I was foreperson in a jury where the accused claimed his car had been stolen, and it was not he who fled the scene of the accident. During deliberation, two jurors were reluctant to say he was guilty. So, I asked them a simple question, "Do you think he did it, or did you believe his testimony on the stand?" During the course of the trial, defendant had taken the stand in his own defense, and one or two of his friends testified, too. It was pretty easy to conclude that defendant was lying.
Anyway, the two reluctant jurors were of a mind that the state had not proved its case. So, back to my question to them, "Do you think he did it?" They said, oh yes, they thought he did it. Then I asked the follow-up, "Do you have any doubts about your conclusion?" They did not! They thought defendant was lying , they didn't have any trouble concluding he'd done it, they just didn't think the standard of proof had been met.
So, I told them that there wouldn't have been a trial, if the state had a movie. That our function, as a jury, was to reason through the evidence and reach a conclusion. That it was okay to doubt, but our doubt had to be based on a reason ... on evidence. That if any of us as a juror though defendant was guilty, and didn't have any reasonable doubt on that point, that it was our duty to just say so.
The jury was unanimous for conviction. And, there was no "proof" of the type that wtc911 seems to think is necessary in order to reach a conclusion.
Exactly.
I was only about 25 at the time on mine. While I wasn’t the elected foreman, I became the de facto one during deliberations.
We had at least one person on the jury (might have been two) that thought that the main defendant might really have been using that triple beam balance chemistry lab type scale (this was before electronic scales became common) for weighing lock parts, as the defense claimed. Did I mention the trial was for for a guy who was accused of buying and selling cocaine at kilogram levels, who was unemployed, living a very high on the hog upper middle class lifestyle, whose only previous occupation was locksmith?
Yeah. Weighing lock parts. Right. Huge credibility killer there. We got a good laugh out of that.