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.
This woman is the only person WHO knew and stated to the investigators, how long the child was 'missing'. She murdered her own child and because she was so very clever and did NOT leave enough traceable evidence for anyone but GOD to discover she walks. We have in majority gone to the dark side.
Our jury deliberations were interesting (and quick), because there were two or three of us who wanted to convict the guy straightaway of simple possession (none of us thought that a guy with no prior convictions and no prior history, and just one baggie of ~6 grams of crack, was selling). But when a couple of other guys on the jury went back over the facts, even those of us who originally leaned toward conviction had to admit that the state’s case just didn’t meet that “reasonable doubt” standard that the judge had hammered us with over and over again in the instructions. The confession was just too dodgy, there were serious inconsistencies in the recordkeeping on the traffic stop and arrest of the defendant, and the FBI agent got absolutely demolished on the stand by one of the best defense attorneys in Durham. It wasn’t even close.
Serving on that jury was a real eye-opening experience for me; I’ve never had any interaction with the criminal justice system other than that—I’ve never been arrested, sued, filed a police report, none of it. Seeing how the authorities took what looked so simple and turned it into such a cock-up was very enlightening.
}:-)4