Let the Innocent be convicted–Lubbock DWI trial
In a recent dwi trial I asked a potential jury panel some of my normal questions in my attempt to find a fair and reasonable jury. Jury selection, or de-selection, is usually the first thing that happens as we start a trial. In a first offense, or second offense dwi trial, the jury is six (6) people. When the “trial” starts the judge usually talks to the potential jurors first for a few minutes to give them the background and some basic ideas of how the trial will work. Next the state’s attorney goes and asks questions about various things.
My experience is that most prosecutors simply use the voir dire process as a chance to try and lay out as much of the case as possible to potential jurors. Typically these prosecutors try to do things such as reduce the burden of proof, talk about “use your common sense” and tell prospective jurors that the prosecutors are not saying the citizen accused is a bad person (of course the reason for this is that if the citizen is humanized the prosecutors fear the jury might actually find somebody not guilty.
So in this trial I asked the potential jurors about a hypothetical. What would you do if you only had one option, either convict an innocent person or set a guilty person free? Out of 20 people, 7 or 8 said they would actually convict an innocent person!! I was actually somewhat shocked with the amount of people who said they would send an INNOCENT person to prison. One person said he would do that AND that he hoped he would be the person who was sent to prison to protect society. Pretty scary if you ask me, I mean think about it we want a jury to decide if the government can prove guilt BEYOND A REASONABLE DOUBT but some people really would not care about that in fact they really don’t care if a person is innocent at all. Needless to say those folks DID NOT make my jury, I can only hope that when it is their day of need they have better folks to stand up for them.