As promised, here are some thoughts on my recent experience with jury duty.  The defendant was accused of possession of a “ghost” gun, ammunition without a license, and large capacity magazines.  The prosecution’s case was straightforward; the prosecutor entered a bunch of body-worn camera footage into evidence, showing police searching the house and finding the contraband, as well as proof that the defendant lived at the house and in the room where the items were found.  He then called several of the officers to the stand to confirm that the footage was from the warrant in question and that it showed police finding the items within the home.  They also went into detail about how the magazines found would fit inside the gun, and the ammunition found was compatible with the magazines and the gun.

I left court that day thinking that the government had put on a really weak case and that I would be comfortable finding the defendant not guilty on at least some of the charges.  Apparently I wasn’t the only one, and when we reconvened a few days later to deliberate, several of my fellow jurors volunteered that the prosecutor did a poor job and that they were leaning toward at least partial acquittal.  However, once we received our instructions from the judge, that changed.  Based on the legal definition of “possession” that the judge provided to us, we struggled to come up with “reasonable” doubts that the defendant was not in possession of the gun, magazines and ammunition found in a bag in the bathroom immediately adjoining his room.  There were two ammunition possession charges, and we asked the judge if one of them referred to the rounds in the bag, and one to the rounds found scattered throughout the bedroom.  She brought us back into the court room only to say that she couldn’t provide further details, and that it was up to us to decide. 

That being the case, we decided that one of the ammunition possession counts referred to the bathroom, where all the contraband was found in one container, and one to the bedroom, where there was ammunition in various places including a loose round in a corner under some detritus.  There was, we decided, reasonable doubt that the defendant was aware of the ammunition scattered haphazardly around a room he had at one point shared with another person.  We ended up voting “guilty” on everything else, possession of the weapon, the ammo, and the extended magazines.  

I can’t speak for the entire jury panel, but a lot of us thought this case was pretty weak on the part of the government while we were hearing testimony and mulling it over at home.  But we also discussed our feelings of being duty-bound to do our best and correctly apply the law, and essentially the entire panel agreed to convict on everything but the ammunition once we got our instructions.  Maybe the defendant was in the wrong place at the wrong time, maybe someone else had left a complete mass shooting kit in a bag in his bathroom, but with the information we were given both by the prosecution and the defense, we could not bring ourselves to find such doubts reasonable.  

All in all this was an interesting experience, although I wouldn’t call it fun by any stretch.  It was pretty stressful, and I momentarily didn’t respond well when my wife suggested that the search may have been illegal when I discussed the case with her after its conclusion.  Still, it was somewhat reassuring that I and 11 random strangers all felt like we needed to be fair and impartial and to do our best.  A bit of an unexpected “faith in humankind” moment, I called it once we were done deliberating.  

Thanks for letting me share my experience, birds will be back next week.