Sorry, I know this is late. Part 1. Part 2.
So, to remind you all, this all started right at the top of the year, and it took about a week to get the jury together, and they set the schedule as being Monday, Wednesday, Thursday, so we didn’t get started until the second Wed of January. (It was really a blessing that we only did three days a week, and missed two Mondays – one holiday, one snow day – as I was able to keep my job’s workload pretty much under control on the other days.)
The first several days of the trial were a steady parade of witnesses, mostly police officers and detectives who:
- had been on the scene for the shoving incident a week before the murder
- been on scene post-murder
- had been tasked with canvassing the neighborhood for evidence and video footage
- had processed said evidence and video footage
This was kind of tedious, because the questioning was very nitpicky. How long have you been with the force? How long were in you in that job? What sort of training did you have? Why did you have that footage? (because I was asked to get it) But as the trial went on, it was very clear what the prosecution was doing – laying an incontrovertible groundwork for the evidence. The defense didn’t have a lot of options except to raise very flimsy objections from time to time, which were largely overruled.
One issue I thought was interesting is, for all that video gathering, it was clear that it went something like:
- detective downloads the video from the security system onto a thumb drive
- takes it to the office, uploads it into their system
- here it is four years later, gets a copy of it downloaded onto a different thumb drive for review
So there were defense questions like, “is that the thumb drive you downloaded the video on?” “no”. But I wish they had more clearly established that this was standard practice, there are ways to ensure the file we’re looking at now is an identical copy of what got downloaded, it doesn’t matter which thumb drive it’s lived on.
The detectives, etc. were an interesting mix. There was a very notable gentleman – I forget exactly what his connection was, but he was very articulate and smart in his answers. He was African-American, very fit, very handsome… and about four foot eight. Another detective was remarkable for how inarticulate he was. Look, in my job, I spend a lot of time interviewing people and the smart ones can generally figure out why you’re asking the question, and answer in a way that is not only responsive, but illuminating. This guy, though.
Q: Where on your body was the body cam?
A: On the outside of my clothes.
Technically correct, I guess, but the question was clearly going for “on my left breast” or such. What the hell? He’s probably been through dozens of examinations like this. I don’t think he was taking the piss, he was just a dumbass.
We also had Cross’s parole officer testify, with the awesome name of Crystal Pipkin. The prosecution established in grueling detail that she had plenty of time with Cross, certainly enough to be able to identify him in videos. And defense tried to knock that down and it was just silly.
They were also very nitpicky about having the detectives who gathered the video footage describe it – for instance, it was fairly common that the timestamp on the footage wasn’t exactly correct, because the system that was capturing the video was off. So the detectives would do a ‘test’ – basically looking nothing what time it was when they arrived, checking themselves on the security footage and noticing the time difference. So undermining any attempts by the defense to use those time shifts to throw mud into the prosecution.
Once they’d established the provenance of a lot of the security cam and body cam footage, they eventually stitched all that together into a consecutive timeline so we could see the flow of the cousin, Killa and the goons picking up Cross and driving to the mother’s house (various different cam shots of the car traveling down the street), then after the murder, the four guys running away. Notable later was what those four were wearing, lots of description and detail went into that so we could clearly identify who was who.
We also got to see not only the actual gun and some of the other evidence, we saw on both bodycam footage and autopsy photos the actual dead body. This was pretty horrible, but not so awful as to send us into conniptions. The jury box had little monitors set up every two seats so we could easily see what was being shared, whether it was video, maps or still photos.
And then we got the interesting testimony – the couch friend (Matthew Morris) who ended up getting shot 5 times, but lived – and the cousin who was part of the robbery. The cousin was getting some sort of reduction in sentence deal for testifying and the defense did their best to imply that the cousin’s testimony had been ‘bought’ and was therefore worthless. Call me gullible, but I thought that was a non-starter – but it also was clear that the defense didn’t have an awful lot to work with. Often the defense would raise a fuss about minutia and the attorneys would be called up to the judge, and sometimes we’d even be sent out of the room. (we spent a fair amount of time in the jury room, but it wasn’t as painful as during the voir dire part)
We also got medical examiner testimony about the murdered victim. For instance, the first shot is what killed him, the second shot (although it could have been used to indicate the murder was ‘more deliberate’ than just one shot) possibly wouldn’t have.
Finally, the first Wed in February the prosecution rested, and the defense didn’t have any rebuttal witnesses to call up. The next day, we had the summing up. Both sides were a little strident. Prosecution: “clearly based on our evidence, this happened”, and Defense: “clearly you can’t believe anything they say about this”. I thought this didn’t take long, but consulting my notes, we didn’t start deliberations until the next Monday. Oh, now that I think of it, it’s because the judge had to explain to us what the (eight) charges were and what had to be true beyond a reasonable doubt for us to find the defendant guilty on that charge.
The charges were basically:
- Murder in the second-degree (actually committing the murder)
- Murder in the second degree as part of the commission of another crime (even if someone else did the murder)
- Attempted murder (for the guy who lived)
- Burglary with a deadly weapon
- Burglary that caused harm to someone else
- Possession of a weapon during the committing of a crime
- Possession of a weapon in a place where you forced entry (or weren’t supposed to be)
- Attempted assault in the third degree (the shoving incident)
We had time to start the deliberations and put in our lunch order.
The foreman was assigned (Juror #1, Kevin) and he did a decent job, although others stepped up at times. We started with a go-round-the-table. I started basically by thinking the defendant was guilty of everything, but discussion made me rethink a lot of that. Michelle, the chatty older lady, was the sand in the gears. She didn’t trust the testimony of either couch guy or the cousin and so a lot of things we all thought were certain she wouldn’t believe, and she would not listen to anything. There were a lot of heated conversations. It became clear, unfortunately, that this was going to bleed into the next day.
We were all puzzled by some things they left out. Like, how could they not identify the third guy on the couch? He was Morris’s friend’s brother, how hard could it have been to find out who he was and question him? But he, and the other two guys in the robbery, vanished into the wind and we got no description of any attempts to find them.
One thing we came to terms with was, although Cross was almost certainly the guy with the gun who did the shooting, there was no direct evidence tying him to it, and the guys were all in ski masks. Matthew Morris had positively identified Cross as the man who shot him, but that wasn’t enough for Michelle and some others to buy it. So, although we definitely established he was one of the four guys who did the attempted robbery, we couldn’t claim beyond a reasonable doubt that he was the guy with the gun.
We all wished they could have just given us the transcript of the trial to review, but we weren’t allowed that. What we could do was request to be read particular testimony, and we ended up doing this three times – for Morris, for the cousin and for (I think) the parole officer. This took forever, for each one, and the poor court reporter had to read the whole damn thing. I felt so bad for her. We also wanted more clarification on some of the charges – for instance, although Calvin Cross had been thrown out of the house and didn’t live there any more and they’d changed the locks, when he showed up on the night in question, Mr. Dennis let him in, he didn’t break in. Some of the charges hinged on whether they were allowed in the house or were ‘breaking in’ or not supposed to be there. Luckily, the language was descriptive enough that we figured out that, even if they’d been let in, further events certainly established that they were there by force (the attempted robbery). The judge (who by this point was clearly fed up with this trial) didn’t really give us any more clarification, he just read the whole description of each charge and what ‘guilty’ would mean again. Sigh.
Doing my business analyst thing, I was doing my best to get people to pin down their vote on at least some of the charges. One by one. I also figured that Michelle, once she’d had enough attention and was tired of it all, would begrudgingly stop being the sand in the gears and let us come to a conclusion – and she did, at the end of that second day. (good, because we would have murdered her)
Fun fact – for this last day only, they moved the whole operation up to a different floor, courtroom and jury room. Probably because they hadn’t expected this to drag on this long.
So finally we had a verdict and we summoned Toby the court officer and gave him the list to give to the judge. Which he then brought back, because what we had to do was submit a note to the judge that we had a verdict, and then he’d bring us in to read off the sheet he’d just sent back. Sigh. This is what we’d decided, and most of it was because we couldn’t directly tie Cross to the gun.
- Murder (direct) – not guilty, because we couldn’t prove he was the one with the gun.
- Murder as part of the commission of another crime – guilty, because he was definitely there criming
- Attempted murder of Matthew Morrison – not guilty, because we couldn’t prove it was him who did the shooting
- Burglary with a deadly weapon – guilty, because he was part of the burglary, which had a deadly weapon
- Burglary that caused harm to someone – guilty
- Possession of a weapon #1 – not guilty
- Possession of a weapon #2 – not guilty
- Attempted assault (shoving) – guilty
So he got away with some charges he probably did, but we still found him guilty on four of the eight charges. I don’t know what his sentence is, but I’m sure the judge gave appropriate weight to it.
They did poll the jury: “Is this your verdict?’ “yes” and of course we were all afraid Michelle would grab the spotlight again and play diva and recant her decision, but she said “yes” too.
And we wrapped it up. The judge said specifically, ‘remember all those times I told you you couldn’t talk about this stuff? Well, now you can! Say anything you want!’. Toby also mentioned that the attorneys might want to come in and ask us some informal questions as we packed up (and got our phones back, which they took during deliberations), but they were just as fed up as we were and took off.
And that was my jury experience! I thought it was fascinating, and sad, and I’m glad I did it and I shouldn’t have to do it again for at least another six years.
Oh, PS: one of the funny things that happened once was I was in the first floor bathroom, and there were two court officers in there talking, and another guy finished up what he was doing and as he left, one officer said, “Wash your hands, nasty!” And the other officer and I cracked up and I said, “see, I’m washing my hands”.
The Toast Point Page 