Wednesday, July 25, 2007

Guilty!

Well folks the trial is finally over and I can officially spill the beans. Basically some dude stabbed this other dude. Lots of witnesses plus a crazy defendant equals guilty.

The prosecuting DA had a bulletproof case. She called about 13 witnesses, when she really only need to call about 5. That didn’t help speed the trail along. This case should have taken a day, but since the DA called everyone in New York up as a witness and the defense lawyer repeated himself over and over and over on cross examination it took a week and a half.

The DA was about 26 years old, 6 foot something, pale white, about as skinny as Nicole Ritchie on a good day, and had jet black hair. This had to be her 3rd or 4th case. She was super nervous and had a cart of evidence that she rolled into court each day. I’m guessing she got picked on in high school a lot.

Now this is where the trail got interesting. The defense lawyer was 80 years old if he was a day. He had absolutely NO case, so he tap danced around everything and tried to convolute the entire trial with moral and irrelevant issues. He was straight out of an episode of Perry Mason; in fact I think it might have been Perry Mason, returned from the grave. I shit you negative when I say he looked like the crypt keeper. During his summation I thought he might start laughing maniacally and disappear in a puff of smoke. There were moments when his face resembled a skull, and the wisps of white hair residing on top of his head made it even more frightening. He was crotchety and easily agitated. He was a lot of fun. He made the trail interesting at least.

In the jury room we were almost ready to vote him guilty, but when you assemble a group of humans, there's always people that just don’t “get it” or want more clarification. So we actually debated for a good two to three hours, but the overwhelming evidence and logic of the case finally rung true and we agreed on a guilty verdict.

I’m not a robot, I know that’s hard to believe because I’m made of metal and am full of circuit boards and wires, but I did feel really bad after I said the word guilty. I’m no saint and I certainly will have a lot to answer for when my clock stops ticking, but I really did feel like I wasn’t qualified to judge another persons actions. At the end of the day, he did commit a crime, and one that could have conceivably killed a man, so he did deserve the verdict he received, but it hurts my heart to think that I just sentenced a man to a punishment that will not only disrupt his life, but his wives life, his family’s life and his friends lives. I guess if I didn’t feel any sympathy I would need therapy, or at the very least a new emotion chip.

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