DM's Jury Duty

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For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places.

Day 27

Defence for Accused A's Summing Up and Argument, Continued

Defence continued deconstructing the 40 strands of circumstance given in Crown's argument. When he'd reached the end, Defence indicated that the cable of evidence proposed by Crown had not a single strand that stood up to examination, and that on that basis, there was no alternative but to find Accused A not guilty.

Defence for Accused B's Summing Up and Argument

Defence for Accused B mentioned the lack of any motive for Accused B to kill Deceased. Defence indicated a substantial component of the evidence against Accused B was Witness 32's statement that he'd heard Accused B say Accused A "owed him big time". Defence reminded us that this was the witness who had scribbled notes on his hand in a previous hearing to "refresh his memory" rather than admit he couldn't remember anything, who had insisted he had not written a note because he had typewritten it, who had compiled this note against Accused B after hearing about the murder investigation and said that he did such notes as a matter of course with all employees, but that this was the only one he'd made. Defence called Witness 32, "in short, the most unreliable and least credible witness in this entire trial".

Defence reiterated Defence for Accused A's words about Witness 34, who said Accused A had asked him to take Accused B to the station just before the meeting with Deceased. If Accused B was not even supposed to be there during the meeting between Accused A and Deceased, how could he have been privy to a murder plot?

Defence then provided alternative explanations for the three most important pieces of evidence against Accused B:

Accused B's fingerprint in the street directory in Deceased's car. Defence cited evidence that on three occasions Deceased had driven Accused B to jobs, and that at other times Deceased had driven him between the station and Business Premises. Defence reminded us that Witness 13 said he could not even hazard a guess as to when the fingerprint was left in the book - it could have been any time from when the book was new (a 1998 edition) to when the car was found. Defence said that clearly we could not rule out that the print was left there on another occasion, not necessarily in the act of dumping the car.
The purchase by Accused A of cigarettes of the brand Accused B smoked from the service station at 9:25pm. Defence cited the evidence of British American Tobacco that 684,000 packets of that brand of cigarettes were sold in Sydney in that month - scarcely an unusual brand. Accused A could easily have been buying them for someone else, not Accused B. Even if they were for Accused B, there was nothing to say Accused B was present at the time. He saw Accused B regularly enough, and there was evidence that he regularly bought cigarettes for him, so it could have been a purchase with the intention to give them to Accused B later.
The phone calls made on Accused B's mobile phone by Accused A, in the area where the body was found. Defence stated that this proved Accused B's phone was there, but not necessarily Accused B. A likely scenario was that Accused A had dropped Accused B at the station, and Accused B had simply left his phone in Accused A's car. Defence indicated that this explanation was supported by the evidence, in that the message left on Accused B's voicemail was not accessed for about an hour after the phone signalled that a message was waiting - consistent with Accused A having the phone and ringing to clear the message simply in order to prevent the phone beeping every few minutes to indicate a waiting message. Defence also cited the phone records, which showed the number from which the message was left, and showed that over the next two days, Accused B never returned the call to that number - another indication that Accused A heard the message instead.

Defence said that, no matter what the evidence said about Accused A, there was nothing proven against Accused B. Also, even if Accused B helped dispose of Deceased's body, that did not make him party to murder. There was in fact nothing even suggesting that Accused B had helped plan and commit the murder, and on that basis alone there was no way we could find him guilty. Add to that the fact that there were reasonable explanations for the evidence pointing towards Accused B dumping the body, and there was simply no way to support a guilty verdict against Accused B.

This was really a stunning argument by Defence for Accused B, who had been quiet throughout most of the rest of the trial, only cross-examining a handful of witnesses, and leaving most of the cross-examinations to Defence for Accused A. Up to now, I had been reasonably confident that Accused B had been involved in at least dumping the body, if not also executing the murder, but now I could see that there were other reasonable explanations. Several other jurors commented that they thought Defence for Accused B had done a brilliant job of summing up and arguing.

The judge indicated that he would begin his summing up the next day, and dismissed us a bit early for the day.

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