My Experience With Jury Duty
By James Donahue
In my years as a police and court news reporter I was only called once for jury duty because I knew too much about just about any case that went before a judge. Even civil cases sometimes caught my attention. When I was working in South Haven, I was corralled one day to make up a sixth member of a municipal court jury panel in the old municipal court that operated then. I just happened to be in city hall and they asked me to fill in. It was a traffic case. I knew nothing about it and did not know the defendant, so I agreed. I thought it would be an interesting experience. I was not disappointed.
The case was tried before a municipal judge by a city attorney. Another local lawyer argued the defense.
The defendant was a middle-aged man who we as jurors learned had been apprehended by the South Haven Police for some obscure reason. Details of just why he was stopped, handcuffed and brought to the city jail were not made known to us throughout the trial. He was charged with some infraction of the driving code but the city attorney failed, at least in my mind, to provide any evidence that the man did what the police claimed he did. The defense lawyer did a good job of putting doubt of any guilt in my mind.
When it was time for the jury to go off into a little room and decide the case, I found that all five of the other jurors were in agreement that the man should be found guilty. If the police thought he did something wrong, that was good enough for them. I had heard so many cases by then that I had reasonable doubt and expressed this. We debated the case for some time as I convinced the other jurors that we had not been given enough evidence to find the man guilty of anything.
At one point we called on the bailiff to ask the court for the answer to a basic question, which was, as I remember it, why the police stopped this driver in the first place. The answer was that we had to decide the case on the information we had.
That cinched it for me. I could not find the man guilty of anything. The other jurors finally agreed with me. We declared him innocent.
The next morning when I stopped at the City Police Station on my morning rounds, Chief Otto Buelow was waiting for me. He said he understood that I was on the jury that found this man innocent the previous day. I told him that I was. He asked why we found him innocent and I explained the case as it was presented to us, and why we had reasonable doubt.
To this Buelow exploded: “Didn’t they tell you this guy was drunk?” Buelow said the vehicle the man was driving drove into something, either a fence or a post after running off the road.
I never understood why this information was never mentioned in the trial, or why the defendant wasn’t charged with drunken driving instead of the lesser charge.
By James Donahue
In my years as a police and court news reporter I was only called once for jury duty because I knew too much about just about any case that went before a judge. Even civil cases sometimes caught my attention. When I was working in South Haven, I was corralled one day to make up a sixth member of a municipal court jury panel in the old municipal court that operated then. I just happened to be in city hall and they asked me to fill in. It was a traffic case. I knew nothing about it and did not know the defendant, so I agreed. I thought it would be an interesting experience. I was not disappointed.
The case was tried before a municipal judge by a city attorney. Another local lawyer argued the defense.
The defendant was a middle-aged man who we as jurors learned had been apprehended by the South Haven Police for some obscure reason. Details of just why he was stopped, handcuffed and brought to the city jail were not made known to us throughout the trial. He was charged with some infraction of the driving code but the city attorney failed, at least in my mind, to provide any evidence that the man did what the police claimed he did. The defense lawyer did a good job of putting doubt of any guilt in my mind.
When it was time for the jury to go off into a little room and decide the case, I found that all five of the other jurors were in agreement that the man should be found guilty. If the police thought he did something wrong, that was good enough for them. I had heard so many cases by then that I had reasonable doubt and expressed this. We debated the case for some time as I convinced the other jurors that we had not been given enough evidence to find the man guilty of anything.
At one point we called on the bailiff to ask the court for the answer to a basic question, which was, as I remember it, why the police stopped this driver in the first place. The answer was that we had to decide the case on the information we had.
That cinched it for me. I could not find the man guilty of anything. The other jurors finally agreed with me. We declared him innocent.
The next morning when I stopped at the City Police Station on my morning rounds, Chief Otto Buelow was waiting for me. He said he understood that I was on the jury that found this man innocent the previous day. I told him that I was. He asked why we found him innocent and I explained the case as it was presented to us, and why we had reasonable doubt.
To this Buelow exploded: “Didn’t they tell you this guy was drunk?” Buelow said the vehicle the man was driving drove into something, either a fence or a post after running off the road.
I never understood why this information was never mentioned in the trial, or why the defendant wasn’t charged with drunken driving instead of the lesser charge.