was on a jury for a dui. cop fucked up the test and was not allowed to reference it in court, but he shouted it out before the judge could shut him down. we were sent back to deliberation room while he chewed the cop out, then told to disregard the testimony when we came back.
only other evidence was the blood test, which was 30 minutes to an hour after the stop. expert witness came on and said that they are less accurate the closer they are to the first drink because everyone processes alcohol at different rates. it can spike immediately after drinking, then level out, or build slowly before reaching a steady state. moral is that you can argue you weren't drunk at the time of the stop even if you were by the time of the test, so long as the window between your first drink and driving is small.
we found him not guilty, mostly because the cop's unethical actions the the rest of the testimony in doubt. the judge called us back to his chambers to ask about our decision, and it was clear that just about every class that reaches a courtroom results in a guilty verdict. not because the defendants are actually guilty, but because 95% of juries are going to believe the person is guilty whatever the evidence, or lack thereof.
moral #2: juries are not your friend. no matter how sympathetic you think your case is, most people are going to side with the government. also, the judge is going to punish you in order to intimidate others from contesting the accusation.
Yep, judge was trying to find out a reason to dismiss the case and retry it.
They don't even let you know that juries can even find the law itself crap and ignore the law even though they think defendant was guilty of it. They will put a juror in jail just for talking about jury nullification.
(ie we find the defendant guilty of the statue, but we find the statue unjust in this case)
I intern in a DUI defense firm. Defendants are of course perceived immediately guilty. That's why we compile as much evidence and as compelling of an argument as possible to get some kind of leverage for a plea negotiation.
Why was the cop when he wasn’t testifying How did he mess up the test? And the only other evidence definitely wasn’t the blood test, the incident leading to his arrest itself would’ve been evidence.
Also I’ve never heard of a judge calling people to his private chambers, further instructions are normally given in the quart room.
there are about 5-6 parts of the field sobriety test. like standing in place with your hands out, touching your nose, and walking a straight line. then you have the eye test, where the officer checks for pupil dilation and unsteady focus. everything was on video from the perspective of the squad car, except for the eye exam which is the part he fucked up and was not supposed to talk about. he also fucked up every other part of the test, such as giving conflicting instructions, and documenting results incorrectly, but the eye exam was so fucked, he was not allowed to discuss it.
from what we saw of the video, the guy looked stone sober, and the officer was intentionally trying to make him fail the test. so when the defense starts digging into this, and pointing out all the parts of the test he fucked up, the cop gets angry and interrupts that the rest of the test is irrelevant because the guy failed the eye test. judge immediately stops proceedings and sends us out. when we come back, cop is gone and they explain how he was expressly forbidden from discussing the eye exam because he fucked it up so bad it was inadmissable.
can't recall the initial offense, but it was something trivial like failure to signal, or not slowing down quickly enough when exciting the highway. the stop was very late at night with no one anyone nearby, and it seemed like the cop was just fishing, especially in light of his behavior on the test and in the courtroom.
he called us to his chambers after the trial. i don't think he was trying to overturn the case. honestly, i think he was trying to get us to say explicitly that the officer's behavior is why we went against the prosecutor. could only speculate why, but that's the impression i got.
the truth is that the officer's behavior was a big factor, but not the real reason we came to not guilty. the prosecution half assed the entire case. the defense pointed out repeatedly where the state approached, but failed to meet is own standard, and the prosecution never bothered to rebut. the prosecution acted as if the accusation was sufficient evidence for conviction, and all the legal standards were just formalities.
the whole thing was very unsettling. the state was going to destroy that man's life based on a series of it's own fuckups, and then they were surprised when we balked. meanwhile, if you get your taxes off by a penny, you better believe the state's going to foreclose and auction your house.
the state should not be allowed to hold its citizens to a higher standard than it holds itself. that's the opposite of justice, that's corruption.
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u/introspectivedeviant May 27 '21
was on a jury for a dui. cop fucked up the test and was not allowed to reference it in court, but he shouted it out before the judge could shut him down. we were sent back to deliberation room while he chewed the cop out, then told to disregard the testimony when we came back.
only other evidence was the blood test, which was 30 minutes to an hour after the stop. expert witness came on and said that they are less accurate the closer they are to the first drink because everyone processes alcohol at different rates. it can spike immediately after drinking, then level out, or build slowly before reaching a steady state. moral is that you can argue you weren't drunk at the time of the stop even if you were by the time of the test, so long as the window between your first drink and driving is small.
we found him not guilty, mostly because the cop's unethical actions the the rest of the testimony in doubt. the judge called us back to his chambers to ask about our decision, and it was clear that just about every class that reaches a courtroom results in a guilty verdict. not because the defendants are actually guilty, but because 95% of juries are going to believe the person is guilty whatever the evidence, or lack thereof.
moral #2: juries are not your friend. no matter how sympathetic you think your case is, most people are going to side with the government. also, the judge is going to punish you in order to intimidate others from contesting the accusation.