Post by Robin Hood on Mar 22, 2013 14:14:09 GMT -6
I hung a jury last night... ;D
Cops pull over a young black couple in the Texas panhandle back in Oct. 2011, the cop pulls the driver out of the car and places him in the squad, asks the GF a few questions, goes back to the squad and issues a couple of warnings to the gentleman, hands him the warnings and NEVER tells him he is free to go, but instead asks him if he can ask him a few questions... the guy says yes... Cop asks him if he has been arrested, he says yes, cop asks a few more basically irrelevant questions and decides a drug dog needs to be called in... so at this point his "reasonable" suspicion consists of extra air fresheners, McD's bags, and energy drinks...
Drug dog shows up and alerts on car, they do a hand search on the side of the road and find almost $14k in cash. At this point they arrest the couple and take the couple and the car back to the DPS barn... at which point they do a more thorough search of the car. They find a notebook, a vacuum sealer, three cell phones and some blunts. NO DRUGS. The cops after finding no drugs in the car decide to search the contents of the cell phones... they find some incriminating stuff.
They charge the couple with Money Laundering.
We get to court and the prosecution paints the picture of these guys being big time traffickers of pot... They called in three of witnesses and allege that the money contained in the car came from illegal methods... because of the text messages contained on the cell phones and the fact they are going to California to meet some dude. The vacuum sealer is actually mentioned in one of the text messages.
So the jury is 7 white women all over 50, one Hispanic lady about 50 and a young lady about 30, and three men, myself, a young man about 30 and a Hispanic gentleman about 50.
So we listen to the trial and now are in deliberations... I CAN NOT get past the evidence contained on the cell phones being obtained without a warrant, I think it is unreasonable to search the contents of the cell phones especially after they found NO DRUGS... I may have felt differently if they had found something... but what they presented to us in trial was one little bitty part of a leaf that could have been ANYTHING. Not to mention the prosecution was asking us to draw the conclusion that the money they had was obtained from illegal activity... which IMHO their case was full of holes... not to mention the way they were telling us that the money was obtained was via text messages contained on the cell phones. At the point of finding no drugs in the vehicle if they wanted to search the contents of the phones I don't think it is unreasonable to require the cops to get a warrant for the cell phone contents, which with one phone call I am sure they could have easily obtained.
So in good conscience I could NOT render a guilty verdict based simply on the fact that included in the jury instructions it was stated any evidence we thought could have been obtained in violation of the COTUS had to be disregarded... I might have been able to make the stretch if they had actually found drugs in the car... but the simple fact that a drug dog alerted to the car was not enough for me.
Do I think these two were up to no good... yes. BUT, I do feel their rights were violated by the search of the cell phone contents without a warrant after they found no drugs... no matter what was contained on the cell phones.
The final vote was 10-2... me and the older Hispanic lady were the Not Guiltys.
At least I was not alone in my belief that these folks' rights were violated. There was LOTS of STUPID in the deliberations... there was even jurors that argued that the Patriot Act no matter how much they disliked it gave them the right to search the cell phones. And we had a couple of jurors that wanted them strung up simply because they "were drug dealers"... I guess fuck their rights as Americans. One juror even said "They wouldn't have arrested them if they weren't guilty"
Cops pull over a young black couple in the Texas panhandle back in Oct. 2011, the cop pulls the driver out of the car and places him in the squad, asks the GF a few questions, goes back to the squad and issues a couple of warnings to the gentleman, hands him the warnings and NEVER tells him he is free to go, but instead asks him if he can ask him a few questions... the guy says yes... Cop asks him if he has been arrested, he says yes, cop asks a few more basically irrelevant questions and decides a drug dog needs to be called in... so at this point his "reasonable" suspicion consists of extra air fresheners, McD's bags, and energy drinks...
Drug dog shows up and alerts on car, they do a hand search on the side of the road and find almost $14k in cash. At this point they arrest the couple and take the couple and the car back to the DPS barn... at which point they do a more thorough search of the car. They find a notebook, a vacuum sealer, three cell phones and some blunts. NO DRUGS. The cops after finding no drugs in the car decide to search the contents of the cell phones... they find some incriminating stuff.
They charge the couple with Money Laundering.
We get to court and the prosecution paints the picture of these guys being big time traffickers of pot... They called in three of witnesses and allege that the money contained in the car came from illegal methods... because of the text messages contained on the cell phones and the fact they are going to California to meet some dude. The vacuum sealer is actually mentioned in one of the text messages.
So the jury is 7 white women all over 50, one Hispanic lady about 50 and a young lady about 30, and three men, myself, a young man about 30 and a Hispanic gentleman about 50.
So we listen to the trial and now are in deliberations... I CAN NOT get past the evidence contained on the cell phones being obtained without a warrant, I think it is unreasonable to search the contents of the cell phones especially after they found NO DRUGS... I may have felt differently if they had found something... but what they presented to us in trial was one little bitty part of a leaf that could have been ANYTHING. Not to mention the prosecution was asking us to draw the conclusion that the money they had was obtained from illegal activity... which IMHO their case was full of holes... not to mention the way they were telling us that the money was obtained was via text messages contained on the cell phones. At the point of finding no drugs in the vehicle if they wanted to search the contents of the phones I don't think it is unreasonable to require the cops to get a warrant for the cell phone contents, which with one phone call I am sure they could have easily obtained.
So in good conscience I could NOT render a guilty verdict based simply on the fact that included in the jury instructions it was stated any evidence we thought could have been obtained in violation of the COTUS had to be disregarded... I might have been able to make the stretch if they had actually found drugs in the car... but the simple fact that a drug dog alerted to the car was not enough for me.
Do I think these two were up to no good... yes. BUT, I do feel their rights were violated by the search of the cell phone contents without a warrant after they found no drugs... no matter what was contained on the cell phones.
The final vote was 10-2... me and the older Hispanic lady were the Not Guiltys.
At least I was not alone in my belief that these folks' rights were violated. There was LOTS of STUPID in the deliberations... there was even jurors that argued that the Patriot Act no matter how much they disliked it gave them the right to search the cell phones. And we had a couple of jurors that wanted them strung up simply because they "were drug dealers"... I guess fuck their rights as Americans. One juror even said "They wouldn't have arrested them if they weren't guilty"
