More about the jury system OR And justice for all -- the low-cost way

I wrote about our jury system a bit recently when I posted on the forthcoming reduction of pay for jurors in Minnesota District Courts.

We all know that the jury system is not perfect and I suppose that this reduction will not make it any more perfect.

I recently had the opportunity [??] of serving as a juror in the Second Judicial District [i.e., Ramsey County]. I was not selected to be on any jury.

I did get to fill out a questionnaire for the Foster case, but they managed to select a jury before they got around to interviewing me. It is probably just as well as I suspect that I knew [or at least thought I knew] too much before hand to be a fair and impartial juror.

Now a jury has been impaneled in Kandiyohi County to hear the case against Olga Franco for the accident with the school bus which killed four children and unleashed the expected bigotry from Governor Plenty and Marty Seifert. [Previous posts: first, second]

I wish them well.

When I was in college I studied both American History and American Government and we learned about the various checks and balances in our system. Two of the lesser mentioned ones are the executive pardon and jury nullification. The former usually does not get much mention until January 21 of presidential inauguration years [Scooter Libby, Alfredo Gonzalez and who else next year? Cheney?] and I would bet that many people had never heard of the latter before the O.J. Simpson case. But they are important.

A jury returned what probably was the only verdict it could in the Foster case. Those who are convinced that justice was served poorly can only hope that there will be a Higher Court later on.

Jim Ragsdale of the DPP wrote about the Foster case on Sunday’s editorial page. I commend it to your attention. As he noted,

Aaron Foster was found "not guilty" of third-degree, unintentional murder. That is not the verdict Barbara Winn's relatives wanted, and they understandably erupted after it was read in court. Nor did it fit the "cold-case" narrative the Winn-Foster matter had acquired in the media, including a moving program on "Dateline NBC" in May titled "Justice for Barbara."

But it was a reasonable verdict based on the remaining evidence of Winn's death in her Maplewood home in 1981. It was a splash of cold water on our faces, reminding us the courtroom has its own rules and ethics, chief among them that the prevailing narrative doesn't matter. What matters is the evidence; the presumption of innocence for anyone charged of a crime; and the need to prove a crime "beyond a reasonable doubt" before sending a defendant off to prison.

Those standards protect us all but do little to assuage the pain felt by children who lost a mother and who feel her killer got off.

Some people suspected that the whole matter was brought up so late as a result of Bill Finney challenging Lord Fletcher for sheriff two years ago. There is not doubt that Finney’s reputation has been smirched and this verdict will not clear that up. Ragsdale notes that Finney has said that he feels damaged and that he did nothing wrong.

The final paragraph of Ragsdale’s column seems a fair summary of the whole matter, at least as far as judicial matters are concerned,

That is where the story begins and ends — with the tragic death of Barbara Winn. The cold-case narrative did not end where the momentum was pushing it — to a conviction. But the jury was not part of a TV program. They made a tough call based on the facts presented to them, and that's why we stand when they walk past us.

We can only hope that the folks in Willmar can reach the right conclusion about Ms. Franco.

Of course they won’t be able to do that unless the lawyers on both sides give their best efforts and the judge keeps things fair.

And those $10/day jurors will be earning their pay.