Tuesday, December 3, 2013

PRESUMPTION of Guilt

A couple of months ago, I received a jury summons in the mail. I'll admit my first thoughts were "I don't have time to deal with this, how can I get out of it" I eventually decided to respond to this during my time as an intern in the courthouse, largely because of many conversations I'd had with judges and attorneys about the importance of juries and responding to jury duty.

Fast forward to my scheduled jury date.
For those who have never gotten called, the way it works is,

Day 1: Jury Panel. The attorneys for both sides (prosecutor for the state, in criminal proceedings) ask the panel of (in my case 70 people) a number of questions with the goal of flushing out bias that potential jurors have about the case in question. The goal is to remove people with obvious biases and assemble the least biased 12/13 members of the panel and make them jurors. For example: IF there is a case involving a drug possession violation, the prosecutor probably wants to remove all parties who have drug convictions themselves, anyone whose family was ruined forever when his/her father/mother went to prison for just a teeny tiny amount of cocaine. Then the lawyers pick off certain people from their comments and of those left, they pick the first 13 (12 jurors 1 alternate). (Side Note, the closer to the front you are, the greater the chances that you'll end up on the jury.)

The way they try to flush out these biases is through a series of questions that jury panel members are to answer correctly. The case I was impaneled for involved a Felony Family Assault Violence case which means the accused has been convicted of a similar crime in the past. And through the conversation with the prosecutor, so many things were revealed. As you can imagine, a group of 70 members of the Travis County public have different experiences with Family Violence. Some involved personally, some more distant. One lady shared that her aunt was killed by her abusive partner, another witnessed his mother get assaulted growing up, another spoke to her work experience seeing the cycle of violence and "if he did it before, he probably did it again", another questioned the requirement of physical pain or injury in the definition of the crime, wondering if a pulled hair should carry the same punishment as a cracked rib.

Even as we discussed further the law, many questioned the ability to find a person not guilty if he/she did not testify for themselves. They simply couldnt understand how someone who didn't commit the offense for which they were being accused, would not stand up and speak for themselves to the jurors deciding their fate. The Prosecutor did a fine job of weeding out the person who had already made up their mind about the accused's guilt.

What was unjust about the whole thing is, While we're sitting there, we all would glance at the accused and back at the attorneys asking questions. It seemed to me like it was a foregone conclusion that this man was guilty of something. They say "Presumption of Innocence" but even for someone like me who hadn't had any personal experience with domestic violence, it was difficult to hear the story about another juror who's aunt was shot to death by her husband, and not think "YOU, YOU HORRIBLE PERSON, YOU'RE JUST LIKE HIM." I mean think about it, we're all sitting in the courtroom and our mental hands are pointing fingers at this man, and I truly think 10 minutes into these questions, No one on the jury panel could fathom that this defendant was an innocent guy on the street picked up for this awful offense.



I didn't feel the need to be the annoying smarty pant law student, so I sat quietly with a comforting thought that as Juror 63 of 70, it was HIGHLY unlikely that I would get picked for the jury, so I just took the opportunity to make my observations about our criminal justice system where Justice is rarely found. Its likely more so a "System for Criminals, and maybe sometimes Justice"

I Will Wait (not your typical post about waiting)

Its 3a.m. and instead of sleeping or prepping for my class in 5 hours, I am here blogging. Mostly because I have an idea in my head and my friend (Shout out T.P) recently asked me if I was still blogging, so I figured I'd post something!


SO, I recently had an epiphany....or maybe just a light got brighter in my mind about who I am and what I want. Over the recent thanksgiving break I had a chance to be really introspective and consider a few things about this year so far for myself. The break lent itself to this because I stayed back in Austin to get some Exam prep done. (how that worked out is a different topic.)


I saw a tweet that said something along the lines of "At any given time most girls have about 3 guys they are consistently texting and they are most interested in the one who is least interested."


 I feel like I have changed so much since law school started and not all in ways I like. I remember a conversation with my sister while i was an undergrad, about a guy, whatever new guy had my attention that season, and how I was no longer going to be associating with him because he was not as interested as I would want of someone requesting the privilege of my time. Maybe it was arrogant, maybe it was confidence who knows? I know I want to be pursued and so a guy who was waiting on me to act all the time would have to hit the road very quickly. 


Fast forward to the last year and I feel like while I am much busier, I have begun to devalue my time. Which is INSANE because I am literally busier than I've ever been in my life. I think this may be linked to my confidence in myself which has taken a hit in the last year, more academically than anything else, but I think when you're used to being one of the smarter people in the room you have no idea how linked that is to other parts of your identity. Needless to say I have not achieved academic prowess in my recent endeavor and my general confidence must have taken a hit. (This is my current theory.) As a result of this shift/shrink in confidence, I think I have wasted more time on people (guys) who I don't think are interested in me, and some who I am not even really interested in. I also think some of this stems from my belief (which statistics seems to support) that women especially black women with higher education are less marriable, whether that stems from somethign within, a level of pride that many men cant deal with, or something without, in society that says a woman is either a career woman or a homemaker and not both. This also is a topic for a different post. 


My point is, I figured I'd really like to meet my husband while in law school, get married sometime soon afterward and let that be a part factor in where I live and practice. This belief, I think has led me to be more open to people that maybe I should not be open to at all. Not saying I am desperate (ahem, the current term is thirst... such a gross word) but I guess I always thought I was single in undergrad because I was too picky or just felt like I had all the time in the world, and now that has magically changed. I somehow started to think if I would just try harder, take more rubbish, be less assertive, be less...me, I would have better luck. 


WHICH OF COURSE IS INSANE. I am 23years old for goodness sakes, I have nothing but time. Time to invest in my relationship with the Lord, friends and family, school and career and so much more. I have time that I cannot begin to devalue, not just YET. So my epiphany is thus: VALUE YOUR WAITING TIME. Because by doing so, you give it away very carefully and not all willynilly to anyone who inquires of a few minutes. I realize I really truly would rather have a 30minute chat with a dear girlfriend and pour into her life than give away my valuable free time to a man who I have not EVEN decided that I am interested in, and needless to say, as is often typical of many guys my age these days, he himself has not given it much thought.



 So, Say Goodbye to crazy unconfident 2013 Ayo.