but perhaps it’s just as well he doesn’t – at least in the case he presented to the jury. Your editor has sat as a juror on two criminal trials…

 The first case involved a series of petty thefts by the defendant employee from the supply room of a government office; the “loot” was stashed in the trunk of an abandoned car in the garage of the same building. The prosecution argued the defendant intended to sell the stuff; the defendant claimed it was to preserve the evidence of the allegations against him. The jury was composed primarily of older, unemployed and retired people on a fixed income. The jury delayed deliberations in order to get the free lunch. After lunch deliberations were quickly concluded: the defendant was determined to be not guilty because it was the opinion of all but one of the jurors that it is okay to steal, especially if it is from the government.

 The second case involved the possession for sale of a controlled substance. The defendant dropped the evidence the moment before his arrest and claimed the drugs were not his – which would be proven by the witness at the scene, a petite young black woman dressed in a pink tracksuit, who was unknown to the defendant. The witness at trial was a tall, heavyset black woman, dressed in a pink track suit. When she stepped down from the witness stand, she embraced the defendant and was overheard agreeing to meet him outside after the trial. The foreman led the jury through a careful and thorough review of all the evidence and weighed the creditability of each of the witnesses; the jurors carefully deliberated and found the defendant guilty.