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Vote 2The previous vote had been left on the whiteboard, and someone said, "Ooh, it's changed already."
Accused A: 8 Guilty, 1 Not Guilty, 2 Undecided.
Accused B: 0 Guilty, 9 Not Guilty, 2 Undecided.
Since Accused B was now quite close to a verdict, we decided to concentrate on him first. We needed to structure our discussion, and Juror A took the lead by suggesting we discuss the points on which the two Undecided people were undecided. He took care to point out that we weren't trying to convince the Undecided people, but rather to air their concerns so that we all had a chance to understand what they were - which could possibly lead to more people agreeing with their position.
As it happened, however, one Undecided was happy to go along with Not Guilty, while the other needed only a few minutes of discussion about the possibilities of Accused B either not having intended to kill or not even being present to also be satisfied with Not Guilty. Someone asked if we should now consider Accused B to have been settled finally, but most of us agreed that we still had time to go over Accused A, and some facts or opinions might come to light during that discussion that may change how people view Accused B's case.
And so we turned to the trickier case of Accused A. Since we were still effectively split 8-3, we decided a more comprehensive dissection of the evidence was in order. We started by listing known facts on the whiteboard, in two columns: those that pointed at Accused A's guilt, and those that pointed at his innocence. With prompting from the other jurors, I write up the points on the board. The guilty column filled quickly, with items such as the purchase of chain, lie to girlfriend about buying chain, calling and driving towards the Boat Hire Business, and so on. We got to about 15 points.
We'd had a shorter than usual day, since Juror A and I had other important things to do this morning, and we hadn't assembled until lunch time, so we didn't get much further than that. There had been a lot of discussion during all these events though, and things were beginning to crystallise. I sensed that tomorrow might well be the day we reached a final verdict, but that Juror K was the most unconvinced of Accused A's guilt, and it might take a considerable effort for all of us to reach a unanimous decision.
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