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Old 03-24-2011, 08:06 AM
FTG-05 FTG-05 is offline
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I've been called for jury once, for a murder trial, Sept. '99.

I ended being the JF. Once the trial went to the jury, we went around the room for every witness and discussed what we heard them say. It never failed that all of us at one time or other missed something important. As JF, I was always last to speak.

The case came down to forensics and one witness. The prosecutor had two witnesses (outside the professionals), and one turned on him on the stand. It was very interesting to watch this person "fall apart like a cheap watch" as my uncle used to say. Since they had a recording of a discusion when he was in the hospital (he was wounded during the murder), his credibility on the stand was zero.

The murderer ditched the gun but didn't change his pants. They found blood spray that matched the victim. We convicted him after a day and a half and we only voted once - I refused to allow them to vote until we had gone around the room on all witnesses.

I'll never forget the name of the murderer - Clifford Steiger, but I can't for the life of me recall the name of the victim.

Steiger's probably out by now, he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for 2nd degree murder; but with good behaviour he's probably out by now.

As soon as we rendered our verdict and went back into the jury room, the homicide detective came into the room and told us that we didn't know what we had done: Steiger had killed is first victim at 17 (he was in his early 30's then) and they had been trying to get him for murder for over 10 years.

I'm also convinced that the defense attorney threw the case - I could have defended that guy better than he did. For one, he let an engineer on the jury (me) plus an NRA life member (also me). When it came down to understanding how the kill shot (contact shot) worked with what gun, I was able to better explain it in the jury when we could discuss it. I was also able to explain the one hour DNA testimony by one of the prosecutor's witnesses. Once you get past all the mumbo-jumbo, it's not hard.
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