Juror #11 Update

Well, I went back to court the second day to hear closing arguments and go into jury deliberation. We were divided about 50-50 on whether or not Mr. Suspicious Mustache was guilty. It was fun to see how the defense attorney's attempts to create doubt had worked -- until we really read what the law said and it was clear that none of the issues that could cause doubt had anything to do with the decision we had to make.

For instance, he tried to make the detectives look stupid because they couldn't remember what a bunch of other cops did 9 months ago. Well, all the detectives were testifying to was that there was a gun in the house in a certain location and that the victim had called the police. There was no doubt about either of those things. The defendant didn't take the stand, so we had no reason to doubt the events as told to us by the attorneys, victim, and detectives.

The defense attorney also tried to say that maybe the victim had been attacking Mr. Mustache, but there was no evidence of that at all. Mr. Mustache simply pulled a gun on his wife in the middle of an argument and the only believable reason to do that is to scare her. That means he menaced her, and since a gun is a deadly weapon, it was a felony and he's in pretty big trouble.

So yeah, my side convinced the not-guilties to come over to our side.

The lesson is: fight fair! Don't pull guns on people.

Alternate lesson: jury duty is kind of interesting, besides it being your literal duty to serve your country and contribute to our legal system, which you might appreciate some day. [Sorry for the mini-lecture, but it was astounding what crazy extent people go to to avoid jury duty!]