Casual
MATUS, VICTORINO
Casual HAPPY TRIALS "I should have killed him I when I had the chance. I Now I'm f—d!" said the -A. man as he was driven away in a squad car. He used to spend his mornings at a methadone clinic,...
...She stuck to her "not guilty" vote, though what she really thought we'll never know...
...But then a blonde girl who had previously voted with the rest of us suddenly announced she thought the defendant was guilty, but I just want to get out of here, so I say not guilty...
...she asked, and, "What about O.J...
...The defense attorney mistook a police officer for a detective and repeatedly asked to approach the bench, until the judge said, "No, ask your next question...
...On the stand, the defendant admitted carrying a 10-inch kitchen knife the day of the crime...
...Why had they falsely denied having jobs...
...The old man next to me shook his head and mumbled, "They always pick me...
...No, this isn't a scene from Belly, and the two men are not DMX and Mos Def...
...The victim had suffered a 12-inch laceration to his thigh...
...The attorneys objected to each other's closing statements, which annoyed the judge, who, incidentally, had no gavel...
...The charge was assault with a deadly weapon...
...We all thought it was over...
...VICTORINO MATUS...
...Was the victim giving the defendant's girlfriend crack cocaine in lieu of rent...
...Do I care what happens to him...
...I think we did our best," I said...
...Why couldn't the victim and his friend tell a straight story...
...Why was the knife itself not placed in evidence...
...By letting the defendant back out on the street, were we only inviting his victim to seek street justice...
...Why didn't a doctor take the stand...
...After a thorough discussion of the lack of credible testimony for the prosecution, most of us agreed there was room for reasonable doubt as to the defendant's guilt...
...Many of us took notes, which we used during deliberations—the one scene almost never shown in courtroom dramas...
...Only once did I hear a juror cite a precedent from Judge Judy...
...He claims the reason he was carrying a knife in his "hoody" the day of the crime was to protect himself from a guy who had threatened the day before to "get my Gat...
...An elderly black man wearing tinted glasses spoke up for the first time...
...And what you decide now, you are going to have to live with for the rest of your life...
...attorney kept stopping abruptly mid-sentence and begging the court's indulgence...
...Was the injury deliberate, or did it happen in the scuffle...
...He asked for time to think about it overnight...
...Great, I thought...
...The lawyers kept objecting without providing a reason like "Counsel is leading the witness" or "The question is irrelevant...
...or "Here endeth the lesson...
...What impressed me most was the attentiveness of the jurors...
...Not after being charged with stabbing a man in the thigh...
...But the prosecution's witnesses were unconvincing...
...The victim and a buddy of his contradicted each other several times...
...This is the last thing I need—to worry about someone else's problems...
...One juror held out, convinced the defendant had acted intentionally...
...I told her I thought about it, too...
...When we reconvened the next day and took another vote, he looked down, exhaled, and said, "Not guilty...
...If you live in D.C., you know that every two years you'll get called for jury duty...
...She said she still wondered if we'd done the right thing...
...My fellow jurors shared the sentiment...
...And somehow by the end of the voir dire, I found myself sitting in the jury box...
...Yet as soon as the trial began, we were completely engrossed...
...The trial had lasted too long, she griped...
...A few days later I received an e-mail from our forewoman...
...We stared at her in disbelief...
...I heard it the other day in a District of Columbia courtroom...
...Not once did either attorney yell, "I want the truth...
...In fact, the U.S...
...Then came the Oscar moment, straight out of Twelve Ang^ Men...
...Some testimony suggested as much, but was stricken from the record, though not from our memories...
...He used to spend his mornings at a methadone clinic, but not any more...
...Turning to the blonde, he said: "Young lady, you cannot decide on another man's life just out of convenience...
...This whole court is out of order...
...A police officer testified that the alleged stabber had said after his arrest that he should have killed the victim when he'd had the chance...
...No one cross-examined like Sam Waterston...
...We learned that the defendant had shared an apartment with the victim and had kicked him out for failing to pay his share of the rent...
...Through all of this, I kept comparing these real court proceedings with those I'd seen in movies and on television...
...And there endeth the lesson...
...This is a true story...
...You have to make the decision based on your conscience...
Vol. 8 • March 2003 • No. 27
