Yesterday I finished my work as a juror on a panel in a small East Texas town (30,000 pop) where we judged a man for sexual assault of a minor (15 y.o.). The question put to us by the statute was is this person a minor (under 17) and did the perpetrator (age 27) penetrate the minor. It was clearly established that she was age 15 and he admitted on tape after being Mirandized that he penetrated. Eleven of us agreed and on the first vote we voted to give him the maximum punishment allowed by law (20 years in Texas penetentary and 10,000 dollar fine)
Now one person on the panel, who admitted in casual conversation prior to the trial that he used cocaine, marijuana,cocaine, and "any chemical he could find to put into his body" and that this was not bad behavior. He volunteered the information in light casual banter. None of the 11 adults thought it was very funny.
Anyway, we finally forced this democrat idiot drug head to again listen to the audio tape and understand what the man stated. Finally we had a 12-0 agreement and convicted in of "Sexual Assault of a Minor".
Then the next day we tried the penalty phase. We quickly came to the conclusion to give him 20 years in the pen, but the hippy would not fine the man. The 11 thought it was necessary to send the message to the public and the convict that this would not be tolerated in this area. In the penalty phase we learned that the man had 17 prior arrests as a minor (including aggrivated assult with a deadly weapon when he put a gun in a girls face and stole her Chicago Bulls walking jacked, held 2 young girls in threatening hostageses with a meat cleaver while his friends assaulted and invaded a habitation, and many other breaking and enterings, theft auto, destruction of property such as cars, numberous altercations while on probation. Then he was turned over from Juvenile Probattion to Adult Probation. He had never spent so much as 1 night in jail. ANd that was after 22 offences. Finally after this crime of sexual assault of a minor had been committed, he was jailed on parole violation of cocaine use while on probation.
The hippie would not allow maximal punishment under the law and told all of us that he would let him go.
Now, I am an easy-going Freeper, but this was too much for me. Most of the folks wanted to go home after 4 hours of this punk telling us that this perp did nothing wrong. HE SAID "I WILL LET HIM GO HOME". One of my fellow jurors who had 4 daughters and 1 on the way told this hippie that if he let him go and one of his daughters was harmed, we would come see him(the hippie). I told him to ease off, and that I agreed with him.
Then it struck me,....and I started to remember all of the arguements I engaged in on Free Republic and all of the fights and eloquence the freepers have demonstrated and I did dig deep. Then I started to expose this hippie to the other 10 jurors of this liberals ideology and "right thinking" people and where we parted company. Then the shouting began and it got very ugly. I was enjoying humiliating this punk. As his unbridaled humiliation even some of the more timid women on the panel started eating the hippies ass out. We became an unrelenting pack and finally, in total humiliation, the druggie democrat caved. Everyone shook each others hands outside the courthouse, except no one shook the hippies hand. The juror druggie got into his pickup and screeched his tires trying to get away from all of us.
I think FR pushed this over the top. It was only an arguement of a few thousand dollars, but it was sweet.
I will tell you how sweet. I trade commodities. I am currently in coffee. For each penny up price that market moves (I was long) I make 375 dollars). At the beginning of deliberation I called my wife and said we might be here a while. She told me my broker called and we were 6700 dollars up,....did we want to liquidate our position. I returned his call (about 1 hour after the broker had called my wife) and he told me the market had moved back to near when I entered the market. In otherwords, I lost 6700 dollars because this hippie would not be reasonable. Today, reflecting on it, it was worth every penny I lost. We successfully flamed 2 idiots.