more years!
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