Jury Duty: Part 1 (Doink! Doink!)
Since I have had a lot of questions about this, I have decided to answer them in a series of posts (yeah, well, I'm just that verbose). I make no claims to do this in an even faintly chronological or otherwise systemic order. There's going to be some ranting in this, be aware.
THE INCIDENT
From http://www.ktvu.com/news/18640672/detail.html:
"A 6-year-old San Jose boy was killed and a woman was critically injured in a crash in San Jose late Tuesday night that involved a suspected drunken driver, police Officer Jermaine Thomas said. Isaac Young was killed in the two-car crash, which was reported just before 11 p.m. at the intersection of Ruby Avenue and Quimby Drive in the city's Evergreen neighborhood, police said."
About two years ago, a minister, her husband (the driver) and two kids, all escorted by a caravan of members of the church, were leaving their church in southeastern San Jose on a Tuesday night when the minivan the minister and her family were driving in edged through a yellow light and were subsequently T-boned by a construction worker driving home from drinking at his cousin's who was (according to his story) trying to time the light.
After the rubble cleared, the younger of the kids was dead from fatal whiplash (his spine was completely snapped), his father (the driver) had multiple fractures in his arm, and his mother was severely injured to the point of being hospitalized for some time.
Moreover, the construction worker driving the vehicle that T-boned the minivan didn't exactly have a clean record. Ten years before he had a couple of DUI-related convictions, and before that when he was 17 (so about twenty years ago) he had yet another DUI-related conviction.
Sounds like a simple, open and door case, right? There's a catch, however, and it has to do with how the case was charged.
THE CHARGES
There actually were three charges - the second and third were basically variants of "DUI with an injury". These we (as in the jury) settled in literally twenty minutes tops with guilty verdicts. The catch was with the first charged count of Second Degree Murder.
Normally, if you kill someone in a car accident - even if you were drunk - you would be prosecuted for Manslaughter. Manslaughter basically just means, yeah, you killed someone. Yes, you were at fault if you were driving recklessly. No, you didn't mean to. For that, you will get 1-10 years in jail - normally somewhere in the middle of that range.
If, however, you have previous DUI's, then to get your license back you had to take classes that would basically educate you that "this is bad!" This is important to the prosecutor's office, because this can theoretically be used to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had knowledge of the potential consequences of their actions, which is in turn a requirement for...Second Degree Murder.
Second Degree Murder doesn't require direct intent to kill someone (that's First Degree Murder), but it does require something called "malice aforethought". Malice aforethought doesn't necessarily mean you meant to kill someone, but it does require that you "deliberately acted with conscious disregard". Remember, too, that all of this has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning that if there is any "reasonable" scenario that can be constructed that does not fulfill this standard in a juror's mind, that juror is supposed to return a vote of "not guilty".
The problem is that the law for Second Degree Murder was never intended for this kind of situation, but as social expectations about DUI's have evolved, prosecutors and the public have been pressing for harsher sentences. Manslaughter's penalties aren't a picnic, but they can mean someone is out on parole in a couple of years, and if they've already been in jail waiting for trial for a couple of years, they could literally walk out the door with time served.
The wording for Second Degree Murder is, moreover, contradictory. The jury deadlocked over several things, but most importantly, does "deliberately acted with conscious disregard" mean the defendant had to know what they were doing was wrong, and disregarded it? What if they thought what they were doing is safe? To prove Second Degree Murder you have to prove that there is no scenario whereby the defendant did not "deliberately act with conscious disregard".
The law is very clear about reckless driving and driving while intoxicated, which is why those counts were returned immediately. Second Degree Murder, however, is all about intent. What did the defendant think at the time? What did the defendant remember about the dangers of how they were behaving?
The situation clearly rose to the level of Manslaughter, and possibly to Second Degree Murder. The prosecutor made a tactical ploy, however, and charged the defendant with Second Degree Murder only with no option to instead convict on Manslaughter.
The reason for this is that the Second Degree Murder charge was...iffy, and the prosecutor clearly felt the jury would rather overcome any doubts they might have about the charge rather than risk the defendant getting off on any charge for the death of a 6-year old. The jury was not amused by this, since it was, at best, the court saying, "We don't trust the jury to make the appropriate decision," and at worst the court saying, "We're going to try to bluff the jury into charging for a higher crime by making the alternative letting him go completely free."
THE INCIDENT
From http://www.ktvu.com/news/18640672/detail.html:
"A 6-year-old San Jose boy was killed and a woman was critically injured in a crash in San Jose late Tuesday night that involved a suspected drunken driver, police Officer Jermaine Thomas said. Isaac Young was killed in the two-car crash, which was reported just before 11 p.m. at the intersection of Ruby Avenue and Quimby Drive in the city's Evergreen neighborhood, police said."
About two years ago, a minister, her husband (the driver) and two kids, all escorted by a caravan of members of the church, were leaving their church in southeastern San Jose on a Tuesday night when the minivan the minister and her family were driving in edged through a yellow light and were subsequently T-boned by a construction worker driving home from drinking at his cousin's who was (according to his story) trying to time the light.
After the rubble cleared, the younger of the kids was dead from fatal whiplash (his spine was completely snapped), his father (the driver) had multiple fractures in his arm, and his mother was severely injured to the point of being hospitalized for some time.
Moreover, the construction worker driving the vehicle that T-boned the minivan didn't exactly have a clean record. Ten years before he had a couple of DUI-related convictions, and before that when he was 17 (so about twenty years ago) he had yet another DUI-related conviction.
Sounds like a simple, open and door case, right? There's a catch, however, and it has to do with how the case was charged.
THE CHARGES
There actually were three charges - the second and third were basically variants of "DUI with an injury". These we (as in the jury) settled in literally twenty minutes tops with guilty verdicts. The catch was with the first charged count of Second Degree Murder.
Normally, if you kill someone in a car accident - even if you were drunk - you would be prosecuted for Manslaughter. Manslaughter basically just means, yeah, you killed someone. Yes, you were at fault if you were driving recklessly. No, you didn't mean to. For that, you will get 1-10 years in jail - normally somewhere in the middle of that range.
If, however, you have previous DUI's, then to get your license back you had to take classes that would basically educate you that "this is bad!" This is important to the prosecutor's office, because this can theoretically be used to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had knowledge of the potential consequences of their actions, which is in turn a requirement for...Second Degree Murder.
Second Degree Murder doesn't require direct intent to kill someone (that's First Degree Murder), but it does require something called "malice aforethought". Malice aforethought doesn't necessarily mean you meant to kill someone, but it does require that you "deliberately acted with conscious disregard". Remember, too, that all of this has to be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, meaning that if there is any "reasonable" scenario that can be constructed that does not fulfill this standard in a juror's mind, that juror is supposed to return a vote of "not guilty".
The problem is that the law for Second Degree Murder was never intended for this kind of situation, but as social expectations about DUI's have evolved, prosecutors and the public have been pressing for harsher sentences. Manslaughter's penalties aren't a picnic, but they can mean someone is out on parole in a couple of years, and if they've already been in jail waiting for trial for a couple of years, they could literally walk out the door with time served.
The wording for Second Degree Murder is, moreover, contradictory. The jury deadlocked over several things, but most importantly, does "deliberately acted with conscious disregard" mean the defendant had to know what they were doing was wrong, and disregarded it? What if they thought what they were doing is safe? To prove Second Degree Murder you have to prove that there is no scenario whereby the defendant did not "deliberately act with conscious disregard".
The law is very clear about reckless driving and driving while intoxicated, which is why those counts were returned immediately. Second Degree Murder, however, is all about intent. What did the defendant think at the time? What did the defendant remember about the dangers of how they were behaving?
The situation clearly rose to the level of Manslaughter, and possibly to Second Degree Murder. The prosecutor made a tactical ploy, however, and charged the defendant with Second Degree Murder only with no option to instead convict on Manslaughter.
The reason for this is that the Second Degree Murder charge was...iffy, and the prosecutor clearly felt the jury would rather overcome any doubts they might have about the charge rather than risk the defendant getting off on any charge for the death of a 6-year old. The jury was not amused by this, since it was, at best, the court saying, "We don't trust the jury to make the appropriate decision," and at worst the court saying, "We're going to try to bluff the jury into charging for a higher crime by making the alternative letting him go completely free."