My First Jury Trial

By Nicole Black

I learned a lot from my first jury trial. I learned that winning doesn’t necessarily mean a not guilty verdict. I learned that people lie on the stand and sometimes, that’s a good thing. And, I learned that justice isn’t always what it seems.

At the time, I was an Assistant Public Defender. My client was accused of breaking into a car and trying to steal a cell phone. He was charged with Petit Larceny, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 1 year in jail and Attempted Criminal Mischief, a misdemeanor punishable by up to 90 days in jail. This wasn’t his first arrest. The judge knew him well, made it clear that he wanted to send my client to jail for 1 year and refused to consent to any plea bargains.

Because it was a night court, the jury trial began at 10 p.m. Trust me, no one wanted to be there.

After picking a jury, the People’s first witness took the stand. He was a cop-wanna-be—in other words, an off duty security officer who lived in the apartment complex where the car was parked. He claimed that he watched my client attempt to open every car door until he found an unlocked car. As my client entered the car, the witness ran out to the parking lot and dragged him from the car.

On cross, I asked the cop-wanna-be if he was able to see anything in the car, given that it was dark outside. He insisted he could see everything. I acted incredulous and then encouraged him to offer a detailed description of the interior of the car. He happily obliged and waxed and waned for a good 5 minutes.

Next up, the complainant, who testified that nothing had been stolen from her car. She then offered a description of the interior of her car that differed greatly from that of the prior witness. In fact, she seemed genuinely confused each time I asked her to confirm a feature of her vehicle (without citing the source of the description.) For example, I asked if her dashboard was tan, and she replied that it was gray. I asked if her car had manual locks and she replied that they were automatic. By the end of the cross, it was obvious that the cop-wanna-be hadn’t really seen much of anything.

The jury was out 15 minutes and returned their verdict at 3 a.m.–not guilty of the top count, but guilty of Attempted Criminal Mischief.

What happened next was definitely not something you’d see in Law & Order. My client pumped his fist in the air and whooped. The judge scowled and immediately sentenced him to 90 days in jail. My client gleefully yanked a garbage bag full of clothes from underneath the table, and ran out to the court deputies with his arms extended, yelling over his shoulder “Thanks, Ms. Black.” The jurors looked downright confused.

It wasn’t the jury trial I’d envisioned in law school. The verdict was rendered in the middle of the night, a witness lied, and my client was convicted and sentenced to jail. But he was ecstatic about it, so I’d done my job and, oddly enough, in its own strange way, justice was served.

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