JURY DUTY
Prompt - Jury Duty : Write a short story or poem that takes place in a courtroom
We had all listened to the same people. To the same statements, facts, opinions, evidence, interviews, summings up, instruction. We had all been in the same room at the same times. We were all mature adults, with different life experiences and outlooks of course, but all civilised members of the same society. So how could we come to such radically different conclusions?
A pandemic lockdown jury is not like other juries. It's still fifteen individuals trying their best to carry out their civic duty, to reach a mutual decision that would see justice served. But we are not in the courtroom. The action is one step removed from our presence, shown on a big screen. We can not observe one another's reactions, or easily talk with each other. Our jury room is in a cinema, we are very, very socially distanced, our small band scattered across seating intended for two or three hundred. Even when we are divorced from the judge's command and told to come to our decision, we remain in our seats. Our faces are shown, slightly fuzzily, on screen, but there is no way to look your fellow jurors in the eye and question their motivation.
The defendant had fingered his ex, after a party, when she was asleep. It was perfectly clear that this was non consensual sexual activity, which is exactly what the law said he should be prosecuted for. There were two witnesses who said that she hadn't looked comfortable around him during the party. There was another who the defendant had confided in immediately after the incident, after the young woman who had been subjected to the assault had stormed off in a whirl of anger and upset, and she said it was clear he knew he had done something wrong. Even he knew.
So when we went around the room and announced what verdict each, as individuals, were leaning towards, it was a major shock to find that only I and two others considered him guilty. The rest a mix of not proven and not guilty. And that the explanations given for these verdicts was doubt over the credibility of the witnesses, despite one corroborating the evidence of the other, and, and this was the one that left me almost speechless in it's lack of consideration for the young woman who'd had the bravery to take her case to the police, that the lad who'd assaulted her had had some reason to think that she might have wanted him to.
What? Is that a real thing in these people's heads? That she MIGHT have wanted it, despite keeping her distance, so they'd give him the benefit of the doubt? And while the majority of jurors who expressed this view were, no surprise, men, there were women who joined in to, which shocked me. The women who did were middle aged. Of the three of us who stuck to our guilty verdict throughout, I was the only man, there was one middle aged woman, and one younger who was perhaps the same age as the victim. The latter stormed off looking angry at the end. I sympathised.
It didn't take long. The three of us tried our best, but convinced nobody. No one changed their mind, we were same after a couple of hours as we were at the start. As that intransigence, and the wholly different world views they represented, was clearly fixed I had to give way in the end and allow a majority verdict of not guilty. Even though he was. If I had been able to make eye contact, to engage with consciences, maybe some difference could have been made. No wonder women don't bother to report sexual assaults so often...
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