The third and final chapter in Matt’s jury saga.

Read post two here.

Read post one here.

I know this is the post you’ve been waiting for for over a week. My apologies for keeping you on the edge of your seat.

After the closing arguments were made, our judge read us our instructions. These were long, complex and, frankly, poorly articulated.

We the jury were to decide if:

A) James N. was guilty of two counts of domestic violence with regards to Ronneisha. One count with the fighting stick, one count with the knife.

B) James N. was guilty of two counts of assault with a deadly weapon with regards to Diane. Again, one count w/ stick, one count with knife.

C) The stick qualifies as a deadly weapon (there’s a surprising amount of legalese here that determines whether an item is a deadly weapon. here’s a simplification provided by Steven Rodriguez & Associates).

We were handed printed copies of the jury instructions and sent into the jury chamber to deliberate. In case you’re wondering, jury chambers are not a terribly awesome place to be. A lot like a bush-league dentist’s office with a big table in the middle (featured accoutrements: 5 year old magazines, a coffeepot our bailiff advised us to use at our own risk, and a chess set with 6 missing pieces).

(our jury was not all that angry though one juror did call another unreasonable at one point)

Deliberation reminded me of doing a problem set with a bunch of classmates in high school. A handful want you to do the work for them, a handful don’t really get the assignment, and a handful are incredibly headstrong (but not necessarily bright).

We all pretty quickly decided James had no intent to “willfully” strike his mother, so we got through the Diane charges pretty quickly. We also deduced early on that the stick would not qualify as a deadly weapon, but that a knife would.

We spent a great deal of time, however, parsing through Diane’s testimony and determining whether the prosecution proved beyond a reasonable doubt that James attacked Ronneisha with stick and/or knife. Many on the jury believed there was a slight possibility that Diane lied about the knife to the officers (disclaimer: i was not one of these people), and in the end we convicted James of the stick charge but not the knife.

Four counts charged, one stuck. When the judge read our decision, James was a very happy man.

Me? I was happy to get on with my life and to have played my part in the civic system (and also to have something to blog about).

So, now i turn to you. Admittedly youre getting an extremely filtered view of the case, but I’d love to know your thoughts. How would you have decided?