okay i guess it took so i guess recording has started now
yeah
uh
so have you ever served on a jury
i served i was in the Air Force and served on a court martial uh board a couple of times which is very similar to a jury a lot of the same rules apply have you ever served on one
yeah i finally served on one last year i've um been voting for years and i couldn't figure out why i hadn't been called yet
uh-huh
and i finally was so it was an interesting experience i was kind of boring
was it civil or criminal
uh it was uh
a grand jury or something
uh it was uh
well let's see it was municipal court so it was a combination of uh and i was in the pool for a couple of weeks
uh-huh
i see
so it was a combination of criminal and civil and they had uh well most of the time we we spent sitting around in the jury room and getting to know the other potential jurors and then
uh-huh
it was always we was exciting when we got called to to to go because then we thought we might be able to do something else besides uh just sit in the jury room
uh-huh uh did did the judge uh hand down sentences or did you folks do that
uh yeah the judge did uh i uh i had a hard time getting seated on a jury i kept getting uh
i'd be questioned uh for impaneling the jury and they kept uh dismissing me
uh-huh
um
course they don't have to give a reason but it's just whether the prosecutor or the defense attorney feels like you know they want to get the best uh mix for their case so they ask all kinds of wild questions
no
that
that's a science in itself
yeah well i kept getting called up for drunk driving uh
questions and i think part of it was they didn't uh
they didn't like the fact that i don't drink any more
uh-huh i see because you'd probably be uh too puritanical and to
yeah that was probably it although in my case i might have been more uh sympathetic with the person who got caught i don't know
uh-huh
so uh were were the uh sentences that the judge handed out what you thought to be fair or would if you were deciding do you think that they would have been different
well i was never there never there for any sentencing uh i finally got impaneled on one case uh on my next to the last day and uh we got into the uh jury room to uh
decide the case and there was one guy on the jury who announced to everybody that he didn't need to deliberate because he'd already decided that the guy was uh not guilty and he would never vote for guilty
huh
so uh they appointed me jury jury foreman and i uh didn't think that uh going in without deliberating
allowed us to reach a verdict so i told the judge that we weren't were unable unable to reach a verdict because we couldn't get one member of the jury to deliberate so the whole thing had to be tried over again
um
wow i bet that made him happy
yeah
yeah it was uh it was funny
the uh i just i i don't know i uh
i didn't uh
uh i didn't like not being able to deliberate i uh i i wanted to vote guilty for the guy and the other people were kind of mixed
right
uh-huh
so uh the guy had to go through the whole thing all over again cost him a lot of money i'm sure
yeah
oh how many members were on the jury was it a six or twelve member jury
uh it must have been six
uh-huh that's kind of curious to me i didn't realize until the uh Wayne Kennedy Smith trial uh
yeah
a few months ago that they had six member juries i thought that they you know it was always twelve twelve men tried and true so to speak
um
but uh apparently for some some crimes it's permissible to have six people sit in judgment
um
i know on a getting to this unanimous thing whether you know a jury should be unanimous or not or not in a court martial case it doesn't require the jury to be unanimous it's simple a simple majority you know rules
yeah
well let's see is it on uh capital crimes that they have to be unanimous and
a probably on capital i don't know we weren't we the two that i were on had to do with drugs
uh-huh
and uh we were uh unanimous in acquitting the person even though we in our in our uh gut felt that the individuals were both guilty just because of the friends because of various things
the government really failed to prove its case and you know being fair to the person if the government doesn't prove its case no matter how you feel you have to go by what's offered as proof and we had to acquit him in both cases
uh too it was too circumstantial
uh yeah it was yeah in some of the critical things like the off special investigations at one time in one of the cases had videotaped this person but something happened to the camera and the tape and
um
all they could do was testify about
