Jury duty is over

We finished the case yesterday.  Deliberations, realistically, took about 5 minutes.  We all pretty much felt that the state had failed to prove, beyond a reasonable doubt, that the defendant was guilty.  We talked about it a while to be sure we all felt the same way.  We decided we needed two things to be completely sure that we were in doubt.  We listened to the whole direct testimony of the victim and got to view the tattoo on the defendant's neck.  Between these two things, we were 100% in agreement that this was not the man that attacked the victim.

When we delivered the verdict, the defendant broke into tears.  It seemed really genuine and it left me feeling like we'd done the right thing. 

The judge came and spent about a half hour talking to the jury afterwards to see if we had any questions or comments.  We talked for quite a while.  The only real question I had for him was whether he personally was of the opinion that we'd done the right thing.  He wouldn't answer that question on the grounds that it was our decision to make.  I tried a slightly different approach, but he was adamant about not answering that.  The clerk of court (Tom) told us after the judge left the room that the judge couldn't really tell us his opinion, but that he (Tom) and the rest of the staff felt that we did the right thing.  All six of us felt really good about that.

I wouldn't say that this was the most positive experience of my life.  The past two weeks were Hell, what with the long hours of the move, the two hours at United every morning before court, the days at court themselves and then the three to four hours at Marlin afterward each day.  However, the comeraderie with the other jurors was awesome.  I took them all out to lunch yesterday before the final deliberations.  They were a very cool group of people and I will miss them.  It was good to see an innocent man get to take advantage of the system, instead of the other way around.

But now, back to "real" life.