Hugs to you, to all of you with crazy losses this summer. It is, indeed, too damn much.

it's been a full and enjoyable summer, but so full of loss that's so hard to carry.

Yes, this exactly.

OK, I'll spill details. Feel free to ask questions. This is 2 days of testimony condensed.

warning. This is a criminal case about brothers beating each other. If you are sensitive to these kind of things, please skip. I certainly do not want to trigger any bad memories for folks.

To keep it a little easier, a few abbreviations:
D= defendant
V=Victim (younger brother to the defendant)
M= mother to the D & V.
P= Prosecutor
DefAt = Defense Attorny

The D is 31, the V is 29 years old. Both large guys. The D is more muscular, the V a little less so, but not flabby/obese by any stretch. But D is taller, and stronger.

M lives in a 2 bedroom trailer home. She moved in a few months prior to the incident. She charectorized the 2nd bedroom as "the spare room". The brothers charectorized it as D's room. M didn't want either of her boys home, due to previous incidents at their old residence. Apparently (it was discussed, P wasn't happy that the info was slipped, but no evidence or details were presented) their was a restraining order on V from previous incidents at the old resident.

D is home on probation. It was revealed he has a number of priors that were burglery, robbery, and petty theft (that was elevated to a felony level due to priors) Specifics were not given. D has served time. D has been living with his mom, "on a temporary basis" since around November.

The day before the incident, V arrived at the residence. He had apparently been kicked out of a sober living home. No details given. DefAt kept harping on this point discretely, that the V had a fifth of vodka that night. Known drunk. etc. etc.

Incident:
Some time in the afternoon, D girlfriend shows up. Unknown reasons, she didn't testify. They are having a disagreement in D bedroom. D says she dropped by to pick up something, and yell at him for stupid stuff. Those two walk off to the bus stop so the gf can go home (or where ever). While at the bus stop, they continue to argue. The bus stop is across the street from the entrance to the mobile home community, which apparently has a guard shack. The guard shack calls M to say the discussion is getting heated, and the cops might be called. M sends V to bus stop to get his brother, so he doesn't get arrested again. D says he ignores V, because he's been drinking, and when he is like this, he doesn't pay attention to him. M finally arrives with the car (she has great diffiuclty getting around, plus the car was having trouble starting, or some such). Anyhow, when M arrives, D pays attention, and the family get in the car and head back to the home.

Apprently, while at the bus station, another person was waiting for a bus. This guy had a knife. He apparently "laid hands on D, wanting to pick a fight". V says D was pestering him, trying to solicit his help to fight this stranger. V did not want to do this. So D was pestering V about being a pussy. And V was calling D a pussy for being chicken to pick a fight with stranger, but willing to pick a fight with his brother. [editors note: this section is really questionable. No evidence was presented about this other guy. D didn't testify to other guy. And M didn't see other guy. V was the only one who mentioned it. P brought it up on the first day, but didn't really establish how it all connected. When we were deliberating, we guessed it was to show the D was in a fighting mood. ::shrugs::].

As if that section wasn't foggy enough. Here is where it gets even foggier. There were 3 folks in the residence, and they each give a different order of events.

What they agree on is, the V was sleeping in M's room, on a mat on the floor. D was laying on the mat talking to M, who was sitting in her recliner, which looked to be right next to the mat. V walks into the room and wants to go to bed.

This is where we have story divergence.

M says the boys were goofing off in the mat, and it got messy.

D says there was some words, but he got up and went to his bedroom.

V says the incident started here. There were (continued...)

( continues...) words, that led to rough housing, that led to D pinning V and pummeling him. When asked how long was D beating him, V responded "felt like forever. 3 or 4 minutes".

(highlights of V side of the story)

V says the D finally stopped, and left room. V got up and went to the bathroom to clean up blood and assess injuries. At that time, had puffy eye, bleeding from eye, chipped tooth, split lip. V says he was at sink, and D forcefully entered the tiny bathroom, and started pushing V around. V landed against the shower doors, which collapsed. V ended up on the ground. V says D unscrewed the rubber from the plunger, then repeatedly beat him with the wood stick from the plunger. Eventually D stopped beating him, left the bathroom, and went to the dining room. V went to the kitchen, where M was with a cordless phone. V grabbed phone from M. D grabs the phone from the V and says "you're not calling anyone, bitch" (incidently, this is the power point error, the P had "you're not calling anyone bitch" on multiple slides. One little comma changes things a bit. Whatever!). Anyhow, grabs the phone from the V, and throws it into the living room, or some such. D starts hitting V again in the dining room/living room area. Pushes V to ground in Dining Room, and starts kicking him in the face. Eventually D stops, and goes to his bedroom. V got up and pursued him. Found D laying on his bed mat (apparently only M had a bed). Got on top of D and tried to beat him. Glancing blows about 6 of them on the D. Then the D bit V to get him off "He's a biter, he's bitten me a lot in the past". Pushed V off of him, and picks up a 2' sports trophy and tries to beat V with it. V says he was hit with trophy base several times. V escapes and goes outside, where M is. She grabbed other cordless phone (first came apart when tossed) and called 911. V sat on the curb. D came out of the house, and kicked V one last time, and then the police arrived.

OK, that's the V version of the story.

Mom was the next witness. She did not see everything. She was sitting in her recliner in the bedroom. She has trouble moving around. Her version of the story has it starting in her room, then moving to the spare room, then the bathroom. M says she was hitting Ian on the back trying to get him to stop beating his brother when they were in the kitchen/dining room area. She also said D spit on the V when they were outside. M says flat out, D is bigger and stronger. If she had to pick who would win a fight, it always has been, and always will be D.

Next was the police officer tesitmony. When he arrived, all three were outside. He observed the D was "amped up". Observed no injuries to the D (although he did have a gash on his left thigh, and bruised/bloodied knuckles). The V had a towel to his face. Left eye was swollen. Lip bleeding. On cross examination, the DefAt showed the officer was 8 months on the job. Questioned how he gathered evidence. Officer said it was by the book. [editorial: I think evidence gathering sucked. The pictures taken were difficult to determine what was where. Pictures of walls with blood on it, but no way to tell what wall. No detail pics of weapons. No frame of reference for how big/small items were. I dunno, maybe I watch too many proceedural shows with little ruler thingies in the picures. Labels. Etc.]

With that, Prosecution rested.

The DefAt did her opening remarks. Made a big tado that her client wants to testify, and will. That he does not have to, but he is innocent, and wants to.

D takes the stand. They start by discussing prior incidents where the V was abusive to M and/or D. The second incident was what prompted the restraining order. Due to the incidents, M moved to new house. V was not living there.

On the day of the incident, D says it happened more like this: D laying on V bedroll. V lays next to D. D gets up. V says "Next time I'll make you get up". D says "I'd like to see you try, I'm not a 60 year old lady that you can push around" (refering to earlier incident at old residence). This pissed (continued...)

( continues...) off V. D left to his bedroom and goes to bed. About 15 minutes later, D was asleep, and V storms in his bedroom, and kicks D in the ass. V is on top of D trying to land blows. D says he's been in lots of fights, and knows how to fight. Kept his chin down, kept V at arms length. So most blows were to top of head, glancing blows. Not really landing. It was at this time D bit V, to try and get him off. D was pushing his way to the wall, and used wall to get to his feet. V grabbed trophy that was on the floor by door, and flung it backwards towards D, as V was leaving bedroom. Trophy cut gash in D left shin. D picked up trophy, and attempted to use it in a two hand, overhead "tomahawk" swing onto V. But doorway prevented the base from hitting V. After that, they moved to the bathroom. D says "I am trying to keep him from attacking again". In Bathroom, V grabs the plunger, and hits D with the rubber end of it. D is mad that he was hit with "nasty end of the plunger". When V hit him, the rubber end popped off. Then V threw the stick at D. D picked it up, and whacked V on the head with it, then threw it back at him. That is when V fell into the shower doors. V was never on the floor in the bathroom. not enough room. Tiny bathroom. They were upright, and fist fighting. Sparring. Feeling each other out. After V landed in shower, D walked out to kitchen.

It was at this time D was saying, he felt like he had to subdue V, because he had a lot of weapons around the house and stored in the shed. Blowdart guns, knives, etc.

When V came out of the bathroom, he made a beeline for D, who was in the kitchen. D assumed a defensive posture, and punched V hard. V fell to kitchen floor. then got back up. D punched V in the face. V was drunk and not feeling it.

On cross examination, P established that prior incidents were minor, lower level of incidents. A shove type of thing. Not brawl type of thing.

P established the incident started in M bedroom with inuslt exchange.

P established V injury to crown of his head was from plunger handle.

P established, that after the kitchen, the fight moved back to mom's room, and that is where the fight finally stopped. D went outside to find M. And V went to bathroom to clean up wounds. (the sink was really bloody in the pictures).

On redirect, D feels the cops arrested him because he wasn't bloody. And that the police didn't ask any questions. That D demanded he take pictures at the station. And that he had to tell his side, and the officer was reluctant to hear it. Officer didn't take notes or record the discussion.

Last witness was best friend of D of 16 years. Saying that M feels D was stealing things from her. Seems like it was a charactor witness to say D was a good guy, and that M had an axe to grind on D.

With that, the defense rested.

What a mess, omnis. Families like that, it's hard to tell who's in the wrong in any particular incident, because generally they ALL are involved with inciting or escalating the violence. (I come from a family of brawlers, jailbirds, and drunks. My immediate family were the only ones who stayed sober and out of trouble, mostly because of my grandfather's influence.)

Can you tell us how it was decided?

Today was jurur instructions and closing arguments. We were given the case around 11:40am. We get back to the jury room, and nobody is wanting to be foreman. Finally, Jurur #3 voluneers. He joked, he could shave his head, in case D got out. Others joked that, being an air marshal, at least he has a gun. #3 later said, he thought it was open/shut/slamdunk case of guilt. Hence the comment.

So the charges were:
[editorial. Not sure of exact phrasing of charges. So, lawyers, forgive me]
1 - Assualt with a Deadly Weapon. Once with the sports trophy. Another with the plunger. We had to vote Guilty/Not guilty on the charge. Yes or no on each of the weapons. If voted not guilty, we could vote guitly on a lessor charge of Simple Assault.

2 - Prevention of victim or witness from contacting authorities. [editorial note: The majority of the juror heard this read in pre-trial as "witness tampering", and were wondering when they were going to talk about it. I, myself kept asking that, and wondering why the P kept harping about the stupid phone incident]. So the phone incident was charged as hampering a witness or victim from calling the police.

4- Assault with intent of serious bodily harm

[Note- no charge 3. Judge said not to read into that. It's a clearical thing. I'm guessing one of the charges got excluded during pre-trial]

Before lunch, we took a quick vote, to see how much debating we had to do. All votes were slips of paper, anonymous. We had 3 not guilty to all charges. And then a mix of Guilty/Not Guilty between the charges. Foreman was a bit shocked by the results. And at that time, the Baliff said it was lunch, and we had to leave the room for 90 minutes. No discussing the case outside of the room.

When we got back, foreman wanted to start with count 1, and talk about ADW charges. I suggested we pause, and actually take a vote, if we felt the D acted in self defense. Sure enough, that was issue. The votes were all over the place (the first two votes were tallied in foremans book, so I don't have those counts).

So we looked at the juror instructions, at the legal definitions for self defense and mutual combatants (I think that was the phrase). We discussed how each version of the story was different. How each brother, at some point, (re)-initiated violence. Then it felt like we were all on the same page, so I proposed we vote on if we feel self defense is acceptable as the defense. Saying, if we all think no, then it will be easier to discuss counts 1 & 4. The vote for "Self defense, yes or no" came out as 8 for no, and 2 for yes, and which point we stopped counting, because we need 100%. We continued to discuss. And 15 minutes later, we took another vote. One of the no votes admitted, she misunderstood what a yes or no vote was. So we voted again. This time "Mutual Combatants or Self Defense". 100% vote for Mutual Combatants.

With that out of the way, and the discussions from it, it turned some of the pre-lunch folks minds, and 5 minutes later, we voted on count 4, bodily harm. 100% guilty.

We spent the next 15 minutes or so looking over the definition for ADW, and what constitues a deadly weapon. And that the law doesn't require injury from the weapon, just the threat and attempt to use it. We discussed the potential damage the base of the trophy could do. And that, even though no real blows landed from it, it had potential to do great harm, and it was admitted to being used by the D in his direct testimony. We voted on ADW for the trophy, and found guilty.

Next we talked about the plunger. Most of the discussion was the same as with the trophy. The difference being, the plunger actually did damage to the crown of the V head. We kinda laughed that a plunger is a deadly weapon, but found him guilty of that count as well.

Lastly we debated count 2, preventing the reporting of a crime by a witness or victim. I think I left out of previous post the D discussion on this. I bring it up, as most of us actually believed his version of the story. D answered this on cross (continued...)

( continues...) examination from the P. The P was pestering on this topic. Puzzling most of us jurors. The D was getting really frustrated. And said it was nothing. He was mad at how the V grabbed the phone from their M, so he grabbed the hone from V, and then threw it out of the way. It was a 2 second, triple possession. No thinking. Just reacting. So in deliberation, foreman said, he felt it was the P piling on the counts. So we took a vote, and came up 11-1 for guilty. Ugg. Almost. So I try and be diplomatic. I say, (paraphrase) "Ok, well, this is an anynomous vote. Given that there is one voting guilty, we will need to hear that persons views. Keep in mind, everyone, we aren't going to be judgemental, we need to be open to this persons concerns. Hear them. And talk about them. Of course, that means, the dissenting vote will need to out themselves...." At which point the one gal said "wait, I think I misunderstood what the vote was. Is grabbing the phone guilty? Because he grabbed the phone. It was part of the fight." So spent a few minutes making sure we all understood that "not guilty" vote meant he grabbed the phone in anger, and "guilty" meant he grabbed the phone with malice to prevent calling the police. And at that vote, we came with 100% not guilty.

We filled out the paperwork. And then I wanted to make sure we were 100%. There were a couple folks who didn't say much in the deliberations. And then a couple confusions in voting. So I wanted to make sure we are all in agreement. And a few of the other jururs agreed, that we need to make sure we are all on the same page, since we are basically voting to send someone to prison for a long time. And we went around the room and concurred with Guilty on the assault charges, and Not Guilty on the preventing reporting a crime.

We call the clerk to inform her, we are ready. Half hour later, we get the call to return to the court room. Clerk reads the verdicts (mispronouncing the D & V names! Repeatedly). D had no reaction. Judge thanked us for our service, and released us back to the jury pool room. There, we got our parking validated, and our certificates for HR. And that was it.

Dunno anyone's name in the jury. Kinda strange. Just spent the better part of 3 days with these people, and I don't know any of their names.

Outside, one of the jurors came up to me. He's a retired chemistry professor. He thanked me. Said I really helped him with the decisions. That the way I kept steering the conversation, to attack each item on a point by point basis. And that step by step determination helped make the decisions.

We all pretty much agreed (no vote, just chatting while filling in the paperwork) that both brothers should really be charged. But we couldn't do anything about it. That once we determined it was Mutual Combat, that the assualt charges fell into place. And the defense "well, he started it", and "well he used it on me first" didn't make him innocent.

Can you tell us how it was decided?

Ha. Long cross post. Yup.

OK, that's the bulk of the case. I'm sure I missed some details. Thankfully I kept my notes, and the vote tallies that I recorded.

On the whole, it was a good experience. I understand why everyone wants to ditch jury duty. Especially if work doesn't pay for it, or dings you vacation or sick days or something. But I found it very interesting. Of course, I do watch a lot of procedural tv shows, and grew up reading murder mystery novels. So, YRMV.

Fascinating. Sounds like you were crucial in getting a decision out of that jury. Good job, you!