re: Law proposed to require unanimous decision for felonies

quote:

---

How isn't that reasonable doubt?

---

I can give you a real-life example.

I served as the jury foreman on an aggravated arson case a few years ago. The defendant was charged with trying to kill his landlord because the landlord was going to evict the defendant for non-payment of his rent.

The 12 person jury included 10 men, two of them black, and 2 white women. The defendant and the landlord were both black.

We heard testimony for 3 days, including a taped confession by the defendant where he described setting his landlord's house on fire in the middle of the night knowing the landlord was in the house.

The landlord had died of natural causes before the trial started meaning the only eye witness to the crime was no longer available to testify at the trial.

The defendant's confession was made while the landlord was still alive. After the landlord died, the defendant disavowed his confession.

We found him guilty by a vote of 10-2. Both black men voted guilty and the 2 white women voted not guilty. Both of those bitches were whining that the confession was forced out of the defendant, which is what he testified to on the stand, although there was no evidence of that happening.

After I read the verdict to the judge and the defendant was removed from the courtroom, the judge told the jury he wanted to share with us the whole story about the defendant that we were not allowed to hear during the trial.

This was the defendant's third trial on this same charge. He had been found guilty both times before but the previous two verdicts were overturned on appeal due to technicalities.

The defendant was well known in his "community" as a fire bug. He had killed his 1 year old daughter by dousing her with lighter fluid while she was asleep in her crib and setting her on fire because the "baby mama" (his common law wife) wouldn't fix him a meal. The mother witnessed the murder but refused to testify against him because he told her he would escape from prison and burn her and her other children to death if she testified at his trial.

He also killed another man by pouring gasoline on him and setting him on fire because the other guy owed him ten bucks. No one would testify against him because they were afraid of him.

He was a sadistic monster.

We weren't allowed to hear any of this during the trial because it would be "prejudicial" to our deliberations on this case.

When the judge finished telling us the whole story, both of the white women who voted not guilty broke down crying and apologizing to the rest of us saying they were sorry they wanted to let that monster go free.

I saw in the paper a few weeks later the defendant was sentenced to 25 years at hard labor at the Angola state prison.

The defendant got his due process and his just punishment.

If a unanimous verdict had been required, he would have gone free to kill again.