Jury Duty

From October 29 - November 1, 2007, I served on a jury at the Court of Common Pleas in Philadelphia, PA. Below is a summary of my experience and the verdict our jury reached. This information was originally posted on Baptist Board.com

A Synopsis of the Case
The jury rendered its verdicts today. Here is a synopsys of the case. Greg was a 25 year old man on September 19, 2006 living in Kensington section of Philadelphia. Across the street from his house, several doors down, he owned a second house which he was renovating. James Johnson, a drug dealer, "hung around" the block and often stashed his drugs on Greg's vacant property. Greg, who is mildly retarded, and has several learning disabilities tried to keep James away from his property, but was unsuccessful. On this particular day, Greg's two half-brothers, Derrick and Dominique, ages 16 and 14 came over with their friend Kyle. When they heard from Greg how upset he was that James was hanging around and selling drugs, they went over to confront James and tell him to get off the property. Greg's brothers, Dominique and Derrick, returned to Greg's home and stayed out on the street working on a motor scooter. About 15 minutes later, James' "boss", Derrick Wright arrived brandishing a revolver and threatening Derrick and Kyle (who were still on the street; by this point, Dominique has gone inside). A scuffle between Derrick Wright and Derrick over the gun ensued. Kyle ran in the house. In the scuffle, Wright prevailed and began to pistol whip Derrick on the forehead, striking him five times. Dominique, inside and hearing the commotion, came out of the house, grabbed a baseball bat, and struck Derrick Wright from behind in the back of the head. Derrick Wright turned to Dominique and fired at him from about five feet away stricking him in the neck (with a snake bullet which contains buckshot). Dominique turned to run away. While he was running, Derrick Wright fired at him three times and struck him in the arm and in both shoulders, breaking one shoulder bone. Then, Derrick Wright and James turned and fled the scene.In our case, the Commonwealth of PA was charging James Johnson with the following:
-conspiracy to murder Greg, Derrick, and Dominique
-conspiracy to assault with a deadly weapon Greg, Derrick, and Dominique
-assault with a deadly weapon with intent to cause bodily harm on Greg, Derrick, and Dominique
-assault with a deadly weapon on Derrick and Dominique

The Verdict
After our jury received its charge from the judge, we began our deliberations. Two issues were crucial for us and once they were decided they led to our conclusions about James Johnson’s guilt.The first issue was the matter of conspiracy. Remember that James Johnson, who was charged with the crimes, had not committed any of the alleged crimes with his own hand. Had he conspired to commit them with Derrick Wright? On the stand, all four victims had testified about a cell phone call the James placed after his argument with the brothers Greg, Dominique, and Derrick. However, there were differences in the details of the testimony about the cell phone calls that the defense lawyer used to try to raise a reasonable doubt in our minds. For instance, Kyle, Dominique, and Greg all testified that James spoke into his phone and address “D”, a nickname for Derrick Wright. However, Derrick testified that James addressed “Derrick” and he testified that he remembered this specifically because it was his own name. Worse yet, the defense revealed that, while the four had testified about the cell phone call on the stand, not one of them had mentioned this in their signed testimony to police on the evening of the day the attack occurred. This raised the possibility that the four had concocted this story later during the year since the attack occurred. Two elements helped us overcome these doubts. First, each of the boys who testified seemed mentally slow to one degree or another, not to mention the fact that three of the four were teenagers who were visibly nervous about testifying in open court while facing the accused. Derrick, for instance, made an error in his testimony that was quite blatant. He testified repeatedly that he had been pistol-whipped on his right brow. The prosecutor reviewed this with him several times and he persisted in this testimony. Later, when the photographs of his injuries were passed to us it was obvious from his swelling that he had been attacked on the left brow. Because of these factors, we agreed that, despite the discrepancies in the details of the testimony about the cell phone call, the call had almost certainly occurred. We also concluded this because the odds against the alternative were astronomically unlikely. That is, if James Johnson did not call Derrick Wright, we had to conclude that James Johnson had an argument with the four and in fifteen minutes Derrick Wright showed up mysteriously and viciously attacked these four; three of whom did not live on that block and rarely visited there. The jury was able to agree that James Johnson had entered into a conspiracy with Derrick Wright to attack the four who were interfering with his drug trade.

The second question was, what had James Johnson conspired to do? Had he conspired to have these boys murdered and had Derrick Wright attempted to murder the boys? At first, the jury was leaning toward a “guilty” verdict. However, I felt that James and Derrick were trying to intimidate the boys and get them to leave the area or at least stop interfering with James’ business, not kill them. I felt this way because when Derrick Wright pistol-whipped Derrick and had him on the ground, he did not turn the gun on him and shoot him. Also, when Derrick Wright fired on Dominique, he fired face-on from about 4-5 feet, but with a “snake shot” which scatters shot like a shot gun rather than making a concentrated hit as with a bullet. This type of shot is less likely to kill a human. Then Derrick shot Dominique three times in the back, but he did not hit his head nor the trunk of his body. Rather he hit him in one arm and in both shoulders. From the locations of these attacks and their manners I concluded that Derrick was not trying to kill anyone, he was merely seeking to intimidate. Based upon this reasoning, we found James “not guilty” of conspiracy to murder.The remaining charges were either conspiracy to commit assault or assault. We found James guilty on all of these counts