The CSI Factor

A few years ago I was called for jury duty, and being a civic-minded citizen I didn’t try to get out of it and got selected. For legal reasons I’m going to fudge a few of the details, but the case basically went like this: at a concert, the plaintiff was harassing a girl. The defendant stepped in to defend her, but the plaintiff was drunk and started a fight. The defendant ended the fight by stabbing the guy, non-fatally and really not that badly, requiring a few stitches but no hospitalization. Hence the guy who started trouble was the plaintiff, and the defender ends up as the defendant.

The focus of the case was really on whether the defendant was acting in self defense. He was an older guy, pushing 70, and relatively frail looking. He was also sober on the day in question. The plaintiff was in his early 20s, physically fit, and had had at least a few beers. Was it appropriate to pull a knife, or could the defendant have resolved the issue in a manner that didn’t require escalating the level of violence?

Early on in the case, say, within the first 10 minutes when we were being told what had happened, it was made clear that the defendant wasn’t denying that he had stabbed the guy, and that there were several witnesses to the event including the girl whose honor was being defended. No one was disputing that the defendant had stabbed the plaintiff.

On the stand the arresting officer, who was a rookie, stated that the plaintiff had invoked his Miranda rights. You’re not allowed to say that in court, as invoking those rights somehow makes you appear guilty. Honestly, if something goes down and I’m in the heat of the moment and adrenaline is pumping, I’m not running the risk of my words not coming out right and understand wanting to wait before giving a statement. And, no offense to my brothers in blue, but I want more than one person as witness to what I say, so my words aren’t misinterpreted or taken out of context later. The invocation of Miranda caused a mistrial, however, and we were dismissed.

In the jury room, as we were gathering our things and at last free to discuss the case (or as much of it as we’d seen), several of the jurors stated they were ready to find the defendant not guilty right off the bat. Not because they thought it was reasonable for a frail old man to even the odds against a drunken twentysomething by pulling a weapon. No. They took issue with the forensic testing of the knife, or lack thereof. You see, we had been allowed to ask questions, writing them down and passing them to the judge. Someone asked if the knife had been tested for fingerprints. Someone had asked if the blood on the knife had been tested to match the plaintiff’s. Well, duh. When the defendant sits there and says yup, that’s my knife and yup, I stabbed him, do we really need to waste the time and expense to verify that forensically? Apparently so. At least three of my peers were ready to let the defendant walk because we didn’t know for sure that the knife had the defendant’s fingerprints and the plaintiff’s blood. Seriously? Seriously.

So when I see things like the Casey Anthony verdict, I’m not in the least bit surprised. Yeah, there was a dead body in the trunk of her car. Yeah, she lied to police and tried to cover it up. But there was no official cause of death, no time of death, no concrete forensic details, so we can’t say that it was murder, or homicide, or even child abuse. We can’t use critical thinking skills as a substitute for facts. Not because it wouldn’t be appropriate,  but because we no longer have critical thinking skills in this country.