Well, my jury duty is over. It was a domestic abuse case between a 30 year old 6’ 1” oilfield worker and his ex-girlfriend, a 5' 4" Mexican girl. He supposedly beat the heck out of her and threw her down the stairs. However, thanks to the unbelievably poor police work we had to acquit him based on reasonable evidence. He admitted slapping her, so was guilty by definition of 3rd degree assault, HOWEVER, there was a question of whether or not it was in self-defense, or whether she assualted him first. No doubt he COULD have beat her to a pulp, and may have beat her up. She supposedly drove to a convenience store after the event to call 911. The police responded, where they testified that the phone was covered in blood, as was she. No photos of the phone were taken, nor of she until after she was cleaned up. They went to her boyfriends house, where he was waiting for them drinking beer, and admitted to hitting her, but in self defense. HOWEVER, they never went into the bedroom in the basement to even see the scene where the fight occurred, to look for blood that would show her being thrown down the stairs, or being thrown onto the couch and concrete floor next to it. There was supposedly a series of phone calls between the girl who was assaulted and this guys ex in Ohio, that got pretty nasty. The defense flew her out from Ohio, but couldn’t be bothered to get cell phone records to show that the girl who was beat up had maybe called the ex (who the guy was flying out to see the next day to stay with her and visit his 2 kids) and was making trouble and possibly was doing this to provoke the guy, possibly giving him a self-defense defense and providing motive for her to have attacked him, if that was the case. The fight occurred in June so PLENTY of time to obtain something SO simple as phone records, and with cell phones, to obtain pics at both scenes. They took ONE photo of the guy that showed no bruising or discoloration to his face, BUT did have some yellowish brown shadowing on both sides of his face which COULD have been from lighting during the photos, or bruising from him defending himself! And, the girl who was beat up was absolutely NO help to herself. She is apparently on 5-9 different medications due to fibromyalgia, and a previous serious car accident which happened 11 days before the fight (rear ended a car on the interstate doing 75mph!), also causing bruising and injuries to her face. She is on oxycodone, a morphine patch, Zanax, and possibly 5-6 other mood modifying and pain killing drugs, and was drinking Goldschlager shots and beer the whole day before her ex-boyfriend was going to fly out and see his ex. He was drinking all day too, but had left the house after dealing with her, SO possibly to allow her to leave, which he’d already asked her to do. (and she’d actually already moved 90% of her stuff out prior after their breakup). So, it’s entirely conceivable after seeing her testify, seeing how unstable she was (and we caught her in several lies, although the same with the defendant, but not as much by a long way), that she basically was loaded out of her mind, that she was pissed at him, started a fight, and that he did defend himself. IF the police had done even a minimal job collecting evidence or anything to give her SOME credibility, it’s conceivable it could have gone the other way and he would have been convicted. It was THAT close. I did talk to the guy afterwards (they came in and talked to us), and made it CRYSTAL clear just how close he had come to being convicted and that we weren’t 100% convinced that maybe he shouldn’t have been, and that he’d basically only got off on the self-defense question, and do feel a little better that I won’t be reading about this guy 2 weeks from now being in another domestic abuse case. The girlfriend was THAT unstable.
However, despite the fact that it was one step away from Jerry Springer (no one got on a table and started fighting or ripping hair) with the evidence and her emotional outbursts while on the witness stand, it was actually something that I would do again. It was very interesting to see how the law REALLY works, and honestly, after seeing some of the stupid mistakes the police made, if there was ANYTHING like that in the Casey Anthony story for instance, easier to see how she got off despite public opinion. It puts a HUGELY different spin on things when you have to have a unanimous jury vote and when you have to apply a “beyond a reasonable doubt” standard to the charges. Had I voted on how the guy struck me during the trial (smirking, very cocky), I would have put him away, but when you look at the evidence and apply the legal standards, it’s a whole new ballgame!
