Now, at along last, I can divulge details about the trial on which I was a member of the jury.
There were three counts. The first, and most serious of the three, was domestic abuse against a man whose wife said he came home very drunk one night. He started arguing that the food she made was bad and he began throwing things. She tried to calm him, but she said he pushed her to the floor and then punched her on the face. He then kicked her several times, she said. She claimed she tried to call police but he had ripped the telephone line from the wall, so she locked herself in her bathroom and used her cell phone. Her husband was arrested that night. He, too, had called the police.
The second count was for the man having violated a "stay away" order connected to the criminal case pending on the first charge. She said she was in bed asleep one night last year and she awoked to find him standing over her. He said he wanted to get some of his things. She said she went into the bathroom, closed the door and called the police. He left before they arrived, but he was later arrested.
The third count was strangely attached to the domestic abuse charge: The defendant is accused of being publicly intoxicated and committing battery upon the person of the owner of a restaurant/check cashing establishment in Oakland. The charge stated he had cashed his check in the check-cashing section of the building and was loud, drunk and raging. The owner claimed the man was outraged they could not give him a receipt. The owner said he offered to return the check in exchange for the money but that the man did not want his check back. He said the defendant hit him and he fell.
I was steeling myself for some horror stories, but the end result was startlingly different. I don't cotton to anyone hitting a woman. Ever.
In this case, with the cards stacked against him for abusing alcohol and being an ugly drunk, I (and my fellow jurors) could find no evidence to suggest that he ever did hit his wife (on the occasion for which the charge was brought) and no evidence was entered that could contradict the defendant's claim that he was struck first by the owner of the restaurant/check cashing establishment. The "stay away" violation was a no-brainer. He had been ordered to stay no less than 100 yards from his wife for three years...and that doesn't end until August 2010.
The prosecution's witness was a non-English-speaking woman about 5'4". She was scrappy-looking and has obviously lived a hard life. By "hard", I mean I think she's done a lot of heavy drinking. She also is only a few inches shorter than her husband but looks to be solid and able to go rounds with him (and we were given evidence of MANY incidents in which either of the two were arrested individually for hitting or attacking the other). To me, her biggest liability was a "false face"...she adapted a mournful look which dropped away from time to time when she actually veered away from her "account" of what happened that night. This woman changed her story several times. She said he pushed her and she fell on the floor next to her son's bicycle. The next time she told it, she fell ON the bicycle. She claimed he used his fist on her face and that he kicked her several times.
His story was that he had come home from work and was sitting on his bed taking off his work shoes. He said he could tell she was drunk and that she stood in front of him in silence for a moment or two. She then punched him in the nose which, he said, bled profusely. He stood up to leave the apartment but she blocked him. He said he took her head in both hands (one hand on either side of her face) and then pushed her. He was at the door and on the other side of the bedroom wall was his son's bed, beside which was his son's bicycle. When he pushed her, he said he thought she hit the edge of his son's bed and then fell onto the bicycle on her right side. He then left the apartment to calm down. He returned a short while later to get his car keys and she was on the phone talking to the police.
There are many moments of conflicted/conflicting testimony, but the discrepancies were what mattered. Photos that night showed her with blood smeared on the right side of her face (there were no left-side photos). Most of the blood looked dried. It was also smeared. There was one wound above her right eye that looked like injury, but nothing more. No photos of her stomach were taken. Her clothing was clean and blood-free and no account had been given of her having changed. One of the responding officers remarked that her son, who had been in bed, said that she had fallen onto the bicycle.
Photos of him showed redness under his nose...a blood trail and some dried blood. While the woman had claimed her husband had ripped their house telephone from the wall, police noted the house phone was fully functional. A shirt the man had been wearing was covered in blood. There was also blood on the sheet of the bed. When the officers arrived they found the woman on the bed and assumed it was her blood. The defendant said he never saw her bleeding and that it was his blood which gushed from his nose.
No photos were ever taken of the bloody sheets or shirts. The wife said that when he hit her she was standing directly in front of him, face to face. The injury above her right eye could not have been inflicted by a punch from his right hand. She said he hit her with his right hand.
Bottom line: All 12 of us believed the couple had been in a co-dependent relationship that centered on alcohol and personal abuse. We were forced by law to acquit the defendant on all battery charges as he claimed self-defense (which, in the presence of history of violence, says extra force -- and even pursuit -- is permissible if someone is afraid bodily injury may be inflicted upon him).
In the incident at the restaurant/check-cashing establishment, not one witness was produced as to what happened. We didn't even get to hear testimony from the cashier who had cashed the check and told him he could not have a receipt because their machine was broken. When he asked her to write it out, she said she could not. She sent him to another woman and that woman is the one who called the manager and the police. She said he was drunk and angry and that their customers were upset. She never saw who hit who as she was busy doing other things.
Telling bits of testimony and evidence convinced us this man -- who has serious problems with drinking and anger no matter how you look at it -- was badly treated by the owner of the restaurant. The owner admitted he tried to give the defendant his check back. In examination, however, he said he held out the check with one hand while trying to take the money with his other hand. He said he had to forcibly pull the money out of the defendant's hand "and may have grazed his cheek" in the process. That, by law, is BATTERY. That, by law, is the first punch. And the defendant, angry and now enraged, decked the owner on the chin. The owner fell to the floor. The defendant then turned back to the cashier and asked if he could NOW have a receipt. The owner got up and ran to his office. He returned within less than a minute with a stun device. He stunned the defendant, from behind, three separate times. Someone then came from the kitchen and helped the owner eject the defendant from the building. Photos clearly showed the marks from the stun device on the defendant's back and shoulder. Photos taken a few days later showed severe bruises where he had been stunned.
The prosecution (district attorney's office representing the People of the State of California) had little to work with, unfortunately, in the way of evidence and witnesses. He told us afterward that he had attempted to get the defendant's son, but that the son no longer lives with either parent (the wife is actually the stepmother) and they could not get to him to serve him. No witnesses were ever identified from the check-cashing establishment. And SADLY, neither of the lead police officers at the two incidents was available to give testimony. One officer who responded to the apartment incident gave testimony to a lot of details NOT in his police report. The defense attorney got him to admit he had done a bad report. He was fresh out of police academy where, he claimed, he had gotten good training for assessing domestic violence. The defense attorney asked him if he thought his training for detecting domestic violence was as good and thorough as the training he received for writing reports!!!
We heard "her" story, we heard the secondary police officer's story and we heard the defendant's story. The one who came off as being the most credible was the defendant. Even more credible than the police officer who said he saw no evidence that the defendant had been bleeding. When showed the photos he denied seeing anything looking out of the ordinary under the defendant's nose. The rest of us saw the blood, as did the defense attorney.
Even though I thought the defendant more credible and, in the case of how he was handled by the police, badly treated both at his home and in the restaurant, I reckon he's a pretty ugly drunk with a tendency to throw stuff around and cause injury, either on purpose or by accident.
One thing that got my attention and perked me up considerably: Both lawyers asked their clients (husband and wife) to recount "other" incidents they could recall (many of them a matter of police record, by the way, and not disputed by either attorney). The defendant said that he came home from work one afternoon and was stunned to see his wife dressed in combat boots, camouflage pants and shirt, and wearing a beret and a black mask (like a ski mask). He said he just stood there not knowing what to think or say when she lunged at him and started beating on him. She knocked him down, he said, and then leaned over toward a piece of furniture from which she drew a machete!!! He said he rolled her over and stepped on the hand holding the machete and yelled at his son, who was watching, to run from the house. He said he then took the machete and began to leave when he felt something pass his right ear. She had thrown a hatchet at him and it lodged in the door. When the police arrived and entered the apartment, he said she attacked one of the police officers.
That was never called into question as factual and both attorneys referenced it in their closing arguments.
I was AMAZED.
We had a good lunch yesterday as we were treated to a nice meal at le Cheval, a fine French-Vietnamese restaurant a few blocks from the courthouse. It's a popular spot for Oakland politicos/movers and shakers. Today, we had sandwiches ordered for us (we chose what we wanted). They arrived just as we were being dismissed following the reading of our verdicts.
I came home and went to bed. I'm exhausted.
