90% of Americans have NO concept of a jury’s Constitutional responsibilities. Of the other 10%, 8% of them don’t have the backbone to exercise their Constitutional duties if it would make them the only person in the room to be doing so.
How’s that saying go about being a patriot? Something about other will join you when the majority agrees.
This case should have never come to be. Management in the city's IT organization was terrible. There were no adopted security policies or procedures in place. This was a situation that management allowed to develop until it came to this unfortunate point. They did everything wrong that they possibly could have to create this situation. However, the city was not on trial, but Terry Childs was. And when we went into that jury room, we had very explicit instructions on what laws we were to apply and what definitions we were to follow in applying those laws.
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We were not allowed to let our emotions or biases determine the matter, because if they could there may have been a different outcome. Quite simply, we followed the law. I personally, and many of the other juror, felt terrible coming to this verdict. Terry Childs turned his life around and educated himself in the networking field on very complex technologies. One different decision by him, or more effective management by the city could have completely avoided this entire scenario. But those are not factors we could consider as a jury. We applied the law as it was provided to us and our verdict was the unfortunate, but inevitable result.Simply put, jurors (and not juges) should be the arbiters of both the facts and the law. But if that's not what they are taught in school, if that's not what they are told by the judge, if lawyers are forbidden from telling them that, then who can blame them if they feel terrible for reaching an "unfortunate" verdict?