So my first week of jury duty experience ended today when the defendant pleaded guilty to two counts of felonious assault and one count of aggravated murder (or manslaughter, can’t remember…)
In November of 2006, he and some others were at the Syndicate in Newport when the altercation began. It continued across the Ohio where someone (from Oakley I found out later) was shot on the Clay Wade Bailey Bridge. A little further into Cincinnati, someone else was shot. Then in an apartment complex on the south end of Colrain Avenue, someone ended up shot to death.
Had the defendant not entered into the plea deal and had the jury found him guilty, he would have faced forty-five years to life.
As it is, he’ll serve 15 years. He’s 23. He will be released on my birthday in 2022
With that one evening of violence, how many lives have been destroyed. I’m glad that I didn’t have to be the one making the decision of his guilt or innocence. I’m glad I got to see some of the process. I was not prepared for the feeling I had when we got in the courtroom yesterday. When you realize that you could be responsible for something that weighty, you realize the extent to which the jury duty obligation goes. It’s quite an experience to look in the eyes of someone who you could decide his fate. It’s quite an experience to look in the eyes of someone who killed another.
Egg Fast Log Sept 2017...
8 years ago
2 comments:
Okay...your blog is getting too deep.
Show me a happy kitten!!!
Kris
sorry. No kittens right now. Or sloths, for that matter.
I have found that I'm the kind of person that pursues new experiences... and this was certainly one. I've been thinking about the events of the last couple days pretty extensively. Of course, it doesn't hurt that we were sitting waiting in the jury room for hours over the last two days.
Even the dynamics of the possible jurors themselves was incredibly interesting. The first day, nobody really talked. A little here and there. Yesterday things started to loosen up a little. Today we got there by 10:30, and there was almost endless chatter until we were called in a little before 1:00. I spent the day talking to a pair of retirees - one my parent's age and the other about ten years older.
We shared a strange type of comradery - a somewhat diverse group thrown into a room - with the understanding that at some point we may have to work together... so you may as well get to know each other before things get tense.
Enough. I could go on for a while.
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