(Please read the previous 2 days’ posts before you read this one)
The government’s wire tapping of this gang’s cell phone calls netted them over 30,000 calls. Since these were all in Spanish, they had to be translated. Fortunately, we “only” had to listen to about 100 of them. Of course they’re all in Spanish so I thought it was pointless to have us listen to them. We had a binder of the transcripts of these calls, with the English translation right below it. I got to learn some saucy Spanish words so I guess that’s a plus.

Of course, anyone’s translation of the calls can be brought into question, especially when dealing with supposed code words or slang. They brought in 3 of the translators to explain their process. One was an elderly lady who had decades of transcribing experience. The lawyer for one of the defendants brought up one of the few funny questions of the trial. To make his point about the subjective nature of slang, he asked the lady if she knew what “heezie fo sheezie” meant. I almost busted out laughing. She didn’t know and then he pressed the issue and asked her if she knew what a “buster” was. I wanted to raise my hand to translate, since I had viewed a few episodes of the Snoop Dogg show on MTV called “Doggy Fizzle Televizzle”. Fo shizzle, rizzle dizzle. I never thought I would hear Snoop-speak in the courtroom.

The amount of evidence that they brought into the courtroom was impressive. Blocks of pot, bags of crystal meth, bottles of meth being processed when it was seized, guns galore, and more cell phones than a Verizon warehouse. Surveillance photos, aerial video, the aforementioned phone calls, stakeouts, you name it. I think the only thing they didn’t bring in was the car hauler that had the cars with the million bucks in the gas tanks. The prosecuting attorney for the government did a damn fine job in presenting his case, which he needed to since the verdict that needed to be returned was “beyond a reasonable doubt”. If there was some semblance of doubt in your mind, you can’t return a guilty verdict.

A sideshow that occurred the first Friday of our case was the unfortunate shooting of the county superior court judge, Rowland Barnes, the court clerk, and 2 deputies by that psychopath Brian Nichols. This occurred in the building next to ours. We reported to court at 9 AM every day and by 10:20 that Friday, we were still in the jury room wondering what the heck was going on. Finally we are ushered in and the judge informs us what happened and that all court cases will be postponed for the day. We are also told that the killer is still on the loose. We were escorted to the parking lot and our court deputy watched us get into our cars. I was surprised that they even let us leave the perimeter with a murderous fugitive still lurking out there. As we found out the following weeks, the level of incompetence in the sheriff’s department was astounding. More scary to me was seeing the timeline of the events that occurred the next day on TV and realizing I missed encountering this guy as he was escaping by no more than 5 minutes in the parking lot. That was a little unnerving, seeing that he pistol-whipped an Atlanta Journal-Constitution writer in the parking deck as he was leaving.

The prosecution took 9 days to present their case. I think there were at least 30+ witnesses, then there were cross-examinations of the witnesses, and rebuttals to the cross-examinations. If they were supposed experts in their field, the attorneys had to lay the groundwork to prove their expertise in testifying, which took about 10 minutes to prove to the courts that they were an expert witness. While the assistant D.A. was a good prosecutor, his underling was a bumbling idiot, who hurt the case more than he helped it. The final straw for him was when he was questioning the one defendant who did wind up taking the stand. I forget the question but the defendant said something to the extent that all he was trying to do was work in this country legally and would do any type of legal job, even if it meant cleaning toilets in the prison. The assistant then said something like “Well, you’ll probably get your wish pretty soon” which was stricken from the record and most of the jurors (myself included) were visibly pissed at such an inappropriate comment. I’m pretty sure they had juror specialists in the courtroom every day because after that verbal slipup, the guy was never to be seen again for the remainder of the case.

There was another witness who was cooperating with the government (meaning that he pled guilty and testified for a lesser sentence) and during the line of questioning, he mentioned that he had been given 4 death threats while in prison. The jury was escorted faster out of the court than if someone had yelled “Bomb!” When we finally were brought back after about 20 minutes, the judge informed us that they had to question each defendant to ensure that it was not them making the death threats.

Closing arguments took a full day. We were now into the third week and it is really putting a crimp into my relationship with my employer. I will explain the aftermath in a later post. The next day the judge gave us our instructions before deliberating, which took about 45 minutes. We caught a break, at least time-wise, because the 2 brothers pled before deliberations and were not present in the courtroom. They can’t tell the jury which way they plead but we can guess that it was a guilty plea. One of the brothers’ lawyers always wore real flashy suits with monogrammed everything – including his socks. Note to any lawyer who might read this – don’t ever wear shaded eyeglasses into court. If I can’t see your eyes, that tells me you’re hiding something. We found out after the trial that they pled guilty. They might have not been convicted on all charges, as there was some doubt so I don’t know if that was the right tactic for them to take. The last witness for them, the brother’s former lawyer, said some inconsistent things and they pled that next morning.

We deliberate for 7 hours that day. I didn’t realize that the defendants, lawyers, and judge all stay in the courtroom during that time. That must be agonizing if you’re a defendant. Since this is a federal case, the felony counts come with no parole so if you’re convicted, you’re fucked. If you’re an alien, you get double-fucked if you have a gun because not only do you get a charge of possessing a firearm in furtherance of a drug conspiracy, but you also get a charge of possessing a firearm as an illegal alien. The one guy who had 3 charges against him was a slam dunk case. They had aerial footage, photos, phone calls, you name it. We found him guilty on all 3 charges. The second guy had 4 charges against him and we found him guilty on 3 and couldn’t come to a unanimous decision on the 4th charge. I was one of the ones who had reasonable doubt about the charge being levied against him. Any non-unanimous vote means a mistrial, but for that charge only. The other charges, whether they are guilty or not guilty, still stick. It’s up to the prosecution if they want to retry that person.

The last guy was the one who I had the sleepless nights about. There just wasn’t a solid case against him on any count. To me, he truly was in the wrong place at the wrong time. We took an initial vote and it was 9-3 not guilty on all counts. I’m not about to take credit for getting them to change their minds but I was pretty passionate about the holes in the government’s case against them. There is no way I could have left that courtroom without returning a not guilty plea on all charges. It was a case of the government throwing out their fishing net into the ocean and trying to see how many fish they could get, whether they were guilty or not was irrelevant. We finally get the vote to 11-1 with one guy holding out. The way I got to him was having him read the exact charge the government was charging the defendant with and after he read it several times he realized that even though he still thought he was guilty, the charge that the government used did not apply. It was a big government oversight to not charge him with something that could maybe stick. There absolutely was more than reasonable doubt and we wound up getting a unanimous not guilty vote on all 3 charges.

When the court reporter read the verdicts, the 2 guilty guys were stone-faced, and you could tell they knew what the outcome would be. When the 3 not guilty votes were read out loud for the 5th defendant, he and his lawyer broke out in tears. He would be deported immediately to go back to his family. His lawyer’s gamble of putting him on the stand paid off and I truly felt that an innocent man was given a proper verdict by the jury. Even though he was innocent, he still spent 19 months in jail until this trial began.

This case took 12 working days but I was satisfied that someone’s life would get back to some sort of normalcy. Save the “James, you’re a damn liberal hippie” posts. Justice was served. When the verdict was read for that guy, the prosecuting D.A.’s body language was like “Yeah, I kind of figured that”. Besides, the government batted .800 in this case so I think they were satisfied with the results.

A final note - I felt bad for the alternate jurors (3 of them). They had to sit through the whole trial and take time off from work but then didn't get to vote or even listen to the jury deliberations. I would have lost my mind if I had been an alternate and not get a say in the vote.