My Jury Duty

In June of 2021, I was called to jury duty. This crazy and incredible experience left me dumbfounded by our justice system. Previously, I thought the use of juries was a safer option than allowing a single judge decide one’s fate, but now I see how a jury can be just as frightening for an innocent person accused of a crime or of anyone accused of breaking a corrupt law. Despite the hassle of it all, I’m glad to have had the experience.

As a synopsis, this was a criminal case. At the beginning of 2019, an Ampm convenience store was robbed of a single pack of cigarettes. The state of Washington accused a man of robbery, which is defined as theft by the use or threat of violence. The accused man was found near the vicinity of the convenience store after the police responded to the 9/11 call made by the store attendant. She claims to have been the only other person in the store during the crime.

Notes

  1. I would like to thank my beautiful daughter for helping me. She recorded several videos 1 month after my jury duty. I asked my daughter to help, because I didn’t feel like setting up my nice camera. Her iPhone had great video and audio quality and I thought it would just be easier. The whole process ended up taking forever, due to meshing with her schedule (and mood) to capture the videos and upload them to my DropBox account. With that and other delays, this took over 2 months to complete! As you can see, I struggled to remember all the fine details of the experience. In hindsight, I should have prepared better and done it all in 1 session, which would have saved me a lot of time putting it all together, and would have resulted in a better presentation.
  2. I used Blender to create the final product, and then Video Download Capture (Apowersoft) for the final conversion. Blender is a fun program and I highly recommend it!
  3. We were told that after the case was over, we were free to discuss all the details of the case with whomever we wanted, so I don’t feel concerned about sharing with the public.
  4. One thing I failed to emphasize was about how the state needed to prove that the woman was harmed in the crime. For the charge of burglary, they had to prove a threat or actual violence. Otherwise, it would be just petty theft or shoplifting and they couldn’t send him to jail. As explained in the video, the state had failed to provide sufficient evidence of this. But most of the jurors didn’t seem to care about that key aspect when considering the case.
  5. Although the experience confirmed my assessment of the miseducated public. I respected the other jurors and those participating in the process, even the judge. Individually, I found them all very nice and decent.

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