Repair-It

Just wondering if anyone on this forum has ever actually had to serve on a jury? I just did in a criminal case involving counterfeit money. The trial itself lasted 5 days and I will say it was interesting to see a trial play it out first hand. I know during the course of the trial, I found myself wondering how the other jurors were interpreting information the same way I was or if they were 100% opposite of my thought process.

A few other observations about the legal system in general:

1) The fundamental "innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt"- I have a new found respect for a prosecuting attorney at how tough their job can be sometimes. In the case I watched, the biggest question was whether the defendant knew that the money he had on him was fake or not. And as the jury started deliberations, one person kept asking "well, how does this prove that the defendant knew". And after the verdict was handed back (not guilty), I started to think about it all of this more. I own my actions and the fact that I voted not guilty (had to be unanimous) but at the same point, had the trail not ended at around 1pm on a Friday and court closes around 5pm and not really wanting to have to take my own vacation time in order to keep getting paid from my actual job, I did kind of feel pressured when the initial vote was overwhelming majority was voting not guilty. So, I had to do some quick thinking and say to myself, is anything I really look at going to concrete prove to me that the defendant knew it was fake money. Combined with that even though my gut was saying something isn't right and that the defendant probably knew something, since he is presumed to be innocent, i shouldn't really be focusing on questions I have about his story (example- he claims he made a cash sale to someone and that this person must have handed him fake money but the defendant had no actual proof that a sale ever existed so was this the truth or a lie?) and instead thinking about what was presented during the trial. If it was the job of the defense to prove that he was not guilty, i don't think they really did that. But that's not how the system works. The prosecution has to prove that the defendant was guilty. So therefore, by the end, I just thought that in this case, since there wasn't pictures or video of the defendant printing fake money, then I can't 100% say for sure that he knew he had fake money on him. But had this trial ended on a Thursday, I would have dragged everyone back into court on Friday to further discuss some of the details. But since it was Friday into a Monday, I decided it would be best for me to just make a decision one way or the other and move on.

2) When we, the jury, wanted to look back at testimony, i found it weird that rather than give us a hard copy of it for us to read, we had to go back into court with both prosecution and defense sitting there and the court stenographer had to read back the entire part that we asked for. I'm not sure I get why it had to be done this way because in reality, it was just a few keys questions we wanted to see/hear but having to listen to like 5 to 10 min of someone reading, you kind of lose patience and want to say "skip that, fast forward, no stop, rewind, say that again" but you can't. Not sure if this is how it's always done but if it is, I think that needs to change as it would have been far more effective of the jury to just be given the entire transcript and let us go through it (because while the reading was happening, i did notice both the prosecution and defense both had hard printed hard copies so I know it could have been done).

3) I get why the jury isn't suppose to talk about the case amongst themselves while it's happening and instead wait until both sides rest their case, but I feel it would have been nice to discuss and get a read on things as they are happening as oppose to trying to remember ourselves. A lot of discussion about did this person say X or did they say Y.

So, just wondering if anyone has an experience with serving on a jury or has their own thoughts. For me, it was a personal struggle. On one hand, if the person was guilty and I say not guilty, then I'm putting a "criminal" back out into society and they could cause more harm. But on the other hand, if they were innocent and i say guilty, this is a person's life that I'm now derailing. So, basically, I think it's easy to look at things from a distance and form an opinion but another thing to be directly in the middle of it as a person selected at random (and apparently having a brother in law that works as an ADA elsewhere in NYC didn't get me rejected from being a juror).

Combined with that even though my gut was saying something isn't right and that the defendant probably knew something, since he is presumed to be innocent, i shouldn't really be focusing on questions I have about his story (example- he claims he made a cash sale to someone and that this person must have handed him fake money but the defendant had no actual proof that a sale ever existed so was this the truth or a lie?) and instead thinking about what was presented during the trial. If it was the job of the defense to prove that he was not guilty, i don't think they really did that. But that's not how the system works.

This is key. There is a difference between someone being guilty (or guilty of SOMEthing) and prosecutable. And our system is set up so that you need to be proven guilty of a specific crime which involves time/place/motive/evidence, etc. The jury's job is not to determine if the person was shady, or make any "gut" judgement. I have not had the pleasure of participating in this process.

And this is where ultimately I had to rationally put those types of thoughts to the side and just side "by the letter of the law, is this person guilty from what has been presented", regardless of questions that I had that went unasked and therefore unanswered. Basically, I made myself play by the rules of the system and the system saying this person is innocent until proven guilty and not this person needs to prove that they are not guilty in order to be found not guilty.

Like I said, it's an interesting process to go through but not sure I really want to do it again just because I do feel it's a big responsibility that can truly impact someone's life (at least from a criminal case, and thankfully this was a non-violent crime). Maybe if it was a civil case or something stupid like a traffic dispute, perhaps I wouldn't really mind too much.

As for the system, I guess the optimism (so to speak) is that if a person is actually guilty of a crime but is found not guilty that perhaps either a) they'll learn a lesson and not do whatever they did a second time or b) they get stupid and keep doing what they're doing until finally the system catches up with them and punish them for the crime. No idea for the individual involved in my case how he'll pan out. Hopefully, he keeps at his personal business (he buys clothes from wholesalers and then puts his designs on them and sells them to people) and that pans out enough for him to get by without having to resort to anything questionable or unethical.

It was also interesting at the end, the judge mentioned that it is possible that the lawyers may reach out to the jury to discuss the case. I'm sort of wondering if I spoke to the prosecution how that conversation would go as I almost think this was an unwinnable case for them in order to prove that he defendant had knowledge of fake money based on what was presented.

Also, in case anyone is interested, the way the ADA attempted to prove that the defendant had knowledge was a) the money found on him was separated into piles and in different pockets, therefore separating real money from fake money, b) running a typical/common scam that a person who knowingly has counterfeit money will do- make a small purchase with fake money and take the change and pocket the real money, c) discrepancies in the defendant's side of the story, such as when he was first arrested he agreed to speak to the ADA and said he had nothing to hide but then deliberately left out an altercation that he had with a cab driver who called the police on him after the cab driver discovered the money he was given was fake and just asked for the change ($13) back and he would give a free cab ride. Those were the keys that the ADA was relying on as "proof" the defendant had knowledge that money he had on him was fake (all the $20's and 1 $50, totaling $250, were fake while real money was in $10's, $5's, and $1's, totaling around $100).

$250? That guy is an idiot. Wasn't he looking at felony charges??

Yup, this was a felony case. And to add on, the defendant took the stand and was the only witness called for the defense. He has a girlfriend who he is still with (the incident took place in Dec 2017) and she was with him the entire time in the night in question. The girlfriend was arrested but not sure if she was ever charged (I suspect not but I also suspect that she might have known about the counterfeit money) but I also wonder why if the defendant's story is 100% true, why the girlfriend was not called to the stand to corroborate his story? But once again, can't take that into consideration while deliberating and making a decision. Additionally, when the defendant was crossed examined by the ADA, she mentioned something about how either the defendant was previously arrested and/or convicted twice before on felonies but I think there was some objection or maybe the judge told us to not consider that while deliberating or something. But that was the only time it was mentioned and I wonder why? I mean, did he previous get arrested for counterfeit money charges or was it something else? You figure if it was for counterfeit, the ADA would mentioned this but yet the ADA didn't. But in my opinion, I would guess that if the defendant was actually guilty, then this probably wasn't the first time he used counterfeit money. But who knows.

Another detail about this case which doesn't act as proof but at least makes you think, as mentioned, all of the counterfeit money consisted of $20 bills and 1 $50 bill. The defendant testified saying that earlier in the day he sold about 5 or 6 hats for around $15 to $20 (he doesn't have a set price). He also said that he goes to tourist areas around Penn Station or Times Square to make sales, basically high volume tourist areas. And the ADA made a remark at some point about how it seems peculiar that out of all of these sales, not 1 person paid with a $20 (since the defendant is basically saying that he made 1 sale later during the day, at like 10pm, to 1 person that was like for $260 and that the person counted the money in front of him and the defendant didn't check the money and just took it and pocketed it) so if he got the fake money from 1 person, how is it that no one else gave him a real $20.

One side effect from this case is I thought back to the few times I've posted items for sell online and met someone in person and they've paid cash, what is the likely hood that I would check to see if the money is legit and just trusted that the person was handing me real cash? I guess counterfeit money isn't that common but it could happen.