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| For obvious reasons, the following diary contains no names. It also contains no specific dates or places. |
Then the judge gave us legal directions. He said that murder, as defined legally and relevant to this case, constituted an intent that the victim be killed and the person to be present and assisting or encouraging the act that kills the victim. So, if one person pulled the trigger, and a second person was present and rendering assistance by way of, for example, holding the victim down, or making sure nobody interrupted them, or simply expressing approval that the action take place, then both of those people would be guilty of murder. If a person did not share the intent to kill, or did not render any assistance or approval, then that person was not guilty of murder. In particular, a person could help dispose of the body, and still not be guilty of murder - he may then be guilty of another crime, but that was not a question before us, and should not come into our consideration.
The two Accused, although being tried together, were to be treated as separate cases and we would be required to give two separate verdicts. The judge indicated that the way the case had been presented by the Crown, we could find either:
The judge said that once we began deliberation, we would have access to all the exhibits in evidence, as well as the full transcript of all the evidence which had already been given to us. If we needed clarification on any point of evidence or law, all we had to do was ask. The court could recall witnesses if necessary to clarify any questions that we might have about the evidence as given. Apart from that, the decision was entirely up to us.
The law said that if we considered an accused to have committed the crime "beyond reasonable doubt", then we must consider him guilty. If not, we must consider him not guilty. The words "beyond reasonable doubt" had no legal intepretation, and were to be understood as plain English. It was up to us as jurors to decide what is meant by reasonable doubt.
And with that information, we were asked to retire to consider our verdicts.
Vote 1This caused a bit of debate immediately on whether "Undecided" was a valid vote. Juror A, who had been good as a foreman up to now, showed excellent leadership and had us agree to speak one at a time, around the table, rather than devolve into a free-for-all. In this manner, most of us expressed the feeling that undecided meant you must have some doubt that the accused is guilty, so by default that is really a not guilty. A few jurors said that undecided to them meant that they were fairly convinced of guilt, but just wanted to hear from everyone else what they thought, before committing to that decision as final, and that since this was clearly not a final vote, there should be no pressure to commit to a decision. Then Juror J said that our job here was to make a decision, and that saying "undecided" was not a decision. We however agreed that in this case there was no need to press people into making a decision, since the results were split anyway.
Accused A: 6 Guilty, 3 Not Guilty, 2 Undecided.
Accused B: 1 Guilty, 7 Not Guilty, 3 Undecided.
We decided that the best thing to do now was to let each juror have a say about why they thought the way they did. We went around the table again, giving each juror as much or as little time as they wanted to speak, without interruption for questions or argument from anyone else, to tell all the rest of us what they thought about the evidence and how they were thinking in coming to a verdict on each of the accused.
As fate would have it, I was selected to go first. I began with Accused B, saying that I thought he was not guilty, because of the three arguments put by his Defence Counsel, namely the alternative explanations for the fingerprint in the street directory of Deceased's car, the purchase of his brand of cigarettes by Accused A, and the calls made on his phone near where the body was found. I said that I considered each of these to be a reasonable alternative explanation, perhaps not likely, but not extremely improbable, and certainly not so improbable that I could consider Accused B to have been present beyond reasonable doubt. I also felt that, despite Defence arguments to the contrary, Accused A was capable of lifting Deceased's body and 30kg of chain unassisted, so there was no need to have Accused B help him.
On Accused A, I used the whiteboard in the jury room to present a detailed argument of what I considered the important circumstances pointing to his guilt, and I tried to give a probability for each one that there was an alternative explanation.
Then each of the other jurors had their say. Some spoke briefly, saying they basically agreed with what I said and adding one or two observations of their own. Some spoke at length, presenting their own arguments based on their interpretation of the evidence, and in most cases reaching the same conclusions. Some presented an alternative view, that they still had doubts that the evidence against Accused A was strong enough.
Juror A said he also thought Accused B had to be considered not guilty, but for completely different reasons to me. He said that he could not convince himself that Accused B was party to the plan or intent to kill Deceased, even though he believed Accused B had helped dump the body. Juror A also said that my points about Accused B possibly not being at the river that night just added to his conviction that we didn't have enough evidence to call him guilty. Juror J said that he had thought Accused B was guilty, but now after hearing me and some other jurors speak, he was also having doubts that the evidence was beyond reasonable doubt.
By the time we'd gone around everyone, it was almost time to go home. We considered holding another vote, but decided by mutual agreement that we'd have one first thing the next day, after everyone had had time to sleep on their thoughts.
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