Law and Order - Part Four

How can you find innocent a man caught just five minutes after an armed robbery who fits the description provided by witnesses, has in his possession the weapon and money, and is identified by one of his victims?

You can’t.

After we all filed back into the deliberation room we sat in silence. We had been instructed not to begin discussing the trial until the bailiff had an opportunity to bring all the evidence back to our room. The rules of a courtroom are very strict and taken quite seriously. As the bailiff came in to drop off the evidence he warned us not to say a word until he had left the room and closed the door.

“If you need anything,” he explained, “there’s a notepad right here on the wall next to the door. The foreman needs to write your request on a single sheet of paper, knock on the door, and wait for me to come in and take the sheet to the judge. Please do not include any names of jurors on the sheet. Rather, identify yourselves by your juror number only.”

The evidence consisted of the gun (the rounds were kept in the courtroom as we were not allowed to have both the gun and the rounds with us at the same time), the defendant’s clothing, stacks of photographs, poster-sized maps showing the area of the robbery and attempted get-away, and a video. The video was from the dashboard camera of the police officers who pulled the gray truck over.

“I’d like to see the video one more time,” requested the woman next to me. She was a newly retired teacher from the same district I teach in as well as a former English-as-a-Second-Language teacher of our oldest son. “Could you ask the judge to send in the DVD player so we can see the video again.”

There was a silence. Everyone was thinking the same thing but only Bill spoke up.

“Why?”

“I just think a man’s life is at stake here and we should make sure we are going to make the right decision,” she explained.

“What are you hoping to see in the video that you don’t already know?” asked Marcus.

She had no answer. I think, like many of us, she felt that coming right back in after only a minute and a half would make it seem as though we hadn’t really kept an open mind about anything. She felt we needed to be thorough and discuss this in earnest.

The foreman, another teacher from my district, ripped off a half sheet of paper, scribbled out the request, and knocked on the door. Within seconds the bailiff entered, took the sheet, and began shaking his head.

“No, no, no,” he said. “This won’t do. You need to write it on a FULL sheet of paper.”

We all laughed. He did not.

So the foreman went about getting a full sheet of paper and rewriting the request for the DVD player while we all sat and discussed what difference a full sheet of paper could possibly make. We were confused but certainly not surprised. Over the past few days we had come to learn that there is a rule or procedure for everything that happens in the courtroom - from the defense attorney beginning every cross examination with “As it pleases the court, Your Honor” to the order in which the attorneys were allowed to ask their questions.

A few minutes later a woman came into the room with a laptop. She opened up Windows Media Player and warned us not to watch any other videos on the DVD. As curious as we may have been, the sun was sinking lower in the sky and we were anxious to get this thing over with.

We all huddled around the small screen and squinted as the video played. The defendant had stated he was picked up by the truck just a block before it was pulled over and we were looking to see if the truck did in fact come to a rolling stop to pick someone up. The problem was that the police car was a block and a half behind the truck and it was awfully hard to see with any detail. I don’t think anyone saw whether or not the truck’s brake lights came on but we were all content to believe we had. It didn’t matter because the defendant’s story of what happened after he was picked up involved him doing about five minutes worth of work and talking in the time it took the truck to travel half a block, pull into a parking lot, and get trapped in by police cars. Nothing of his story added up or even made sense.

I was excited because after four long days we were finally getting ready to return to our lives. I was excited because I knew there was no doubt that we were getting ready to make the right decision. Assuming we were ready to take our one and only vote, I began packing up my few belongings. That’s when I heard…

“I think we’re all certain he’s guilty of armed robbery but if you’re going to try to stick these three counts of kidnapping on him we’re all in for a LONG night.”

It was Bill. For about the hundredth time over the past four days there was an awkward silence in the room. This time, however, the silence was different. There were looks of befuddlement all around the table and a quickly growing sense of tension.

“I mean he robbed that restaurant,” said Bill. “But to add three counts of kidnapping just seems like we’re trying to pile it on him.”

As relatively quiet as I had been up to this point I could no longer contain myself.

“Piling on has nothing to do with it,” I argued. “Our job is to decide if he’s guilty of the charges brought against him.”

“We’ve already got him for armed robbery,” he said. “What’s the point of adding these other charges? I mean, I’m probably the most conservative person in this room but this wasn’t kidnapping. I think we oughta convict him of the robbery and leave the rest be.”

The room erupted. I sat and listened as he argued back and forth with a number of the other jurors. His mind was set.

“They didn’t even spend any time proving kidnapping," he argued.

“They did,” I said, probably a bit too loudly. “The prosecutor explained that kidnapping is not just taking someone but also confining them by force or threat of harm to commit a subsequent crime. That is exactly what this guy did.”

“I just don’t by it,” he said. “She spent zero time proving it.”

I was beside myself.

“Every single victim,” I argued, “All four victims, they were all asked ‘Did you feel free to leave the restaurant at any time’ and they all answered ‘No.’ What other evidence do you need? That’s confinement.”

“I don’t buy it,” he said again. “They were only in there a few minutes. That’s not kidnapping.”

“But time doesn’t matter,” I said. “The judge and prosecution both explained that confinement begins the very moment that the victim’s freedom to leave is taken from them and ends only when that freedom is restored. There’s no time limit, no magical line in the sand. Confinement is confinement.”

“I just don’t buy it.”

It was dead silent. We couldn’t even begin to imagine what we were going to do. The law was clear, the defendant had clearly broken it, and this guy was going to sit there and say “I don’t buy it” all night long.

The foreman decided that perhaps we should take a vote. I supposed that he was hoping that the pressure of being the only one to raise his hand for an innocent verdict on kidnapping would help loosen Bill up a bit. On the count of armed robbery we all raised our hands for a guilty verdict. Then the three counts of kidnapping were read separately. For the first count of kidnapping Bill was the only person to vote innocent. But on the other two another juror joined his ranks. Tempers flared.

“Why did you vote guilty on one but innocent on two others?” asked Marcus.

Juror number 56 looked up and said “Well…I think maybe since he held a gun to the one guy and forced him to put the money in the bag that was kidnapping. But the others were kind of off to the side so we could just find him guilty of one count.“ She looked over at Bill. “Doesn’t that make sense?”

I was furious. She was trying to cut a deal.

“No,” I said. “You can’t do that. He can’t be guilty of one count of kidnapping but not the others. All three victims were confined in that restaurant by gunpoint. None of them could leave.”

“How do you know that?” asked Bill. “How do you know they couldn’t leave? He never said that to them.”

“Really?” I asked. “Armed men now have to vocally tell their victims that they can’t leave in order to prove their wrongdoing? Someone sticks a gun in my face I think it’s implied I can’t leave.”

“I don’t know,” he said. “It just doesn’t seem like kidnapping to me.”

There was yet another long silence in the room. No one knew what to say. No one knew how to fix this. What seemed an hour ago to be the easiest verdict in the world had now become a stalemate that threatened to keep us there late into the night and possibly even into the next day.

Then it occurred to me that maybe Bill felt cornered. Maybe a small piece of him might consider changing his mind but that all the yelling that had taken place up to this point had left him feeling cornered and too proud to back down. Speaking into the silence, I tried a calmer approach.

“I understand your problem with this,” I said to him. “The very first thing I wrote on my notepad Tuesday as ‘What does kidnapping have to do with this case?’. I’ve always thought of kidnapping as someone abducting a person, usually a kid or a woman, and taking them off to another place. I was really surprised to hear that in South Carolina confinement counts as kidnapping. And I’m not 100% sure I agree with it, to tell you the truth. However, that’s the way the law is written and our job isn’t to interpret the law but to read the law and determine if the defendant has broken it. Broken it as it’s written. I think it’s clear he has, even it what he did doesn’t fit the definition you and I, and probably most of us here, had for kidnapping.”

He sat and thought. More silence.

“Yeah, well…” he said. “I can see where he confined them with a gun but I just don’t believe that’s kidnapping.”

“But that’s not our job here,” said another juror. “We just need to follow the laws that are in the books, the way they’ve been written.”

“I guess you’re right,” he said. “I just don’t like it.”

We took another vote and he begrudgingly raised his hand for a guilty verdict on all counts. Everyone remained quiet as the foreman filled out the indictments and signed his name.

“Well look it this way,” I finally said to Bill. “You won’t have to come back for at least another three years.”

“Oh no, “ he said, “I’m turning 65 so this is my last time in a courtroom.”

“Unless you come back as a defendant,” joked Marcus.

“Ha,” laughed Bill. “If I do I hope you bunch aren’t my jury. You’ll hang me for sure!”

Epilogue

After the verdicts were read the defense attorney requested that the judge poll the jury. We each had our number called out and had to tell the court that we did, in fact, agree with the verdicts and had not changed our minds. Bill stayed firm with a “Yes, your honor.” In a rare moment of bold behavior, I looked over at the defendant and exclaimed “Absolutely I do.”

We were invited by the judge to come back around to the gallery after our dismissal from the courtroom so that we could see the sentencing. He was of the experience that this helped to provide a sense of closure for juries. Eight of us took him up on this offer but four others felt uncomfortable seeing a man sentenced to prison based on a decision we had made for him. Even if that decision was the correct one.

Sitting in the gallery we learned that Mr. Broadnax had a long history of gun related crimes that dated back to 1979. He had spent more time in prison over the past two decades than he had outside of them. The prosecution told the judge the defendant currently had four other armed robbery indictments pending in her office. He was a bad guy.

The judge had no choice as to the sentence. Life in prison without parole. Christopher Broadnax had finally run out of strikes.

The next morning I received an e-mail from the jury foreman asking me what the sentence was. He was curious to know but couldn’t bring himself to sit in the courtroom and watch it happen. He feared he was already going to have enough problems getting to sleep that night.

I told him of the long rap sheet, the pending indictments, and the strong sentence. His e-mail back was short and simple. It simply read “Thanks.” There was no more reason to discuss, or even think about, all we had heard.

It’s sad what people in this world will do for $211.47.