I was on a jury for a domestic violence case

I wrote the following recap of my experience in a frenzied state immediately after the trial. It’s long and rambling and not well organized – so no one should feel any obligation to read it all. But it was super interesting, and I had to write down every single detail while it was still in my head.

Jury selection

Prior to walking in the courtroom, I was assigned number 12, which meant I sat in the jury box during the questioning portion. There were around 70 or so to start, but 50 or so were included in the jury selection after the others were granted exceptions or deferrals right off the bat.

First, the judge asked us to answer questions from a sheet of paper handed out to the group. Answers were given one by one, and we each listened to each person respond to each question. Some of the questions were quite intimate and sensitive.

There were so many heartbreaking experiences:

• Potential juror 11 a seat away from me explained that his wife suffered severe abuse from the daycare she attended as a child. The perpetrator eventually murdered one of the kids. To this day, she attends the parole board hearings for the now imprisoned abuser. The potential juror explained how painful it is for his wife to relive those memories on a regular basis.
• Another potential juror revealed that she had been the victim of domestic violence, and that she also had been arrested in the same incident. She explained that because both she and the other involved party were women, the cops arrested both of them.
• Many others had people very close to them who had been abused. For some it was a mother, a father, or a friend. Each told the judge that they would try their hardest not to let those experiences bias them in either direction. But many were honest and said that it would be very difficult.

Others had interesting backgrounds and stories to tell:

• One potential juror explained that he has hyperhidrosis, and implied that he also has social anxiety and is not accustomed to being in large groups. He was only dismissed after answering yes to a question of whether it was possible that he’d have trouble standing up for his own views during deliberation.
• Another guy explained that he had placed bad investments recently and was a victim of a ponzi scheme. The trial was ongoing.
• One other person explained that his and his girlfriend’s likenesses were used for an FBI investigation to catch child predators. He was eventually dismissed because he continually said that anything involving abuse toward children would totally bias his decision on the case because he hates child abusers.
• One was a retired cop who was married to a cop. She was eventually dismissed. Many others had friends and families who work in law enforcement – I don’t think any of them made it on the jury.
• Others had past criminal records they recounted to the room of 50 or so of us. One guy had a DUI from a couple decades ago. One got caught selling weed in the 80s. I think the weed guy made it on the jury.

After the judge asked questions, the attorneys asked questions too. The questions alternated between generic questions that anyone could raise their hands and answer and pointed questions to individuals.

The questions they asked were definitely pertinent to the case, but not always in ways I expected. The prosecutor asked the group whether they agreed with the idea that:

“a single witness testimony can establish a fact.”

A number of people took issue with the idea, including myself. I thought I might be canned because I explained that I’ve learned about how unreliable people’s observational abilities and recollection can be when it comes to details. But I later discovered this was likely not a negative indicator for the prosecutor’s side, because much of the case was dependent on believing one group versus another about their very conflicting explanations of the event. Importantly, the wording is “can” establish a fact, not “does” establish a fact.

Based on a question he asked about whether I collaborate with others at work, I also think the attorney was a bit worried I was overly insular, quiet, and non-confrontational as a kind of weird computer guy who gave very short answers to the initial questions. He thought I was offended, but really I wasn’t because that is just how I come across.

The case

The defendant faced two counts:

1. Simple Battery: Against Spouse, Cohabitant, or Fellow Parent
2. Child Abuse

I’m unsure of the specific name of the child abuse charge.

The people in court

• The judge seemed to be quite kindhearted and fair. He didn’t seem to have a big ego, was of course process-oriented, and took the job very seriously. When ruling on an objection made by one of the attorneys he would pause and think deeply before responding.
• The bailiff was kind.
• The deputy district attorney (prosecutor) was quite young. He seemed like a nice guy. He seemed competent but slightly nervous and uncertain, like this may be among the first cases he was trying.
• The defense attorney also was quite young. He seemed like a nice guy and my worldviews likely align with his more closely than the prosecutor’s. But he also was a bit more abrasive than the prosecutor during the trial, and seemed more experienced. The way he communicated to the jury was clear and intelligent, but it was hard not to feel like he was telling a story – as his job requires. The prosecutor also was telling a story. But the defense attorney would walk around looking at each of us in a more showy fashion, and his tone was more like a salesman.
• The defendant was a middle aged hispanic man. He was silent during the entire trial. He did not look at us. He had headphones on most of the time because a Spanish-language translator sat nearby and spoke into a device that connected to his headphones. The only time I saw any show of emotion from the defendant was when he covered a smile as one of the witnesses was testifying. I don’t know what he was smiling about. He may have thought it was funny that the witness was either failing to understand the questions or intentionally failing to answer them. I also thought it was sort of absurd how poorly some of the witnesses were answering the questions.

The prosecutor’s story

The narrative the prosecutor presented, both explicitly during the opening and closing arguments and through the lines of questioning, was as follows:

1. The defendant left the house around 7 PM. He sat in his car drinking for hours, which he commonly does.
2. He re-entered the home at around 9:30 PM, drunk.
3. His wife was bathing their seven-year-old son and getting him ready for bed. They were in the wife and defendant’s bedroom.
4. The three of them lay down in the bed together.
5. The husband accused the wife of cheating on him with her coworker, Chad.
6. She denied the claim.
7. He called her a “puta.”
8. He started pushing her, yelling “get out!”
9. He pushed her two times by the back of the head. She was trying to leave the room as he was pushing her.

• Side note: it seemed to most of the jurors during deliberation that there possibly were more than two pushes, based on all the testimony. I think the prosecutor needs to be careful when giving the story so as to not indicate any doubt, and giving a plausible and conservative answer of “two” was reasonable.

10. The seven-year-old son ran out of the bedroom.
11. On one of the pushes, she slammed into a “case of water bottles” or a “bag of empty water bottles to be recycled.” This loud noise prompted their young-adult daughter to come out of her room and call 911.
12. Eventually, he pushed her out of their room into the living room.
13. The sister of the defendant, who also lives in the same house, came out of her room and either pushed the defendant back into the bedroom or went in the room and slapped him.
14. On the 911 call, the daughter said “my dad is abusing my mom.” In response to the question of “did he hit her” she said “Yes. He was [or will].” Others in the background were yelling that someone needed to call the police.

• Side note: the jury had the audio from this call as evidence. We listened to it many times. Information came out of that call that the attorneys didn’t discuss. One point was that we heard a woman crying out in Spanish in the background saying something to the effect of “why did my husband hit me” and “I’m in pain.”

15. The police showed up, and took statements from the wife (victim), daughter, and sister of the defendant. Their statements were all consistent with the above timeline.

Separately, there was another incident in 2019, in which the cops were called to the home. Usually, I don’t believe this sort of history can be included in a trial, but specifically for domestic violence cases there is an allowance for “evidence of uncharged domestic violence” in the past. The story the prosecutor would like us to believe for this 2019 incident is as follows:

1. The defendant and his wife were in the bedroom.
2. The wife accused the defendant of cheating on her, showing him texts and photos from his phone as evidence.
3. They had a verbal argument.
4. She slapped him.

• Side note: the prosecutor did not attempt to hide or deny this.

5. While she was attempting to leave the room, after she slapped him, he grabbed her by the neck or upper chest area with his arm or hand, and slammed her to the floor.
6. Someone called the police at some point.
7. The police took statements from the defendant and his wife.

The defense attorney’s story

The narrative from the defense attorney for the 2024 incident being tried, similarly provided through his direct arguments and his lines of questioning, was as follows:

1. The defendant left the house around 7 PM. He was going to go get medicine for himself, or just drink – it’s not clear.
2. He came back into the house around 9:30 PM.
3. The wife and son were in the bedroom, but the son left prior to the defendant entering, in order to go say his nightly prayers with others in the living room.
4. When the defendant entered the bedroom, the wife was angry at him for drinking.
5. She slapped him.
6. In order to protect himself and diffuse the situation, he then gently held her shoulders and “guided” her out of the room.
7. While “guiding” her out of the room, she brushed against the bag of plastic water bottles accidentally and they fell.
8. The daughter called 911, mostly because she was worried that her mom might fall since she had recently had gallbladder surgery. She wasn’t worried about her dad hurting her.
9. The reason the daughter used the words “abuse” and “hit” was because her emotions were high, and her first language is Spanish so she doesn’t always translate English to Spanish correctly in her head.

• Side note: the point about her language abilities was incredibly difficult to believe. She spoke in flawless English without a hint of an accent while on the stand.

10. The translators who were taking the statements of the residents that night confused the residents and were trying to trick them. This included the standard language translation phone line which is used across the county for many services, not just the police.
11. The cops encouraged the residents to tell the story in a certain way. The cops don’t believe that men can be victims of domestic violence.
12. Someone from the DA’s office approached the victim at a court hearing months before the trial, encouraging her to describe her husband as dangerous. She didn’t agree with that assessment.

The narrative from the 2019 incident is similar to the prosecutor’s narrative, but they want us to include the details that:

• She was continually attacking him.
• The only way to stop her was by holding her to the floor.
• Both of the above points, I believe, came from a Miranda statement made by the defendant (of the 2024 case i.e. the husband), and I don’t believe they matched up with her statement.

The witnesses and evidence

Every witness who took the stand was called by the prosecutor. The defense attorney did not call any witnesses. Both attorneys had questions for the witnesses.

Some of the witnesses were cops. Most of the value they provided was giving information about the statements that were made to them from the residents of the house that night.

The wife

• The wife was a short middle aged woman. She and her family live with the defendant.
• A translator communicated her testimony to the rest of us. This was kind of nice because it gave me time to write notes in between her answers.
• Her answers match what I describe as the defense attorney’s story above.
• The prosecutor continually asked her, “so yes, that is your retelling of what happened, but what did you tell the police happened when you gave a statement that night?”
• She had an incredible amount of difficulty answering the question of what she told the police. It would go like:

• Prosecutor: Did you tell the police in a statement the night of the incident that the defendant accused you of cheating on him with a guy named Chad?
• Wife: I would never cheat on my husband with Chad, he’s an old friend.
• Prosecutor: But did you tell police that the defendant accused you of cheating on him with Chad?
• Wife: Like I said, I’d never cheat with Chad.
• Prosecutor: Right, but did you tell police that [...]?
• Defense attorney: Objection, asked and answered.
• Judge: Overruled
• Prosecutor: Did you tell the police that [...]?
• Wife: I didn’t cheat with Chad.
• Prosecutor: Judge, could you please instruct the witness to answer the question?
• Judge: Madame, the attorney is asking you what you told the police, not what you did.
• Prosecutor: Did you tell the police that [...]?
• Wife: I’m telling you again, I didn’t cheat with Chad.

• The above process was fairly excruciating, and I asked the Spanish-language speakers on the jury whether they thought there were miscommunications, translation issues, or problems with her understanding the question. They did not think so – they thought she was intentionally dodging the question.
• An alternative situation to the above was:

• Prosecutor: Did you tell the police that he pushed you from behind?
• Wife: I don’t remember.
• Prosecutor: Can I refresh your memory with the statement?
• Wife: Yes.
• The wife then has the transcript read to her by the translator. Jurors are not allowed to listen and the translator and wife are off to the side with a white noise machine playing.
• Prosecutor: Is your memory refreshed? [Wife says yes.] Did you tell the police that he pushed you from behind?
• Wife: He did not push me, he gently guided me.
• Prosecutor: But did you tell police [...]?
• And then we cycled back to the first excruciating situation.

• I wish there was more to say about the wife’s testimony, but the story really is just that it was incredibly incongruous with the 911 call which we later heard, the answers were very unclear to almost every question about what she told the police, and she said that she was the instigator. Importantly, she was adamant that there was no argument about infidelity. She started the argument because he was drunk, and he was not an instigator.

The daughter

• The daughter was 21 years old.
• She spoke perfect English and did not require a translator.
• Her testimony was very clear and not obstructive in the way her mom’s was, as described above, but much of it came across as deliberately misleading or outright lies.
• She had lots of negative things to say about her mom.
• Her mom nags, and she doesn’t know when to stop an argument.
• Her mom is a little woman. Her dad is strong. If he wanted to hurt her he easily could have.
• The push that she had described seeing to the police was actually more like gentle guiding out of the room.
• She wasn’t worried about her dad hurting her mom. She was just worried about her mom potentially falling and getting hurt because of the recent surgery.

• Side note: I found this in particular absolutely ludicrous. Why are you worried about your mom falling? What or who would be causing her to fall? Let alone the fact that on the 911 call which the jury heard played back, the first thing she said was “hello my dad is abusing my mom.”

• She did agree that her aunt (the defendant’s sister) came in the room after the altercation and pushed or slapped the defendant. I don’t believe the wife brought this up in her testimony.
• I believe she did say that her dad was visibly drunk.
• She said that her dad had never hit her or her mom.

Overall, I found the daughter’s testimony to be completely uncredible. Her statements on the stand compared with the 911 call with her voice were so incongruous that it was just absurd. She had so many negative things to say about her nagging annoying mom who was bothering her strong cool dad. I just found it pretty gross to listen to. Of course, I couldn’t let my reaction to her language about her mom influence my decision – that is a side note I’m making now. But I could choose how much of each testimony to believe based on how credible it appeared to be (based on all the other evidence). And the daughter’s testimony was clearly not credible.

The 911 call

• The 911 call was introduced as evidence while the daughter was on the stand.
• We also had access to this audio recording during deliberation, and we played it many times.
• During the trial, we were given a transcript, but it wasn’t the best and didn’t capture a lot of the background noise.
• The general vibe of the call is utter chaos. Multiple voices are wailing in the background. There are multiple people calling out “call 911” and “call the police.”
• As previously mentioned, there was Spanish spoken in the background that indicated the wife was crying aloud saying that her husband hit her and that she was in pain. That was not discussed in the trial at all and it’s not clear that the attorneys even knew about this detail.
• The following key phrases were mentioned:

• “My dad is abusing my mom.”
• “[Operator:] Did he hit her?” and “Yes. He was [or will – a bit hard to hear].”
• “He tried to throw her to the floor.”

• The call ended without the daughter ending it. The operator was confused as seemingly the daughter just hung up. Again, the situation seemed incredibly chaotic.

• Each time the call was played – during the trial and during the many times in the deliberation room – there was a clear vibe shift. The audio was harrowing.

​​The defendant’s sister

• The defendant’s sister was a middle aged woman, who lives at the same house with a number of extended family members.
• She used a Spanish-language translator.
• She had the same difficulties in answering the questions about what she had told the police that the wife did.
• It was similarly excruciating to listen to for that reason.
• Her story on the stand was that she was in her bedroom the entire time. She didn’t really know what was going on.
• She may have mentioned coming out at one point and then going back into her bedroom.
• The above is conflicting with the 911 call, the statements made to the police from that night, and the testimony that her niece (daughter of the defendant) made on the stand. Every other piece of evidence indicated that she not only witnessed the altercation but got involved physically.
• I can’t remember if she denied pushing the defendant and getting between him and his wife. I feel like she did deny that.
• She claimed she was just in her bedroom minding her own business until eventually the police came and she was like “yeah damn IDK what happened, weird.”

Cop #1, from the 2024 incident

The cops were used mostly as a conduit to get information from the statements given that night to the jurors. The jurors were not allowed to see the statements.

• There were three statements given to this officer the night of the incident, and we heard about two of them.
• The statements from the wife given to cop #1 on the night of the incident went as follows:

• The statement matched the prosecutor’s story described above.
• Infidelity was mentioned.
• The defendant calling her a “puta” was mentioned.
• She was pushed on the back of the head twice.
• She was eventually pushed into the hallway, where she saw a number of other residents, including the daughter and the defendant’s sister.
• There isn’t much else to say here, but I do want to emphasize that this statement was consistent with the 911 call and other statements that were given that night, described below.

Cop #2, from the 2024 incident

• This officer took statements from the daughter and the sister of the defendant.
• The daughter’s statement:

• She was in her room. She heard her dad call her mom a “puta.”
• She heard loud noises.
• She came out of her room and saw her dad push her mom.
• Her aunt came out and went into the bedroom and slapped her dad.
• Her dad was visibly drunk.
• I’m having trouble remembering the exact details of what else she said, but the gist of it is that the story matched the prosecutor’s story and her mom’s statement and her aunt’s statement described below.

• The aunt’s statement:

• She was in her room.
• She came out and saw her brother pushing his wife.
• She saw him push her on the chest.

• Side note: this is not consistent with the other statements, but I don’t read into it too much. Maybe it was on the chest or maybe the back. There were multiple pushes described. I don’t think it’s overly important that the sister specified the chest in this case.

• She then went in between the defendant and his wife and “helped push” the defendant back into the bedroom.
• The language she used made it very clear that the defendant was the aggressor.

Image of injuries from the 2024 incident

• At some point while the defense attorney was cross-examining the cops, he brought out an image as evidence.

• The image showed the defendant shirtless with his arms stretched out. There was a scratch on his shoulder and a small scratch on his wrist. There was blood in both places.

• The prosecutor, surprisingly to me, did not make the argument that these scratches were caused by the defendant’s sister when she slapped or pushed him. The defense attorney however, did at least imply that the scratches were from the wife.

• There were no visible injuries on the wife.

Cop #3, from the 2019 incident, and the wife again

• This officer took statements from the defendant and his wife.
• The wife’s statement was as described in the prosecutor’s story.
• The wife described that her husband grabbed her neck and pushed her to the ground.
• The husband’s statement added that he needed to hold her down to prevent her from attacking him.
• The wife also took the stand to talk about this incident directly, but her testimony matched up with the statement given the night of the incident pretty closely from what I remember. I think she downplayed the part about him throwing her to the ground, but I can’t remember what she said in this part of the trial too well.

• One point she made sure to emphasize was that it was not the neck he grabbed her by, but instead the upper chest.

• The defense attorney during cross examination had the officer explain there was no evidence of strangulation.

I don’t have much more to add about this witness testimony, but I will note that my impression from this incident was that it was quite violent, more than in 2024. Grabbing the woman by her neck area and throwing her to the ground is drastic and I can’t see an argument for self-defense doing something like this, even though she slapped him first.

I also want to emphasize that two people can both commit battery – both the husband and wife. Undoubtedly, she committed battery on her husband by slapping him first. But she was not on trial in this case.

The closing arguments

• The prosecutor spent time going through every inconsistency between the statements given to the police the night of the incident and the testimony given by the family on the stand.
• Throughout the entire trial the attorneys were saying “objection, blah” and the judge would rule. The only time I saw the judge become clearly pissed was when the prosecutor during his closing arguments mentioned that the daughter had called the cops in the 2019 incident. I think this had come up previously and had to be stricken from the record too. The judge clearly was mad the prosecutor brought it up again. I don’t think who called the cops in 2019 would have mattered in my decision making, but there must be some rule that its inclusion violated. It was stricken from the record.
• The prosecutor pointed out the strangeness of the defense implying that the cops and translators were part of a conspiracy to trick the defendants into making statements that would incriminate the defendant.

• Side note: I have no doubt that corrupt cops and DA offices do unsavory things all the time. But taking all the evidence together, it was just fairly unreasonable to believe that this neutral phone-a-translator service somehow was trying to trick the residents who witnessed the incident.

• The defense attorney made the claim that the defendant was a victim of domestic violence and that he reported this to the police. I believe those reports were the statements the defendant made to the police immediately following the 2019 and 2024 incidents.

• I agree that he was a victim in the 2019 incident based on what we heard. But the idea that slamming a small woman to the floor was an appropriate response in order to defend himself is silly.

• The defense attorney painted a picture of corrupt cops who don’t believe men can be victims, and the translators were sketch, and the DA was trying to coerce the family. And the victim herself said on the stand that she slapped the defendant in the 2019 and 2024 incident.
• The defense is in a cool situation because they can kind of splatter doubt around in all sorts of directions and only one needs to stick. In order to convict, the jurors must have ruled out all reasonable doubt that the defendant committed the crime. So just one piece of doubt could be the deciding factor.
• I think the defense did a good job, and he was very clear. But the foundation of what he was working with just left me with the impression that they really didn’t have a compelling case.

My thoughts on the case

My perspective certainly shifted a bit on various topics during the discussion, but my general understanding and conclusion from the case remained constant. So I’m going to just lay out how I view the case now and how I viewed it before the deliberations as one cohesive narrative.

Let’s look at the first charge – which really is my focus and was the focus of our deliberations.

The judge provided rules to us that were very clear, laid out in plain English. The rules around determining if the battery charge was committed was something like the following, where my memory isn’t perfect but the general idea is roughly correct:

1. A touch was applied to another party in a rude or unkind manner, and
2. The victim was a spouse or cohabitant, and
3. The touch was not in self-defense. In order for it to be self defense, the following must all be true:

1. The defendant reasonably felt they were in imminent danger, and
2. A physical response to the danger was necessary in that moment, and
3. Their response did not go beyond what was required to defend themself.

Also importantly, the judge clarified that self-defense does not mean that the defendant must have retreated instead of standing their ground. They could stand their ground and even pursue the assailant until the danger is no longer present.

Point 1

With respect to point 1, the instructions from the judge were very clear that even a slight touch to clothing – not even the person’s body – can be battery if it was done in a rude or unkind way.

Now if we look at the evidence, the story according to the residents of the house including the victim when they were on the stand during the trial is that there was never an unkind touch. There was simply gentle guiding out the door. However, the testimonies they gave on the stand were so riddled with inconsistencies and nonsense, as described above, that it is reasonable to place little weight on them.

Based on the 911 call and the statements made the night of the incident, the defendant pushed and possibly hit the victim. Besides the clear statements made regarding the push, we also can consider the statements about the sister slapping the defendant or pushing him back in the room. One has to wonder – why would the sister be doing this if not in reaction to his aggression toward his wife?

Now let’s look at the 2019 case. The judge instructed us that the previous uncharged case can be used as evidence that indicates the defendant’s proclivity to commit acts of domestic violence if we find the most likely scenario is that the previous uncharged offense was committed. That’s very important – we don’t have to believe it beyond a reasonable doubt – just that it was most likely – in order for it to inform the 2024 case.

In the 2019 case, the defendant had grabbed the victim by the neck area and pushed her to the ground. And to be fair, that was following her slapping him. But there was no doubt raised by him in his statement that he did indeed push her to the ground. So was that a necessary act of self-defense? I find it incredibly unlikely. His action went well beyond what was required to protect himself. Based on the fact that he was arguing, I think it was done in a rude way. It was intentional force on his wife, and it went beyond what was required to defend himself. I think there was a greater than 50% chance he committed battery in this case according to the rules above, and therefore can use it to inform the decision on the 2024 case.

In summary, for point 1:

• Based on the 911 call and statements made the night of the 2024 incident, he pushed his wife. Don’t forget that the daughter on 911 used the word “abusing” and said that he either hit or will hit his wife and pushed her to the floor. Also, the Spanish-speaking jurors heard the wife crying out saying her husband hit her and that she was in pain.
• The pushes were done in a rude or unkind way. Both the daughter and the victim reported in their statements to the police that he had called the victim a “puta.” This to me indicates the temperament he had during the pushes was rude or unkind.
• The family’s testimony disagrees with the pushing characterization and denies the language around hitting, but that testimony is highly questionable and little weight should be given to it. Particularly its inconsistencies with the 911 audio that we could play back made it clear the testimony was not trustworthy.
• A past incident of domestic violence committed by him was more than 50% likely to have happened, and indicates a proclivity to commit domestic violence in this case too.
• Given the evidence we have, it’s reasonable to conclude that the defendant did push and potentially hit his wife in a rude or unkind way, satisfying point one. No reasonable alternative explanation of what happened can be drawn from the evidence.

Point 2

Not worth discussing, the victim and wife are married and live together.

Point 3

In order for us to even enter into the discussion of whether the defendant acted in self-defense, we first have to establish that the victim attacked the defendant. There is one main piece of evidence that the wife attacked him in 2024: her own testimony on the stand. As discussed above, there are many reasons to doubt the validity of her entire testimony.

It’s also worth noting that the judge called out in his instructions that we can consider whether witnesses have motivations to bend the truth on the stand. She has many motivations: it’s her husband, they live together, he works and provides income for the family, she doesn’t want him facing penalties that could tear him away from his job or kids.

Now another point could indicate that there’s truth to the idea that she hit him, besides her testimony: the 2019 case. The judge instructed us that the 2019 case could be used to inform our understanding of whether she hit him in 2024 and whether he would need to defend himself with potentially greater force than if she had never hit him before (because he has knowledge that she hits, so he needs to be sure to protect himself if she does).

A third point we can bring up is the photos of the scratches the defendant had on his arm. The scratches were real. But according to statements from the night of the incident, his own sister slapped or pushed him, and potentially others were involved in pushing him back as well. It’s really hard to say that those scratches were the result of the wife initiating physical violence.

So if we take together the following:

• The wife’s testimony that she hit him in 2024 (again, just to be clear, her testimony is incredibly suspect), and
• There is more than a 50% chance that she hit him in 2019, and
• There is evidence that he was scratched by someone

we can start believing that yes, she may have hit him. Personally, I wouldn’t put money on the idea that she hit or slapped him. One juror pointed out that in 2019 her statement to the police did include information that she hit him. In 2024 it did not. Why would she omit it in 2024 but not 2019? I think this is sort of bending the rules of working with the evidence provided, and wouldn’t have run with it during deliberation, but it is interesting to consider after the trial has concluded.

But let’s continue with the idea that she hit him, and be generous to the defense’s case.

Point 3a and 3b

We’re now in a world of assuming that the wife did indeed hit the defendant before he began pushing her. If that was the case, would he reasonably believe he was in imminent danger and that some physical action was necessary?

I think the answer is yes. If he was being slapped, he may have needed to do something to protect himself. Now, maybe he could retreat instead, but again, the judge specified that a retreat is not necessary. Standing your ground is acceptable.

Point 3c

This is really the sticking point, and where deliberations fell apart. Assuming the wife did indeed hit the defendant, did his actions go beyond what was necessary?

I think the answer is absolutely yes. We have multiple statements from the residents that night that he pushed the wife, and two of them said it was from behind. The wife specifically stated that he pushed her on the back of the head. The daughter or sister said specifically that he pushed her out of the room. The characterization the daughter gave on the 911 call was that he was abusing the wife and tried pushing her  to the floor. She also indicated he hit or would hit her in the future.

I do not believe the daughter would provide these characterizations of his actions if he were simply defending himself. The first words out of her mouth were “my dad is abusing my mom.” If he were coolly protecting himself from his violent wife… how could the daughter so drastically misinterpret that situation?

And bringing up this point again, according to statements made that night, the sister of the defendant decided to “help push” him back in the bedroom or slap him. I find it very hard to believe the defendant was simply trying to protect himself, his sister saw this and decided, “woah now I need to push him into the room.” This also would have required a big misinterpretation of the situation on her part if he was just this chill guy protecting himself from his crazed wife, she saw this and believed it required her intervention, and then concluded he was the person to go after.

Two plausible explanations

There are two plausible explanations of what happened that night:

1. Explanation one: The defendant started the physical violence, and he pushed her as shown by many pieces of evidence.

• Boom, in this situation he committed battery. It doesn’t matter if she later attacked him back in a way that went beyond self-defense. She is not on trial. If he attacked her first without a reasonable belief that it was necessary to protect against an imminent threat, it’s battery. In other words, points 1 and 2 are true, and point 3 is true because the self defense clause fails on point 3a.

2. Explanation two: The defendant did not start the physical violence, the wife did by slapping him. He then responded by pushing her repeatedly such that their daughter interpreted it as him trying to push her to the floor. Potentially he hit her or gave indications that he would.

• In this situation, we have to decide whether the actions met the qualifications to be self-defense. Points 3a and 3b are clearly true. But point 3c is not – the force used went way beyond what was necessary to protect himself.

The two explanations are the only ones I see as possible. There are a million strange scenarios one could imagine, but those are not reasonable. A juror must believe the crime was committed beyond a reasonable doubt, not without 100% certainty, and the judge called this out in his instructions. It could have been that nanobots infected their brains the night of the incident and caused them to report falsehoods about what they saw, and the daughter played crying and screaming noises from a Youtube video while placing the 911 call. But those are not reasonable ideas.

Aside about the child abuse charge

• The charge of child abuse I don’t really want to even get into, because: the attorneys did not focus on that charge, we did not focus on it during our deliberations, and I am not convinced that child abuse occurred even though I do believe he committed battery against his wife.
• The only evidence we have of child abuse is the statement from the victim on that night that the son had been in the room and ran out while his dad pushed his mom.
• There’s reasonable doubt in my mind that the statement perfectly captured the timeline (what if he ran out while they were yelling and not while he was pushing?).
• In order for it to be child abuse, the child’s health must have been in danger – which I think would have required him to be in the room with the violence.
• Some brought up mental health as something that could have been in danger even if physical health was not. I’m not sure what to think about that.

My thoughts on the case - bottom line

The only reasonable conclusion was that the defendant was guilty on the charge of simple battery against a spouse or cohabitant.

Deliberations

The jury

The twelve of us were:

• A state EPA employee, once a college professor and researcher.
• Recently retired guy, does community service work, sometimes drives for Uber.
• A technician who works for a cancer research lab. She was in her 30s and could speak Spanish.
• A corporate attorney who has done litigation work.
• A community development employee. She was in her 30s and was one of the few people to wear a mask during the trial.
• One mom in her 30s. I didn’t catch what she does for work. She could speak Spanish.
• A younger guy who works for a scientific lab handling sensitive documents.
• A middle-aged woman, I’m unsure about her profession. She could speak Spanish.
• Three retired guys who were older and I didn’t catch what their careers had been.
• Me, software engineer, vanilla background.

The initial vibe

Everyone was very cordial. People wanted to introduce themselves. I was thinking “nah let’s go, let’s wrap this up before EOD and start talking about case details.” That would have been a massive mistake. It was critical that we feel comfortable with each other before moving forward.

I will note that one juror in particular, the recently retired guy, had mentioned during jury selection that he wanted to be on the case. He got his wish. During deliberations he asked if he could be the floor person. No objections. But once we started on the discussion, he sort of floundered about how we should organize the discussion and other people started filling in with ideas. The professor started steering the direction of the conversation. The recently retired guy eventually said it’d make sense for the professor to take over as the floor person since he was running with the conversation and was “centrally located” at the table. To be honest, I think the recently retired guy (RRG from here on) may have had his ego bruised a bit from this.

My initial impression was that some of the jurors were kind of confused about the framework we were working under. One guy said almost as soon as we sat down something to the effect of “I’m confused about what we’re supposed to be doing here” and indicated he wasn’t really totally clear on the fact that the prosecutor and defendant were arguing opposing sides of the case. Another guy said not too long after starting something like “never doubt the spirit of a latina woman,” which was sort of insane but also hilarious given the situation we were in and the fact that three hispanic women were sitting across from him smiling uncomfortably.

I also thought that people were really pretty uneasy about being overly forward with their beliefs about the case. That might have been good, but usually I like making my points of view known early on in discussions. I don’t like the sort of passive aggressive feeling of disagreement with others without being clear about what exactly we’re disagreeing on.

Day one, afternoon deliberations

The deliberations started in the afternoon and I don’t think we made a whole lot of progress in refining our views. In this post I laid out the evidence in the bullet points above, but during deliberations all we had was the audio from the 911 call, the photos of the scratches, and our notebooks from the trial (which were incredibly disorganized).

By the end of the day we weren’t even sure about whether the statements that the cops had recounted included information about the wife slapping the defendant in the 2024 incident. I was certain none of the statements from the police included this, and that it was only brought up by the wife on the stand. But people were really mixing up the 2019 and 2024 incidents (this was a problem throughout all of our deliberations). So we decided we should request to re-listen to or get a transcript from the testimonies of the cops who were on the stand in the trial. Even though I didn’t really see this as necessary, and I was eager to wrap up deliberations, I thought it wouldn’t hurt and if anything would only push people toward having the (what in my mind was) more accurate recollection of what happened that evening fresh in their minds.

Day two, replaying the cops’ testimonies

So the next day we met back in the courtroom and sat listening to the portion of the trial when the cops were on the stand. Based on the judge’s tone and his choice of words I think he was kind of annoyed about this, and he didn’t want the trial to drag on too long. But as we listened to the audio, all I could think was, holy shit this is confusing. Interspersed with all the questions and answers, and sometimes in the middle of an answer, the defense attorney would say “objection” and give a reason for the objection. And then the judge would need to think for a few seconds and either overrule the objection or sustain it and possibly tell us to strike it from the record. Additionally, I realized the 2019 and 2024 incidents were so similar that I didn’t really blame people for mixing the two up. Also, don’t forget, the testimonies the cops were giving were about statements that the people involved in the incidents had said to them that night – a sort of indirect route for us to receive information. What I’m getting at here is that I think it was totally understandable that we needed to listen to this audio over again to get a clear picture of what the cops had testified about.

And I wrote down many details that I had missed when first listening to these testimonies. When they first had been on the stand, it was difficult to even know what exactly would be relevant. Listening to it again after having started the deliberations, I knew what mattered and what didn’t.

Day two, most people don’t agree with me

We left the courtroom to get back to deliberations with a clearer picture of what the cops had said. And we all agreed when we got back that we had answered the main uncertainty that we wanted to clarify – there was no information about the wife slapping the defendant that night from any of the statements the police took. That piece of information came solely from the wife on the stand during the trial.

At some point shortly after, we went around the table taking turns expressing our current thoughts on the case. There were maybe six people before me, and each of them said they were uncertain. On my turn, I said that it was very clear to me that the evidence pointed to one conclusion – that he had indeed committed battery on his wife – and that I had trouble seeing how another conclusion was possible. I think it sort of surprised the others that I was very explicit about this. RRG (recently retired guy) went next and I don’t remember exactly what he said, but I got the sense he felt the defendant’s actions were self-defense. Of the remaining people to speak, three or four (including the attorney) also were leaning toward him being guilty.

Amazingly to me, an anonymous straw poll we took at one point had 5 people voting guilty and 7 not guilty. To be honest I can’t remember if this was from day two, or the prior afternoon before we had listened to the cops’ testimony again. But either way, the point is there was not consensus.

We discussed for awhile, and I at various points soap boxed and laid out why the evidence in my mind was so clear that the defendant was guilty. Others did the same. The tone of our discussion started taking a bad turn when RRG was getting upset with the community development manager for seemingly interrupting him. I really did not think she was interrupting him. I think there was tension because she was disagreeing with points he was making – and her disagreement was valid. Again, I think already his ego had been a bit bruised when he let go of the role of floorperson and now he didn’t like feeling like he was being out-argued too.

At that point I could tell RRG just did not like the community development manager, but I didn’t want that to mean he would dig in further to his viewpoint. I was trying to be very open and make it clear that there weren’t “sides” in the discussion, and that I could see where he was coming from. In particular, I said that he was right, the defendant’s wife shouldn’t have slapped him in 2019. I said that we should tell the DA’s office after the trial that they should prosecute her too. But she wasn’t on trial, and it can be true that both she and him committed battery. In reality, I think that is a stupid idea – obviously the DA isn’t going to press charges on this woman from a 5 year old case in which her husband threw her to the floor. But I do think technically they could. My point is that I wanted RRG to feel like we had similar views and just needed to get aligned about our conclusions.

Day two, almost everyone comes around

By the late afternoon, we had spent a lot of time discussing. But a problem was clear to me which remained throughout all of our deliberations – it was really difficult to dig in on certain points. The professor and others were adamant that one person speak at a time and that we be very careful about not interrupting each other. But what that meant was that people would go on 1-2 minute rambles, and then others would speak after with their own 1-2 minute rambles, and it was very difficult to counter a specific point made by someone three speakers before you because the context was all lost in everyone’s minds.

This case and probably most cases really hinge on certain details, and the boolean logic of the rules the judge gave. Diving deep on a line of argument and layering that over the rules given by the judge is super tricky, and in a room of strangers, without a chance to really refine our thoughts individually and write out a clear argument ahead of time like an attorney would, with scattered notes and a lack of sleep from early mornings and a switch to daylight saving time, it’s just pretty tough.

That said, after hours of discussion and carefully reading over the judge’s instructions, eventually it seemed that people were coming around to the view that the defendant was guilty. Maybe I just annoyed people enough with my monologues and insistence that the evidence pointed to that as the conclusion that they felt forced into that view. Either way, toward the end of the day we took another anonymous poll and found that eleven of us believed the defendant was guilty. It was clear that RRG was the one holdout.

Day two, giving up

At this point, I think people were exhausted. People were starting to feel like this was a hung jury. But I thought that was crazy. We spent a week going through this trial, and we had made so much progress. So I said that, and I told RRG that I had a friend who convinced eleven others on a jury to switch to not guilty on some of the charges of the case he was on. I said we could continue the discussion and implied that might happen here too. I really wanted RRG to feel like it was a discussion and we could switch either way. In reality at that moment, I felt there was no way I’d switch to believing the defendant not guilty, and RRG was not good at laying out a clear argument so it probably would have been impossible for him to convince me and others with strong views. But he should at least feel like it was possible.

Then, after like another half hour of discussion – I did give up. It felt to me that RRG was not really engaging with the discussion. He didn’t bring up specific counter-points. He didn’t have a clear argument as to what others were wrong about.

Something he said multiple times was like “you’re entitled to your opinion about what happened and I’m entitled to mine” which to me felt like an absolute cop out in terms of constructing a real argument. Like yeah, we can have opinions about things, but we need to make an argument based on the evidence we have. What is your argument? I’ll continue this rant about RRG’s thought process later, but at this point I was not frustrated but instead just sort of accepting of the situation we were in.

We threw in the towel.

We sent a note to the judge, he called us back to the court room. He said he were to meet again the next morning after he had a chance to talk to the lawyers. I thought it was over, especially because the floor person had conveyed to the judge that it was hopeless.

Day three, we got better organized

The judge told us the next day that we were to continue deliberations, and perhaps try a different approach during our discussion.

We decided to go through the exact language of the charge, and write down each piece of evidence that related to it. So we did that, very thoroughly and methodically. We tried to avoid sprinkling in argumentation while bringing up the evidence. We also decided not to doubt the validity of the evidence until later. I should also mention that many people were sort of on the fence still. The straw poll from the prior day didn’t capture that.

So we got through each of the points except for the last part of the self-defense clause, that the force couldn’t go beyond what was necessary. We laid out all of the evidence. And without that last clause, it felt like it really could be reasonable that the defendant was defending himself. There was the 2019 precedent of her slapping him, she said she slapped him in 2024 on the stand, and he had scratches on him. And we weren’t going into whether all of that evidence was legit yet. And the excessive force part was so important!

I did not attempt to argue anything at this point. I knew that the excessive force part really was key, and questioning the validity of some of the evidence was also key. But we took a poll before we got to that point, and it was something like 8 guilty, 4 not guilty. Kind of disheartening, but I knew things would get cleared up later. The bailiff asked if we wanted to continue, and I said something to the effect of “I think the evidence is so clear, I don’t know how it would be possible for people not to change their mind” which probably wasn’t helpful. We broke for lunch, planning to come back later.

When we came back, we were able to dive into the excessive force point. And I also brought up how ridiculous the testimony from the family on the stand was. The idea that the defendant was gently “guiding” his wife out of the room was in direct contradiction to the 911 call. We listened to the 911 call again. We read more of the judge’s instructions – including very importantly that we could choose to question and disregard some of the testimony on the stand.

This point from the judge’s rules he gave to us that we could question the testimony given on the stand was really important to some people. I think it allowed them to see that the family’s story just wasn’t something we could take seriously given its inconsistency. RRG said “well by questioning their statements on the stand you’re saying they’re committing a felony by lying under oath.” And I’m thinking… yeah dude people lie under oath all the time. In particular it wouldn’t be surprising for a wife to lie to protect her husband.

Day three, really giving up

So after the above organized discussion and clear breakdown of the evidence, we took another anonymous poll. Again, it was 11 guilty 1 not guilty. RRG had not been swayed.

We continued discussing, but I started really internalizing that this dude was not going to have his mind swayed. I also started feeling frustrated in a way I had not previously.

Mostly, I think it’s pretty bad to try to argue with people in a way where you pick apart their points in a pointed manner. Like if someone says “it rains more in March than December” it’s not great to immediately point at them and say “you’re wrong the data says otherwise see right here” because it feels like an attack against them personally. It’s better to wait a minute and then be like “you know actually it’s kind of surprising but I looked up some information from NOAA and it rains more in December.”

But a jury is a unique situation – you won’t see these people again, it doesn’t matter too much what you all think of each other, you just need to get to a decision and dip.

So I sort of regret not calling out RRG’s bad points specifically. I did at various points – one time I think it had to do with the evidence we had about the wife slapping the defendant in 2024, and he just backed down. It was kind of uncomfortable to just call out this dude. But it might have worked as a last ditch effort. I could have just crashed out and told RRG he needed to explain his line of thought. And then pick apart where he was wrong.

Even the attorney on our jury never really called out RRG specifically. More just like “well the not-guilty-view is wrong because XYZ.” But I do kind of wish we had been like “RRG, you are the one holdout, you need to explain how we’re wrong.”

It felt like we were in that Spongebob meme where Patrick accepts each piece of argumentation but then won’t accept the conclusion:

• “The defendant pushed his wife?” => RRG: “Yes”
• “The only evidence we have of his wife hitting him is her testimony on the stand which was very questionable” => RRG: “Yes”
• “Even if she did hit him, he can only respond with enough force to protect himself” => RRG: “Yes”
• “The 911 call indicated he used so much force that the daughter indicated he was abusing the mom. The statements from everyone that night indicate others needed to get involved to protect the wife from the defendant.” => RRG: “Yes”
• “So the defendant was guilty of battery. The self-defense clause is not satisfied.” => RRG: “The defendant has the right to defend himself”

Toward the end of day three, others and RRG had a conversation that went something like the above and I became incredibly frustrated. The dude just wasn’t making sense and I felt that his pride and ego prevented him from thinking clearly.

Day three, it’s over

We gave up. The judge declared a mistrial due to hung jury. Before leaving the deliberation room, people were saying things like “oh no RRG, it’s all good, people can have different views, blah blah.” Honestly I don’t agree. I don’t think we have to feel good about what happened, and I don’t think we have to believe that RRG was acting in good faith or being reasonable.

I think RRG screwed up the trial and was not a clear thinker. I think he was bad at articulating his view, and I think he was bad at it because his view was wrong. I don’t think he considered the evidence and jury instructions deeply. I don’t think he was willing to have his mind changed. I don’t think he even tried to change our minds.

Closing thoughts

I wrote the above in a sort of frantic state after the trial concluded. At the time, I was very frustrated with the outcome. I felt quite strongly that the one holdout was being totally unreasonable and was not able to provide a coherent narrative for his view. That said, the prosecutor did not have a slam dunk case. I don’t think he realized how much it hurt his argument that he brought up the wife hitting her husband in a past case. That led all sorts of speculation about her being an aggressor in the 2024 case. He seemed surprised by this when I talked to him, which was really odd to me.

I do want to add a conciliatory note for the holdout I was railing against above. It’s hard trying to understand what actually happened that night – you have smart people on both sides weaving narratives that contradict each other while they’re seemingly earnestly compelling you to believe them. It wasn’t until the last couple days in the trial that I really felt like I was getting the full picture.

I’m curious whether the DA’s office will choose to re-try the case, and how it would play out the second time around. The part that’s really sad is that I think the family will be far less likely to call the cops if the guy is abusive in the future. Particularly if anyone in the family has an uncertain immigration status, they’re going to have a really high bar for getting cops involved again.

I don’t have any great takeaways, but it was an incredibly interesting experience.

• It’s a cliche that it’s really difficult to leave an (alleged) abuser – but I really get why. The couple has been together long enough to have adult children. A network of extended family all live together, each with close ties to the defendant. They’re likely dependent on him financially.
• There were all sorts of interesting dynamics – immigrant family vs cops, the daughter painting her mom in a bad light to defend her dad, the defense attorney lambasting the wife calling her an abuser while also telling us to trust her testimony on the stand.
• The process was very laborious. Everything took a very long time – and for good reason really. Probably there are some process improvements that could be made, but generally I think trials are necessarily long-running. I can see why many cases end in a plea deal before getting to trial – there’s a strong incentive to just avoid the whole mess.
• It made me realize how different my job is from many others. The idea of “work” for a judge or an attorney or a clerk is just so different from my conception of it.
• Although I didn’t agree with the outcome of this case, I’m really glad the system errs on the side of innocence for the accused.

I’m glad I was on a jury, and I’m open to doing it again sometime in the distant future. I’ll think back about that family and the case and our deliberations and the entire process for the rest of my life.