Law and Order - Part Two

Trials are boring. Seldom to be found are the anxious television moments where a witness sits on the stand crying or yelling or, really, showing any emotion what-so-ever. Instead, trials consist of many witnesses coming up and telling pretty much the same story you’ve already heard a handful of times from the others.

Prosecution: Can you tell the court where you are currently employed?
Witness: Church’s Chicken.
Prosecution: And is this where you were employed on May 24th of 2009?
Witness: Yes.
Prosecution: What are your duties at Church’s Chicken?
Witness: I cook chicken and wait on customers.
Prosecution: Which were you doing on May 24th of 2009?
Witness: Waiting on customers.
Prosecution: And which shift were you working that night?
Witness: The second shift.
Prosecution: And what hours are those?
Witness: I start at 4:30 and get off at 10:00.
Prosecution: Can you tell us where you were, in Church’s, when Christopher Broadnax walked in…
Defense: (standing) Objection, your honor.
Judge: Sustained.
Prosecution: Can you tell us where you were, in the Church’s, when the robber came in?
Witness: I was sitting in the lobby with Danny and Gracious.
Prosecution: (Goes through a stack of photos that are in no particular order and lying in a big messy stack on the table in front of the witness stand) What do you see in this photo?
Witness: The lobby in Church’s Chicken.
Prosecution: And is this how the lobby would have looked on the afternoon of May 24th, 2009?
Witness: Yes.
Prosecution: Can you point to where you were sitting when the robber came in?
Witness: (pointing to photo) Right there, near the small wall separating the registers from the lobby.
Prosecution: Can you walk us through what happened?

Slowly and meticulously the questions kept coming and coming. There were four people, all employees,
in Church’s Chicken on the intersection of Taylor Street and Two Notch Road the night it was robbed at gunpoint. Each of the four employees came up to the stand and answered, for the most part, the exact same questions. A man came in around 5:30 wearing a black, white, and green striped shirt. He pulled a gun and forced one of the employees to empty the registers into a plastic grocery bag. Although wearing a mask, they all noticed that he had a lazy eye. After he had the money from the registers he calmly said “Have a great night” and cooly walked out the door.

As soon as he made his way around the side of the building one of the employees ran out the door to follow him. As he made his way to the back of the building he saw an old gray pick-up truck start its engine. The driver looked directly at him and pulled away. The employee then ran back to the front of the store where one of the other employees was already on the phone with 911. He passed along the description of the truck and which way it headed.

Within three minutes the police were at Church’s. Just a few minutes later they had already pulled over a gray truck on Two Notch Road fitting the description that had been put out on the radio. The employee who had chased the robber around the building was escorted to the scene and immediately stuck his finger out the window saying “That’s the driver and that’s the guy who robbed us!”

Before he had been escorted to the truck the police had pulled it over and found a man in the passenger side floor board hiding. He was wearing a striped shirt, had a lazy eye, and was sitting on a bag containing a gun, a mask, and an assortment of bills.

The first thing they tell you when you begin jury duty is that you need to keep an open mind and listen to all the facts of the case. The defendant is innocent until proven guilty and it is the burden of the prosecution to prove this guilt beyond a reasonable doubt. The defense has no obligation to prove anything.

Well, they didn’t. I spent three days wondering what in the world we were doing in that courtroom. The defense spent three days pointing out there were no fingerprints taken from the scene and no DNA samples taken from the gun, mask, or money. They tried to imply that the driver of the truck had committed the robbery and that the defendant had been picked up from the roadside, after having just bought some crack cocaine, before the police pulled them over. The crack cocaine, they argued, was why he was hidden in the floorboard. He was supposedly trying to chew it all down before being caught with it.

Yeah, except that the shirt, the lazy eye, and the bag were all awfully hard to look past. While the trial seemed to drag on forever I was certain that our deliberations would be fast and easy.

I was wrong.