Verdict: Guilty or Not Guilty?

In the end, we unanimously agreed that the defendant was guilty of the crimes he was accused of. The evidence was limited but we had enough to know beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant was guilty. Interestingly, either lawyer could have won the case if the sum of all evidence had been different.

As I mentioned, the prosecution submitted the deputy's sketch of the scene to demonstrate what had happened. This tool was very useful for the jury to understand the situation and I'm sure it was required in order for the prosecution to meet its burden of proof; however, the sketch was poorly drawn and if there had been no other evidence submitted, we would have acquitted the defendant. The reason that the drawing was poorly drawn was that the scaling was off making the intersection look much larger than it really was. A large intersection would have supported the story of the defendant (who was accused of driving on the wrong side of the road) because he stated that he did take a wide turn, but not into the wrong side of the road.

On the other hand, the defense submitted photos of the scene. I am really not sure why because the photos served to give the jury a bearing on how small the intersection was and helped us know that the defendant's version of the story was not plausible. The defendant also claimed that words were exchanged between he and the victim three car lengths back from the intersection, not in the middle of the intersection as the prosecution claimed. Unfortunately, given the pictures, the deputy would not have been able to witness any of the interaction if it occurred where the defendant claimed.

If you recall, the jury focused on the points of agreement between the two witnesses and used to evidence to parse out the points of disagreement. Through this process, we were able to, without any reasonable doubt, agree that the defendant's version of the events were not true and that he was guilty. The aforementioned example was discovered later in the process, but what really kicked us in gear was our examination of the evidence for the second part of the indictment - driving without a valid license.

On the stand, the witness stated that he did not know that his license was not valid. For the jury to convict, the criteria would need to be: a. the defendant drove a vehicle without a license, and b. the defendant knew he did not have a license. Can you see the catch 22 here? To ensure an acquittal, the defendant only needs to state that he or she did not know the license was not valid and that is exactly what this defendant did.

During the trial, the prosecutor entered a seemingly innocuous DMV document into evidence. I looked at it but did not see anything of interest. However, when I examined the DMV document during deliberations, I found the four things that the prosecution wanted me to see: 1. That the defendant's license had been revoked, 2. the defendant had been told at the scene of an accident by a police officer that his license had been revoked, 3. the license had been revoked only two weeks prior to the crime he was on trial for, and 4. the defendant had been in several other accidents within the year. These facts all added up to refute the testimony of the witness that he "did not know" his license was invalid. It was also a very clever way for the prosecutor to enter evidence of other unrelated events (the accidents) to demonstrate a track record.

At this point, we realized that it was time to start analyzing the facts and move way from the opinions. We realized we had enough information to make a decision and that we simply needed a process to vet that information. As I wrote earlier in this post and in a previous post, we decided that we could focus on the points in common and use the evidence, like the DMV documents, to fill in the gaps - - even if the evidence had been submitted for a different purpose.

Through this process, we feel justice was served and we made the right decision. I do not know what the exact sentence was for the defendant but I do believe that he received some jail time, fines, and community service.