The Truth, The Whole Truth, and Whatever Those Women Think Is True

So the jurors are all of what has occasionally been referred to as the "female persuasion." This has, somehow,  become a newsworthy piece of information.  Can six women be fair?  Are they tough enough to convict?  Do they have the cojones?*  Are they too weak-kneed, too faint-heartedly feminine to acquit even though a man's gotta do what a man's gotta do?

And who are these six on whom the fate of the western world depends?  These six women about whom we (or at least I) know essentially nothing but odd factoids.

• 2 rescue animals, though not professionally (is there such a profession?)
• 2 have been victims of "non-violent" crimes
• 2 are married to lawyers.
• 1 has been arrested and had her case "disposed of" (whatever that might mean).
• 1 looks Hispanic maybe.
• 0 appear to be African-American.

Their job will be to sift through the evidence they'll hear over the course of the next month or two, decide who's telling the truth about which things so they can agree about what actually happened that night (the law doesn't require that they be right, just that they agree) and how those agreed "facts" fit within the framework of the likely impenetrable instructions on the law the judge will give them.

Will they be fair?  Can they be?  Can 6 non-blacks fairly sort the evidence (whatever it might be) of an incident which has become racially charged whether or not it was racially motivated?  Can soft-hearted animal rescuers fairly evaluate the circumstances and motivation of human killing?  Do those husband/lawyers screw everything up?

When they're done, and assuming that they eventually do agree about what they must, George Zimmerman will have been found guilty of something or not guilty of anything.  And neither you nor I nor anyone else (including those 6 women) will know whether those factoids had anything to do with whether they were or were not fair in how they listened and discussed and evaluated and decided.

Nor will we know whether they got it right (whatever exactly that means).

I still won't know what happened that night.  Nor will you.  Nor, and this is central, will they.

That's not exactly true, of course.  I know, and unless you've been living under a rock so do you, and surely they do or will, that Zimmerman shot Trayvon Martin and that Martin died from the gunshot.  Almost everything else is, and will ultimately remain, a subject of conjecture and guesswork.

Many years ago, my sister was called for jury duty and made it into the box to be questioned.  It was, as I understand it, a civil case involving something falling off a building or a scaffolding or some such and perhaps injuring a passerby.  Several years had passed since then.  Finally the trial.  Justice.  Truth will out.  All that good stuff.

My sister raised her hand.  

I don't see how it's possible to know what happened after all this time just because these people will come in here and tell their stories.  It's just not possible to know who's telling the truth and who's not and who's just mistaken and how memory might have ebbed over the years.

She was hauled into chambers.  She was sent home.  She was also, of course, right.

See, it matters who those 12 6 jurors are because they have to decide.  But it's impossible for them to know.  Which is why the lawyers work so hard to get jurors they think might be inclined to accept their version of what the evidence shows or doesn't show.

And why I've spent so much time over the years explaining to my client that

• No DNA doesn't mean the jury has to acquit.
• No eyewitness doesn't mean the jury has to acquit.
• Haven't found the gun doesn't mean the jury has to acquit.
• Your brother or mama or baby mama or the fucking Pope coming into the courtroom and testifying that you couldn't have done it because you were with him/her at the time doesn't mean the jury has to acquit.  (The Pope would be great, though, if he'd come to court and testify to the right things.  Baby mama not so much.)
• You getting on the stand and saying you didn't do it sure as hell doesn't mean the jury has to acquit.
• And the fact that you're absofuckinglutely innocent absofuckinglutely doesn't mean that the jury has to acquit.

Because no matter how much they talk about trials as a search for truth, they're not.  And Beyond A Reasonable Doubt means, in the real world, whatever the jury believes enough to satisfy itself.  Because trials, as I've said before, are about proof not truth.  And proof, as I've said before, is whatever convinces those folks in the jury box.  Or what doesn't.

It's not random.  Most jurors try hard to get it right, and most juries probably come pretty close most of the time.  But innocent people are convicted.  Guilty people go free (or are convicted of something more or less than what they actually did).  

And sometimes . . . .  Well, they're planning to take another stab at trying to get 12 jurors out in Phoenix to agree about whether Jody Arias should be killed in prison or just rot away there until she dies.

But six women in Florida?

What will Nancy Grace say?

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*I actually have the transcript snippet of a female criminal defense lawyer explaining to a judge that she "wouldn't have the balls" to make the argument the prosecutor was making.