From: cwt@mitre.org (Carl Traber)
Subject: Re: "Technicalities" (was The NYPD situation)
Organization: Mitre Corporation, Bedford, MA.
	<1992Dec5.142703.29789@athena.mit.edu>
	<1992Dec24.000101.5017@bony1.bony.com>
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 14:22:09 GMT

jake@bony1.bony.com (Jake Livni) writes:

   I have no interest in debating the vagaries of Law when Justice is so
   poorly served by it.  I have reset the follow-ups as they were.  If
   you'd like to debate Law, take it to misc.legal,  which I don't read.

[snip]

   Note that I have no intention of pursuing this thread; I am more
   interested in pursuing justice, than in pursuing Law and Money.  You
   have yet to offer a proposal for Justice in the Yankel Rosenbaum
   murder.  

[sig deleted too]

I served on a jury this past August where the defendant was accused
of violating a number of laws.  The most serious of those charges was
Attempted Murder.

We found the defendant not guilty of the attempted murder charge on
the "technicality" that the prosecutor had not proven her case.  And
this in spite of our gut-level feeling that the defendant probably
was trying to commit murder.  Let me explain why.

Once the judge had given us our instructions and we had started
deliberating, we worked hard to evaluate the evidence before us to
find the facts.  We used our own judgement/knowledge/understanding
to filter and weigh the evidence, some of which was conflicting and
a remarkable amount of which correlated well with other evidence.

Then, when we had the facts, we worked even harder to compare those
facts to the legal requirements for a verdict.  We developed scenarios
and tested those scenarios against both the law and the facts that we
had found.  When we had done this and had eliminated all the scenarios
that did not fit all the facts, we were left with several scenarios
that would have lead to a guilty verdict AND we were left with one
that would have lead to a not-guilty verdict.

There was not enough evidence to allow us to decide which scenario
was the correct one.  Thus, in fulfillment of our oaths, we were
forced, each of us, to recognize that the only verdict we could give
for that attempted murder charge was "not guilty."

Note well that that "not guilty" verdict does not mean the defendant
was necessarily innocent.  We did find him guilty of a lesser charge,
which is called "first degree assault" in NH but which my former
state (CT) called "assault with a deadly weapon."

Contrast what we did, Mr. Livni, with the attitude that your recent
posts have displayed.  Contrast the effort we expended to absolutely
honor our oaths to be fair to ALL parties in the dispute to your
recent declaration that you would repeatedly try that NYC defendant
until you got the verdict that you wanted.  Contrast our rendering
of Justice to the bleatings that you proffer that would destroy all
hope of Justice.

You make me feel sick.  I pray that, should I ever have to face
charges in a court of law, that I get a jury that is as careful as
we were.  And from the conversations I had with other jurors while
we were waiting to be selected (or not) for subsequent trials, I
have every expectation that such careful consideration is the de-facto
condition with juries, and not the exception.

-- Carl Traber    cwt@shockley.mitre.org
                  My opinions, not MITRE's
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