Agreed. I haven’t kept up with this case that closely, but I was on a jury a few years back in a similar situation for a much less serious crime. It was what looked like an open-and-shut cocaine possession with intent to distribute case, when police, searching the apartment of a drug dealer under investigation, found a few grams of crack in his roommate’s dresser. Seems pretty straightforward, right?
Remember that this is Durham County, North Carolina—the home of Mike Nifong. The authorities took a simple case and screwed it into the ground. The FBI was involved as part of one of those drug task forces that are the rage nowadays, and we were stunned when the FBI agent, on the stand, maintained that “we don’t record interrogations”...so there was no record of the confession from the roommate. The printed FBI form which contained a *paraphrase* of his confession, not a literal recording, was never entered into evidence (thrown out pre-trial, I assume). The defense attorney made the FBI agent look like a fool, and made a credible case that the confession was coerced under threat of sending the roomie up on Federal distribution charges—meaning 20 years in the Federal pen—to try to get to his drug-dealing friend who was the original target of the investigation.
Did the guy have drugs in his dresser? Maybe. Did the state prove beyond a reasonable doubt that he had them in there with intent to sell them? Not even close, despite a confession. It took us two hours to acquit the guy. When the verdict came back, the DA just got this look on his face like “dammit, I had a feeling this was gonna go wrong.”
“Reasonable doubt” is the kicker. If a prosecutor can’t meet that, they don’t deserve to win the case, no matter how much of a scumbag the defendant may or may not be.
}:-)4
The verdict of guilty of 1st degree murder requires more than a hunch.
I am reassured by this verdict.
The woman may very well have done it but the jury has very specific responsibilities which I believe they fulfilled in this case.
The jury must decide upon the evidence and testimony and not by the light of the torches and shouts of an angry mob with a lynching rope.
I experienced injustice first-hand. Our system must carefully guard against it.
I think it happens a lot more than we’d wish to realize. Sadly people get away with crimes far more often than they probably should but as we all also realize, if we do not protect the rights of even the lowliest scumbag then ultimately we protect the rights of no one. Protection of the innocent also sometimes inadvertantly protects the guilty. Bad lawyering and law enforcement protocol makes it even worse of a problem.
As an aside, I wonder whatever ended up happened to Nifong after he was disbarred...