After high school I felt too old for metal music.
The Off-Topic and Random Thoughts Thread(Anything Goes!)
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I still enjoy 80s Metallica, especially songs from Kill Em All and Ride the Lightning. But there is a time and place for it.
Alright gentlemen time for a little Mother Goose session, @homersheineken asked me for this story after I referenced it in a post once:
My apologies to Homer for not typing this out sooner but here we go….
I was summoned for jury duty in disgusting Detroit as I have the misfortune of living in the one of the very few if not only non infested cities in Wayne county. It was my late 20’s, I want to say like 12-13 years ago I’m not sure exactly when because quite honestly I tried to just put the whole thing out of my head after it ended. I’ve been summoned before, you wait downstairs like an idiot with a thousand other idiots, usually you’re just dismissed there but sometimes you go upstairs and wait some more with a smaller group of idiots….never made it past this part I was always dismissed. This time I was actually called into the court room where they are picking a jury and then I made it to the point where I’m on the jury stand with the other lucky idiots and they are asking me questions to determine if anyone wants to dismiss me or not.
I’m a business owner and at this point in my life my business still pretty much relied entirely on me so waking up at 6am every day to drive down to disgusting Detroit, hunt for a parking spot and walk my ass in the freezing cold in this nasty infested building for God knows how long to deliberate on some hood rat who did who knows what is definitely not good for my life and I did EVERYTHING I could to get off that jury. Short from just flat out calling the defendant a “nigger” I said and did everything I could to get off that jury, I’m not embarrassed to say that I acted like a total piece of shit to the judge and the attorneys. My mannerisms, my answers to the questions, my fake insinuated connections to someone possibly involved in the case….there were more I can’t even remember them. The judge scolded me more than once and I was SHOCKED the defendant’s attorney didn’t ask for me to be dismissed, even the other jurors when all was said and done said to me “damn I can’t believe they left you on the jury”. But it was done I was on the jury.
It was a murder trial, accessory to murder actually, two 18 and a 19 year old garbage hood rat losers unloaded two AK47 mags into a 17 year old over an iphone and he wasn’t even the one that stole it. To sit here and type out all the specifics of the trial would make this story ten times longer so long story long someone stole one of these losers phones, they rolled into their car with an Ak47, tracked it down to some neighborhood where there was a family gathering happening, then for some reason decided one of the kids there was the thief and they unloaded on him. The actual shooter was on the run still the kid who drove and brought the AK was the one on trial. The kid didn’t say a word the entire trial, just had a scowl on his face and sat slouched in his chair the whole time, he was the prime stereotype of the black kid that you didn’t let your guard down when he walked past you and played the knockout game on little old ladies in his spare time. The only people who came to watch him during the trial were a few other nasty kids, no adults. The victim on the other hand had seemingly his entire family tree over there every single day. They were the country fried chicken eating, pants suit wearing at the family reunion factory working blacks as I like to describe them as, the ones with a strong conservative family unit and they were in constant tears the whole trial while the killers side were in there like it was a ghetto school assembly, the judge had to kick out more than one of them out just for not being able to keep quiet. The trial went on for about two weeks and I was eventually elected the jury foreman, I don’t know why but the other jurors decided I should be it.
The other jurors comprised of two black women, one who was the highly involved in the Church Baptist Christian type and another who was just run of the mill black lady you wanted nothing to do with. Two black guys, both were strangely the hipster type not the black power or ghetto type both nice guys. A random nondescript older decent person seeming white woman. A foreign older woman who had no opinion on anything whatsoever she was just taking up space, I’m not even sure she understood any of it I don’t know if she was Hispanic or some kind of eastern european. A military guy probably around my age, white guy nice guy but the type who had “seen some stuff man” in the military. The last two were cute little innocent white girls who shockingly enough both went to my high school, one graduated a couple years after me but I didn’t know her and the other was much younger. I'm pointing out the races because it plays later.
The trial was not to determine if a murder took place, that was done and decided. The attorneys flat out told us that is not what we are deciding, we are deciding if this punk who drove the car and brought the AK was just as complicit as the shooter. In the eyes of the law yes he absolutely is so then the trial isn’t even about that it’s about does this kid get first degree murder or something lesser. I’m not going to go into all the testimonies and things like that, the only notable ones were the victims uncle who was there when it took place and the girlfriend of the shooter that got away that was witness to a lot of the lead up to the shooting.
So as jurors we’re locked in this room together for a little while every morning before things begin, then again after lunch and during breaks or for whatever reason the judge thinks we shouldn’t be in the courtroom. Everyone was really nice, you get a bunch of random people together it’s rare that everyone got along but we did, I would love to sit here and tell you this person or that person was trash just to make it fun but nobody was they were all just decent normal people. It was during this time where you start to notice which way people are going to go on things. For the early part of the case we spent most of this time talking about how horrible the defendants attorney is. She was a public defender, she was this haggard older grey haired white woman who was a complete disaster. She would show up in bad clothes, unkept hair, she would constantly bicker with the judge even though she was dead wrong on things like she finished her law degree the night before online, her defense pretty much consisted at just scoffing at everyone in the court room and stammering off when she didn’t get her way. She was a complete and utter disaster she had no business fighting a parking ticket let alone defending somebody against murder. The county prosecutor was the most straight laced well spoken person you could imagine who presented everything concise and clearly without fault in total contrast with the defendants attorney it was to the point where you felt bad for the kid and couldn’t believe the injustice of the attorney they assigned to him…..which is EXACTLY what she wanted. This was all we talked about in the deliberation room at the early point of the trial, how it was so crazy that this woman was his attorney. It was until something happened as we were walking back in after the judge had us leave the court room where I realized what was really going on, I’m not going to say what it was but it hit me like a cinder block to the head. She was an excellent attorney, there was no defense for this kid NONE whatsoever, she knew damn well the only shot in hell that she had was to play this little game and to hope she caught a juror in it. We had adjourned after this so it wasn’t until the next morning where I walked into the jury room and told them what I had figured out. It was like 10 people all having an epiphany all at once, everyone felt just as dumb as me that they didn’t figure it out sooner. Even the women who would later fight me during deliberations were at awe of what they just came to realize. Looking back on it I think this was part of why they elected me foreman.
So trial was over and it’s deliberation time, at this point one juror gets to randomly go home. I don’t know why this is a thing but it is, I would have been pissed if I was sent home at this point I wanted to see this until the end. It was the indiscriminate white woman that was sent home and she was not happy about it but there was no choice in it, I wish it hadn't been her. Those of us left went into the back room to deliberate, I decided we should take a vote and then we should each one by one tell everyone why we came to that conclusion without interruption, take notes and then one by one again ask any questions or make any points to what anyone else specifically said. I wanted murder one without a doubt I did not want that kid out walking the same streets that the people I love and care about walk and I wanted it for the victims family especially since at this point they may not even catch the shooter. Everyone had him guilty except for the two black women, the Baptist woman I knew I could turn around but the other I wasn’t sure. The Baptist I knew I could turn her around because she wasn’t really stuck in her rationale, it wasn’t “I’m black and proud” type of rationale she kinda just needed affirmation to be nudged a certain way like she was debating just to debate and inflate her self worth to the rest of us. The other woman absolutely not, she came up with stupid nonsense about “why didn’t the uncle help them when the shooting was happening” and “the girlfriend is lying she just trying to cover herself”. Mind you these arguments meant absolutely nothing to the case, the uncle not running into a hail of gunfire certainly does not discredit him or change anything and the girlfriend probably was lying to cover her own involvement but that has nothing to do with the prosecutions case. I would like to sit here and say she was just some ignorant black woman but no she was smart, she was bringing up this nonsense just to sow any doubt she possibly could whether it had meaning or not, in essence she took the same tact as the defending attorney.
I am very gently arguing while patronizing and then to my great dismay the two young white girls on the jury proceeded to try and reason with this woman logically, watching it build up in real time and knowing I couldn’t stop it made me sick to my stomach because I knew exactly what was going to happen. They slowly but then COMPLETELY lost their minds on this black woman and her willful intentional stupidity. I don’t blame them it was total nonsense but what they did not understand was that throwing logic at this woman only strengthened her resolve, hell it even strengthened the other black woman’s resolve who I was confident I could turn around up until this point. The Baptist wasn’t pushing back at all prior but now she was, in the end they banded together and they both flat out said “we don’t want to see a black youth go to jail” and for them that was that. They were telling me that was their final vote and I need to mark it down and I need to tell the bailiff we’re done. Total disaster and there was no way to stop that train from coming down the tracks, anything I said or did in that moment would have just made it worse. I went into the court room and instead told the bailiff we were done for the day and would continue tomorrow, I asked him if he could tell the jury that it was the judges decision to be done for the day instead of mine as things were becoming heated and I didn’t want more conflict, after speaking with the judge they agreed and did that which saved me.
I had become friendly with the two girls and the military guy at this point, we were taking lunch together every day and I was walking the girls back to their cars every night, this was in the winter in nasty Detroit. When we walked out I scolded the girls and told them to keep their mouth shut from now on, I told them they didn’t know how to talk to black people and if they want this punk to actually go to jail they better learn to keep quiet and put their heads down for these two unhinged ladys. I explained a lot more than that in regards to the whole thing and how it had changed because of their actions, I don’t think I need to go into detail for you guys on that stuff. These girls were not dumb at all but you have to understand where we grew up, myself and these two girls who went to my high school we didn’t have black people around…..hell I live here now and it’s still like that. We had all of 3 black kids in my high school, the only reason I understood what was happening was because my family owned businesses in factory towns so I had to grow up dealing with black people like that regularly. It was terrible but I guess it did at least give me understanding and experience, these two girls did not realize what they were doing when they were trying to be rational with someone who was only looking at the color of their skin which is something I had to deal with regularly.
The next day I purposely came in late, I was more than happy to take a scolding from the judge for it. They can’t start deliberating without me there and I wanted to get there as close to lunch as possible, I made up some excuse about my car not starting….it was disgustingly cold that month in Michigan so nobody batted an eye at it another juror had the same issue a few days prior. If I came in on time we would have had 3+ hours just sitting in there while everyone is angry they had to be there in the cold morning and stewing over everything they thought about the night before, all that was going to happen was these women telling me their decision was final again. By the time I got there and we were sent into the room there was no point in doing anything because it was time for lunch, that gave me a chance to talk to the girls and the military guy some more. I walked with them to the restaurant and told them to swallow their pride and just act contrite, the goal of these black women was not justice their goal was to just get one over on whitey and now it had become to get one over on them too. Don’t argue with them, put on your dumb hat and play into everything they say with enabling sympathy and stay out of my way. I didn’t eat lunch with them I instead walked over to greektown to astoria pastries, terrible pastry shop no matter what you get everything tastes artificially the same but everyone knows the fancy name in Detroit and I must have spent $150 on an assortment of nasty pastries. I again purposely walked in late while they were all sitting there with this giant box of pastries in my hand, everyones face lit up like Christmas. After everyone had a really pretty and expensive for no reason pastry sitting in front of them I asked them to take each other’s hand and then asked Baptist church leader black woman to lead us in prayer which she did. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight she was really proud it seemed that I asked her to do so and it was a very lovely prayer she put a lot into it, it was very nice. The two girls to their credit thanked her and commented how lovely it was as well, I wanted to kiss them on the forehead for it. I then gave this long winded off the top of my head speech about how we are all good people looking to do the right things and none of us had any bad in our hearts, I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t a manipulation tactic but it was also true so it was easy to give the speech. Despite this “strong black” BS from the two women they were not necessarily bad people, the entire group was all decent people which was actually kinda shocking that you could just get 9 random Detroit area people together from all walks of life and they were all pretty normal.
We then started talking about the case and the two girls kept quiet they only spoke up to give out affirmations, the Baptist woman completely changed right off the bat I knew I had her in the bag again which was essential to turn the other woman around. Murder one was gone I knew that, as much as it should have been murder one as being an accessory is the same as pulling the trigger yourself in the eyes of the law and that poor kid would still be alive if it weren't for that piece of shit I knew if I pushed for murder one it would all fall apart. Even some of the others who were set on guilty would have gone against me if I started pushing for murder one again. I acted like I had never even uttered it or considered it and spoke only about 2nd degree which led the still innocent voting black woman to believe that she had a victory, which was fine and what I wanted. You could tell because she kept saying “2nd degree” and pausing for my reaction and all she got from me was dumb affirmation, she was loving that as she had won a battle, mind you letting her win a battle to win a war. I then presented the concept that if we didn’t come to a 2nd degree judgement that we would be a hung jury and all the nonsense that the black woman had presented I very subtly alluded to the prosecution simply “sharpening their knives” for the next trial going for murder one and the next jury may not be a room full of good people like all of us here. I had no idea if any of that shit was true but that one got me there, I saw her deflated reaction and that one got it….I swear the contrast between the look on my face and what was actually going on in my head at that moment was something to behold right there and then. I drove it home with different wording with a sympathetic voice, the two girls had sympathy in their purposely dumb comments and then the Baptist woman spoke up with the same sentiment…….DONE!
Second degree murder life in prison.
On the way out the victim’s family grabbed me and hugged me while crying hysterically, the judge is yelling at me to leave the courtroom but she could kiss my ass at that point. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t get them murder one and if I had triey then might have to just go through this all over again, they may have settled for a plea deal or even worse he may not go to jail at all. I told them I was sorry for their loss and God Bless them and their family I could see they are strong people and I hope they find peace. They couldn’t even get words out they were crying so hysterically, their tears were on the shoulders of my coat as I finally walked out.
That’s it that’s the story, I never followed up with it or looked into it ever again. I was happy to put that kid away but I did not enjoy the experience in any way and took no pride in it beyond that. Every jury summons I’ve had since then I’ve tossed in the trash. I actually did get a drink with one of those girls months after that and we didn’t talk about the trial at all I think she had the same sentiment towards it that I did, although she did tell me the military guy stalked her and got kinda crazy on her after the trial haha…..we talked about that.
My apologies to Homer for not typing this out sooner but here we go….
I was summoned for jury duty in disgusting Detroit as I have the misfortune of living in the one of the very few if not only non infested cities in Wayne county. It was my late 20’s, I want to say like 12-13 years ago I’m not sure exactly when because quite honestly I tried to just put the whole thing out of my head after it ended. I’ve been summoned before, you wait downstairs like an idiot with a thousand other idiots, usually you’re just dismissed there but sometimes you go upstairs and wait some more with a smaller group of idiots….never made it past this part I was always dismissed. This time I was actually called into the court room where they are picking a jury and then I made it to the point where I’m on the jury stand with the other lucky idiots and they are asking me questions to determine if anyone wants to dismiss me or not.
I’m a business owner and at this point in my life my business still pretty much relied entirely on me so waking up at 6am every day to drive down to disgusting Detroit, hunt for a parking spot and walk my ass in the freezing cold in this nasty infested building for God knows how long to deliberate on some hood rat who did who knows what is definitely not good for my life and I did EVERYTHING I could to get off that jury. Short from just flat out calling the defendant a “nigger” I said and did everything I could to get off that jury, I’m not embarrassed to say that I acted like a total piece of shit to the judge and the attorneys. My mannerisms, my answers to the questions, my fake insinuated connections to someone possibly involved in the case….there were more I can’t even remember them. The judge scolded me more than once and I was SHOCKED the defendant’s attorney didn’t ask for me to be dismissed, even the other jurors when all was said and done said to me “damn I can’t believe they left you on the jury”. But it was done I was on the jury.
It was a murder trial, accessory to murder actually, two 18 and a 19 year old garbage hood rat losers unloaded two AK47 mags into a 17 year old over an iphone and he wasn’t even the one that stole it. To sit here and type out all the specifics of the trial would make this story ten times longer so long story long someone stole one of these losers phones, they rolled into their car with an Ak47, tracked it down to some neighborhood where there was a family gathering happening, then for some reason decided one of the kids there was the thief and they unloaded on him. The actual shooter was on the run still the kid who drove and brought the AK was the one on trial. The kid didn’t say a word the entire trial, just had a scowl on his face and sat slouched in his chair the whole time, he was the prime stereotype of the black kid that you didn’t let your guard down when he walked past you and played the knockout game on little old ladies in his spare time. The only people who came to watch him during the trial were a few other nasty kids, no adults. The victim on the other hand had seemingly his entire family tree over there every single day. They were the country fried chicken eating, pants suit wearing at the family reunion factory working blacks as I like to describe them as, the ones with a strong conservative family unit and they were in constant tears the whole trial while the killers side were in there like it was a ghetto school assembly, the judge had to kick out more than one of them out just for not being able to keep quiet. The trial went on for about two weeks and I was eventually elected the jury foreman, I don’t know why but the other jurors decided I should be it.
The other jurors comprised of two black women, one who was the highly involved in the Church Baptist Christian type and another who was just run of the mill black lady you wanted nothing to do with. Two black guys, both were strangely the hipster type not the black power or ghetto type both nice guys. A random nondescript older decent person seeming white woman. A foreign older woman who had no opinion on anything whatsoever she was just taking up space, I’m not even sure she understood any of it I don’t know if she was Hispanic or some kind of eastern european. A military guy probably around my age, white guy nice guy but the type who had “seen some stuff man” in the military. The last two were cute little innocent white girls who shockingly enough both went to my high school, one graduated a couple years after me but I didn’t know her and the other was much younger. I'm pointing out the races because it plays later.
The trial was not to determine if a murder took place, that was done and decided. The attorneys flat out told us that is not what we are deciding, we are deciding if this punk who drove the car and brought the AK was just as complicit as the shooter. In the eyes of the law yes he absolutely is so then the trial isn’t even about that it’s about does this kid get first degree murder or something lesser. I’m not going to go into all the testimonies and things like that, the only notable ones were the victims uncle who was there when it took place and the girlfriend of the shooter that got away that was witness to a lot of the lead up to the shooting.
So as jurors we’re locked in this room together for a little while every morning before things begin, then again after lunch and during breaks or for whatever reason the judge thinks we shouldn’t be in the courtroom. Everyone was really nice, you get a bunch of random people together it’s rare that everyone got along but we did, I would love to sit here and tell you this person or that person was trash just to make it fun but nobody was they were all just decent normal people. It was during this time where you start to notice which way people are going to go on things. For the early part of the case we spent most of this time talking about how horrible the defendants attorney is. She was a public defender, she was this haggard older grey haired white woman who was a complete disaster. She would show up in bad clothes, unkept hair, she would constantly bicker with the judge even though she was dead wrong on things like she finished her law degree the night before online, her defense pretty much consisted at just scoffing at everyone in the court room and stammering off when she didn’t get her way. She was a complete and utter disaster she had no business fighting a parking ticket let alone defending somebody against murder. The county prosecutor was the most straight laced well spoken person you could imagine who presented everything concise and clearly without fault in total contrast with the defendants attorney it was to the point where you felt bad for the kid and couldn’t believe the injustice of the attorney they assigned to him…..which is EXACTLY what she wanted. This was all we talked about in the deliberation room at the early point of the trial, how it was so crazy that this woman was his attorney. It was until something happened as we were walking back in after the judge had us leave the court room where I realized what was really going on, I’m not going to say what it was but it hit me like a cinder block to the head. She was an excellent attorney, there was no defense for this kid NONE whatsoever, she knew damn well the only shot in hell that she had was to play this little game and to hope she caught a juror in it. We had adjourned after this so it wasn’t until the next morning where I walked into the jury room and told them what I had figured out. It was like 10 people all having an epiphany all at once, everyone felt just as dumb as me that they didn’t figure it out sooner. Even the women who would later fight me during deliberations were at awe of what they just came to realize. Looking back on it I think this was part of why they elected me foreman.
So trial was over and it’s deliberation time, at this point one juror gets to randomly go home. I don’t know why this is a thing but it is, I would have been pissed if I was sent home at this point I wanted to see this until the end. It was the indiscriminate white woman that was sent home and she was not happy about it but there was no choice in it, I wish it hadn't been her. Those of us left went into the back room to deliberate, I decided we should take a vote and then we should each one by one tell everyone why we came to that conclusion without interruption, take notes and then one by one again ask any questions or make any points to what anyone else specifically said. I wanted murder one without a doubt I did not want that kid out walking the same streets that the people I love and care about walk and I wanted it for the victims family especially since at this point they may not even catch the shooter. Everyone had him guilty except for the two black women, the Baptist woman I knew I could turn around but the other I wasn’t sure. The Baptist I knew I could turn her around because she wasn’t really stuck in her rationale, it wasn’t “I’m black and proud” type of rationale she kinda just needed affirmation to be nudged a certain way like she was debating just to debate and inflate her self worth to the rest of us. The other woman absolutely not, she came up with stupid nonsense about “why didn’t the uncle help them when the shooting was happening” and “the girlfriend is lying she just trying to cover herself”. Mind you these arguments meant absolutely nothing to the case, the uncle not running into a hail of gunfire certainly does not discredit him or change anything and the girlfriend probably was lying to cover her own involvement but that has nothing to do with the prosecutions case. I would like to sit here and say she was just some ignorant black woman but no she was smart, she was bringing up this nonsense just to sow any doubt she possibly could whether it had meaning or not, in essence she took the same tact as the defending attorney.
I am very gently arguing while patronizing and then to my great dismay the two young white girls on the jury proceeded to try and reason with this woman logically, watching it build up in real time and knowing I couldn’t stop it made me sick to my stomach because I knew exactly what was going to happen. They slowly but then COMPLETELY lost their minds on this black woman and her willful intentional stupidity. I don’t blame them it was total nonsense but what they did not understand was that throwing logic at this woman only strengthened her resolve, hell it even strengthened the other black woman’s resolve who I was confident I could turn around up until this point. The Baptist wasn’t pushing back at all prior but now she was, in the end they banded together and they both flat out said “we don’t want to see a black youth go to jail” and for them that was that. They were telling me that was their final vote and I need to mark it down and I need to tell the bailiff we’re done. Total disaster and there was no way to stop that train from coming down the tracks, anything I said or did in that moment would have just made it worse. I went into the court room and instead told the bailiff we were done for the day and would continue tomorrow, I asked him if he could tell the jury that it was the judges decision to be done for the day instead of mine as things were becoming heated and I didn’t want more conflict, after speaking with the judge they agreed and did that which saved me.
I had become friendly with the two girls and the military guy at this point, we were taking lunch together every day and I was walking the girls back to their cars every night, this was in the winter in nasty Detroit. When we walked out I scolded the girls and told them to keep their mouth shut from now on, I told them they didn’t know how to talk to black people and if they want this punk to actually go to jail they better learn to keep quiet and put their heads down for these two unhinged ladys. I explained a lot more than that in regards to the whole thing and how it had changed because of their actions, I don’t think I need to go into detail for you guys on that stuff. These girls were not dumb at all but you have to understand where we grew up, myself and these two girls who went to my high school we didn’t have black people around…..hell I live here now and it’s still like that. We had all of 3 black kids in my high school, the only reason I understood what was happening was because my family owned businesses in factory towns so I had to grow up dealing with black people like that regularly. It was terrible but I guess it did at least give me understanding and experience, these two girls did not realize what they were doing when they were trying to be rational with someone who was only looking at the color of their skin which is something I had to deal with regularly.
The next day I purposely came in late, I was more than happy to take a scolding from the judge for it. They can’t start deliberating without me there and I wanted to get there as close to lunch as possible, I made up some excuse about my car not starting….it was disgustingly cold that month in Michigan so nobody batted an eye at it another juror had the same issue a few days prior. If I came in on time we would have had 3+ hours just sitting in there while everyone is angry they had to be there in the cold morning and stewing over everything they thought about the night before, all that was going to happen was these women telling me their decision was final again. By the time I got there and we were sent into the room there was no point in doing anything because it was time for lunch, that gave me a chance to talk to the girls and the military guy some more. I walked with them to the restaurant and told them to swallow their pride and just act contrite, the goal of these black women was not justice their goal was to just get one over on whitey and now it had become to get one over on them too. Don’t argue with them, put on your dumb hat and play into everything they say with enabling sympathy and stay out of my way. I didn’t eat lunch with them I instead walked over to greektown to astoria pastries, terrible pastry shop no matter what you get everything tastes artificially the same but everyone knows the fancy name in Detroit and I must have spent $150 on an assortment of nasty pastries. I again purposely walked in late while they were all sitting there with this giant box of pastries in my hand, everyones face lit up like Christmas. After everyone had a really pretty and expensive for no reason pastry sitting in front of them I asked them to take each other’s hand and then asked Baptist church leader black woman to lead us in prayer which she did. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight she was really proud it seemed that I asked her to do so and it was a very lovely prayer she put a lot into it, it was very nice. The two girls to their credit thanked her and commented how lovely it was as well, I wanted to kiss them on the forehead for it. I then gave this long winded off the top of my head speech about how we are all good people looking to do the right things and none of us had any bad in our hearts, I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t a manipulation tactic but it was also true so it was easy to give the speech. Despite this “strong black” BS from the two women they were not necessarily bad people, the entire group was all decent people which was actually kinda shocking that you could just get 9 random Detroit area people together from all walks of life and they were all pretty normal.
We then started talking about the case and the two girls kept quiet they only spoke up to give out affirmations, the Baptist woman completely changed right off the bat I knew I had her in the bag again which was essential to turn the other woman around. Murder one was gone I knew that, as much as it should have been murder one as being an accessory is the same as pulling the trigger yourself in the eyes of the law and that poor kid would still be alive if it weren't for that piece of shit I knew if I pushed for murder one it would all fall apart. Even some of the others who were set on guilty would have gone against me if I started pushing for murder one again. I acted like I had never even uttered it or considered it and spoke only about 2nd degree which led the still innocent voting black woman to believe that she had a victory, which was fine and what I wanted. You could tell because she kept saying “2nd degree” and pausing for my reaction and all she got from me was dumb affirmation, she was loving that as she had won a battle, mind you letting her win a battle to win a war. I then presented the concept that if we didn’t come to a 2nd degree judgement that we would be a hung jury and all the nonsense that the black woman had presented I very subtly alluded to the prosecution simply “sharpening their knives” for the next trial going for murder one and the next jury may not be a room full of good people like all of us here. I had no idea if any of that shit was true but that one got me there, I saw her deflated reaction and that one got it….I swear the contrast between the look on my face and what was actually going on in my head at that moment was something to behold right there and then. I drove it home with different wording with a sympathetic voice, the two girls had sympathy in their purposely dumb comments and then the Baptist woman spoke up with the same sentiment…….DONE!
Second degree murder life in prison.
On the way out the victim’s family grabbed me and hugged me while crying hysterically, the judge is yelling at me to leave the courtroom but she could kiss my ass at that point. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t get them murder one and if I had triey then might have to just go through this all over again, they may have settled for a plea deal or even worse he may not go to jail at all. I told them I was sorry for their loss and God Bless them and their family I could see they are strong people and I hope they find peace. They couldn’t even get words out they were crying so hysterically, their tears were on the shoulders of my coat as I finally walked out.
That’s it that’s the story, I never followed up with it or looked into it ever again. I was happy to put that kid away but I did not enjoy the experience in any way and took no pride in it beyond that. Every jury summons I’ve had since then I’ve tossed in the trash. I actually did get a drink with one of those girls months after that and we didn’t talk about the trial at all I think she had the same sentiment towards it that I did, although she did tell me the military guy stalked her and got kinda crazy on her after the trial haha…..we talked about that.
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Maybe they felt like you would be more "authentic" or something.
I did some of the same stuff once. I was in a federal grand jury selection and the judge said that we would have to serve an entire year, 4 to 8 days per month. Basically legalized slavery. From that moment on, I raised my hand at every opportunity to make myself look objectionable.
Haha I know I'm sorry I was wondering who was going to be the first to drop that pic, I'm a decent mother goose that's why it took me so long to tell the damn story!
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Brother I sat there visibly shaking my head at the defendant with a dirty look on my face, I told the judge I didn't know if I could "subconsciously" be impartial and repeated that multiple times after I pretended I knew some of the police officers involved in the case by making some stupid connection to them with the police officers I knew in the city my business was in, I told the judge I didn't have reliable transportation and I had IBS. I said other things too I don't even remember....
What the hell else could I have done?! Did you get out of it?
Someone told me once to say that I don't believe we should judge people only God can do that but I couldn't bring myself to sink that low....probably should have.
Alright gentlemen time for a little Mother Goose session, @homersheineken asked me for this story after I referenced it in a post once:
My apologies to Homer for not typing this out sooner but here we go….
I was summoned for jury duty in disgusting Detroit as I have the misfortune of living in the one of the very few if not only non infested cities in Wayne county. It was my late 20’s, I want to say like 12-13 years ago I’m not sure exactly when because quite honestly I tried to just put the whole thing out of my head after it ended. I’ve been summoned before, you wait downstairs like an idiot with a thousand other idiots, usually you’re just dismissed there but sometimes you go upstairs and wait some more with a smaller group of idiots….never made it past this part I was always dismissed. This time I was actually called into the court room where they are picking a jury and then I made it to the point where I’m on the jury stand with the other lucky idiots and they are asking me questions to determine if anyone wants to dismiss me or not.
I’m a business owner and at this point in my life my business still pretty much relied entirely on me so waking up at 6am every day to drive down to disgusting Detroit, hunt for a parking spot and walk my ass in the freezing cold in this nasty infested building for God knows how long to deliberate on some hood rat who did who knows what is definitely not good for my life and I did EVERYTHING I could to get off that jury. Short from just flat out calling the defendant a “nigger” I said and did everything I could to get off that jury, I’m not embarrassed to say that I acted like a total piece of shit to the judge and the attorneys. My mannerisms, my answers to the questions, my fake insinuated connections to someone possibly involved in the case….there were more I can’t even remember them. The judge scolded me more than once and I was SHOCKED the defendant’s attorney didn’t ask for me to be dismissed, even the other jurors when all was said and done said to me “damn I can’t believe they left you on the jury”. But it was done I was on the jury.
It was a murder trial, accessory to murder actually, two 18 and a 19 year old garbage hood rat losers unloaded two AK47 mags into a 17 year old over an iphone and he wasn’t even the one that stole it. To sit here and type out all the specifics of the trial would make this story ten times longer so long story long someone stole one of these losers phones, they rolled into their car with an Ak47, tracked it down to some neighborhood where there was a family gathering happening, then for some reason decided one of the kids there was the thief and they unloaded on him. The actual shooter was on the run still the kid who drove and brought the AK was the one on trial. The kid didn’t say a word the entire trial, just had a scowl on his face and sat slouched in his chair the whole time, he was the prime stereotype of the black kid that you didn’t let your guard down when he walked past you and played the knockout game on little old ladies in his spare time. The only people who came to watch him during the trial were a few other nasty kids, no adults. The victim on the other hand had seemingly his entire family tree over there every single day. They were the country fried chicken eating, pants suit wearing at the family reunion factory working blacks as I like to describe them as, the ones with a strong conservative family unit and they were in constant tears the whole trial while the killers side were in there like it was a ghetto school assembly, the judge had to kick out more than one of them out just for not being able to keep quiet. The trial went on for about two weeks and I was eventually elected the jury foreman, I don’t know why but the other jurors decided I should be it.
The other jurors comprised of two black women, one who was the highly involved in the Church Baptist Christian type and another who was just run of the mill black lady you wanted nothing to do with. Two black guys, both were strangely the hipster type not the black power or ghetto type both nice guys. A random nondescript older decent person seeming white woman. A foreign older woman who had no opinion on anything whatsoever she was just taking up space, I’m not even sure she understood any of it I don’t know if she was Hispanic or some kind of eastern european. A military guy probably around my age, white guy nice guy but the type who had “seen some stuff man” in the military. The last two were cute little innocent white girls who shockingly enough both went to my high school, one graduated a couple years after me but I didn’t know her and the other was much younger. I'm pointing out the races because it plays later.
The trial was not to determine if a murder took place, that was done and decided. The attorneys flat out told us that is not what we are deciding, we are deciding if this punk who drove the car and brought the AK was just as complicit as the shooter. In the eyes of the law yes he absolutely is so then the trial isn’t even about that it’s about does this kid get first degree murder or something lesser. I’m not going to go into all the testimonies and things like that, the only notable ones were the victims uncle who was there when it took place and the girlfriend of the shooter that got away that was witness to a lot of the lead up to the shooting.
So as jurors we’re locked in this room together for a little while every morning before things begin, then again after lunch and during breaks or for whatever reason the judge thinks we shouldn’t be in the courtroom. Everyone was really nice, you get a bunch of random people together it’s rare that everyone got along but we did, I would love to sit here and tell you this person or that person was trash just to make it fun but nobody was they were all just decent normal people. It was during this time where you start to notice which way people are going to go on things. For the early part of the case we spent most of this time talking about how horrible the defendants attorney is. She was a public defender, she was this haggard older grey haired white woman who was a complete disaster. She would show up in bad clothes, unkept hair, she would constantly bicker with the judge even though she was dead wrong on things like she finished her law degree the night before online, her defense pretty much consisted at just scoffing at everyone in the court room and stammering off when she didn’t get her way. She was a complete and utter disaster she had no business fighting a parking ticket let alone defending somebody against murder. The county prosecutor was the most straight laced well spoken person you could imagine who presented everything concise and clearly without fault in total contrast with the defendants attorney it was to the point where you felt bad for the kid and couldn’t believe the injustice of the attorney they assigned to him…..which is EXACTLY what she wanted. This was all we talked about in the deliberation room at the early point of the trial, how it was so crazy that this woman was his attorney. It was until something happened as we were walking back in after the judge had us leave the court room where I realized what was really going on, I’m not going to say what it was but it hit me like a cinder block to the head. She was an excellent attorney, there was no defense for this kid NONE whatsoever, she knew damn well the only shot in hell that she had was to play this little game and to hope she caught a juror in it. We had adjourned after this so it wasn’t until the next morning where I walked into the jury room and told them what I had figured out. It was like 10 people all having an epiphany all at once, everyone felt just as dumb as me that they didn’t figure it out sooner. Even the women who would later fight me during deliberations were at awe of what they just came to realize. Looking back on it I think this was part of why they elected me foreman.
So trial was over and it’s deliberation time, at this point one juror gets to randomly go home. I don’t know why this is a thing but it is, I would have been pissed if I was sent home at this point I wanted to see this until the end. It was the indiscriminate white woman that was sent home and she was not happy about it but there was no choice in it, I wish it hadn't been her. Those of us left went into the back room to deliberate, I decided we should take a vote and then we should each one by one tell everyone why we came to that conclusion without interruption, take notes and then one by one again ask any questions or make any points to what anyone else specifically said. I wanted murder one without a doubt I did not want that kid out walking the same streets that the people I love and care about walk and I wanted it for the victims family especially since at this point they may not even catch the shooter. Everyone had him guilty except for the two black women, the Baptist woman I knew I could turn around but the other I wasn’t sure. The Baptist I knew I could turn her around because she wasn’t really stuck in her rationale, it wasn’t “I’m black and proud” type of rationale she kinda just needed affirmation to be nudged a certain way like she was debating just to debate and inflate her self worth to the rest of us. The other woman absolutely not, she came up with stupid nonsense about “why didn’t the uncle help them when the shooting was happening” and “the girlfriend is lying she just trying to cover herself”. Mind you these arguments meant absolutely nothing to the case, the uncle not running into a hail of gunfire certainly does not discredit him or change anything and the girlfriend probably was lying to cover her own involvement but that has nothing to do with the prosecutions case. I would like to sit here and say she was just some ignorant black woman but no she was smart, she was bringing up this nonsense just to sow any doubt she possibly could whether it had meaning or not, in essence she took the same tact as the defending attorney.
I am very gently arguing while patronizing and then to my great dismay the two young white girls on the jury proceeded to try and reason with this woman logically, watching it build up in real time and knowing I couldn’t stop it made me sick to my stomach because I knew exactly what was going to happen. They slowly but then COMPLETELY lost their minds on this black woman and her willful intentional stupidity. I don’t blame them it was total nonsense but what they did not understand was that throwing logic at this woman only strengthened her resolve, hell it even strengthened the other black woman’s resolve who I was confident I could turn around up until this point. The Baptist wasn’t pushing back at all prior but now she was, in the end they banded together and they both flat out said “we don’t want to see a black youth go to jail” and for them that was that. They were telling me that was their final vote and I need to mark it down and I need to tell the bailiff we’re done. Total disaster and there was no way to stop that train from coming down the tracks, anything I said or did in that moment would have just made it worse. I went into the court room and instead told the bailiff we were done for the day and would continue tomorrow, I asked him if he could tell the jury that it was the judges decision to be done for the day instead of mine as things were becoming heated and I didn’t want more conflict, after speaking with the judge they agreed and did that which saved me.
I had become friendly with the two girls and the military guy at this point, we were taking lunch together every day and I was walking the girls back to their cars every night, this was in the winter in nasty Detroit. When we walked out I scolded the girls and told them to keep their mouth shut from now on, I told them they didn’t know how to talk to black people and if they want this punk to actually go to jail they better learn to keep quiet and put their heads down for these two unhinged ladys. I explained a lot more than that in regards to the whole thing and how it had changed because of their actions, I don’t think I need to go into detail for you guys on that stuff. These girls were not dumb at all but you have to understand where we grew up, myself and these two girls who went to my high school we didn’t have black people around…..hell I live here now and it’s still like that. We had all of 3 black kids in my high school, the only reason I understood what was happening was because my family owned businesses in factory towns so I had to grow up dealing with black people like that regularly. It was terrible but I guess it did at least give me understanding and experience, these two girls did not realize what they were doing when they were trying to be rational with someone who was only looking at the color of their skin which is something I had to deal with regularly.
The next day I purposely came in late, I was more than happy to take a scolding from the judge for it. They can’t start deliberating without me there and I wanted to get there as close to lunch as possible, I made up some excuse about my car not starting….it was disgustingly cold that month in Michigan so nobody batted an eye at it another juror had the same issue a few days prior. If I came in on time we would have had 3+ hours just sitting in there while everyone is angry they had to be there in the cold morning and stewing over everything they thought about the night before, all that was going to happen was these women telling me their decision was final again. By the time I got there and we were sent into the room there was no point in doing anything because it was time for lunch, that gave me a chance to talk to the girls and the military guy some more. I walked with them to the restaurant and told them to swallow their pride and just act contrite, the goal of these black women was not justice their goal was to just get one over on whitey and now it had become to get one over on them too. Don’t argue with them, put on your dumb hat and play into everything they say with enabling sympathy and stay out of my way. I didn’t eat lunch with them I instead walked over to greektown to astoria pastries, terrible pastry shop no matter what you get everything tastes artificially the same but everyone knows the fancy name in Detroit and I must have spent $150 on an assortment of nasty pastries. I again purposely walked in late while they were all sitting there with this giant box of pastries in my hand, everyones face lit up like Christmas. After everyone had a really pretty and expensive for no reason pastry sitting in front of them I asked them to take each other’s hand and then asked Baptist church leader black woman to lead us in prayer which she did. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight she was really proud it seemed that I asked her to do so and it was a very lovely prayer she put a lot into it, it was very nice. The two girls to their credit thanked her and commented how lovely it was as well, I wanted to kiss them on the forehead for it. I then gave this long winded off the top of my head speech about how we are all good people looking to do the right things and none of us had any bad in our hearts, I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t a manipulation tactic but it was also true so it was easy to give the speech. Despite this “strong black” BS from the two women they were not necessarily bad people, the entire group was all decent people which was actually kinda shocking that you could just get 9 random Detroit area people together from all walks of life and they were all pretty normal.
We then started talking about the case and the two girls kept quiet they only spoke up to give out affirmations, the Baptist woman completely changed right off the bat I knew I had her in the bag again which was essential to turn the other woman around. Murder one was gone I knew that, as much as it should have been murder one as being an accessory is the same as pulling the trigger yourself in the eyes of the law and that poor kid would still be alive if it weren't for that piece of shit I knew if I pushed for murder one it would all fall apart. Even some of the others who were set on guilty would have gone against me if I started pushing for murder one again. I acted like I had never even uttered it or considered it and spoke only about 2nd degree which led the still innocent voting black woman to believe that she had a victory, which was fine and what I wanted. You could tell because she kept saying “2nd degree” and pausing for my reaction and all she got from me was dumb affirmation, she was loving that as she had won a battle, mind you letting her win a battle to win a war. I then presented the concept that if we didn’t come to a 2nd degree judgement that we would be a hung jury and all the nonsense that the black woman had presented I very subtly alluded to the prosecution simply “sharpening their knives” for the next trial going for murder one and the next jury may not be a room full of good people like all of us here. I had no idea if any of that shit was true but that one got me there, I saw her deflated reaction and that one got it….I swear the contrast between the look on my face and what was actually going on in my head at that moment was something to behold right there and then. I drove it home with different wording with a sympathetic voice, the two girls had sympathy in their purposely dumb comments and then the Baptist woman spoke up with the same sentiment…….DONE!
Second degree murder life in prison.
On the way out the victim’s family grabbed me and hugged me while crying hysterically, the judge is yelling at me to leave the courtroom but she could kiss my ass at that point. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t get them murder one and if I had triey then might have to just go through this all over again, they may have settled for a plea deal or even worse he may not go to jail at all. I told them I was sorry for their loss and God Bless them and their family I could see they are strong people and I hope they find peace. They couldn’t even get words out they were crying so hysterically, their tears were on the shoulders of my coat as I finally walked out.
That’s it that’s the story, I never followed up with it or looked into it ever again. I was happy to put that kid away but I did not enjoy the experience in any way and took no pride in it beyond that. Every jury summons I’ve had since then I’ve tossed in the trash. I actually did get a drink with one of those girls months after that and we didn’t talk about the trial at all I think she had the same sentiment towards it that I did, although she did tell me the military guy stalked her and got kinda crazy on her after the trial haha…..we talked about that.
What a story. Thank you for sharing bro.
Hey, you got to do what you got to do right? But I'm very surprised they still put you on that jury. Perhaps the attorney had already used up all her objections. They can only remove a limited number of people from each side, prosecution and defense. Though I think the judge can also strike people off.
Yes, I got out of the grand jury thank God. I think they crossed me off the list when I started talking about negative encounters with law enforcement. A large part of it would have been looking at child porn cases and I have no wish to see any of that. They go through 800 cases during your term of service.
Plus I would have used up all of my PTO and then some unpaid days leading to lost income. I didn't lie though. I just told the truth and left it up to God's will. But if you ask me this kind of work should be done by professionals and not randos off the street.
Alright gentlemen time for a little Mother Goose session, @homersheineken asked me for this story after I referenced it in a post once:
My apologies to Homer for not typing this out sooner but here we go….
I was summoned for jury duty in disgusting Detroit as I have the misfortune of living in the one of the very few if not only non infested cities in Wayne county. It was my late 20’s, I want to say like 12-13 years ago I’m not sure exactly when because quite honestly I tried to just put the whole thing out of my head after it ended. I’ve been summoned before, you wait downstairs like an idiot with a thousand other idiots, usually you’re just dismissed there but sometimes you go upstairs and wait some more with a smaller group of idiots….never made it past this part I was always dismissed. This time I was actually called into the court room where they are picking a jury and then I made it to the point where I’m on the jury stand with the other lucky idiots and they are asking me questions to determine if anyone wants to dismiss me or not.
I’m a business owner and at this point in my life my business still pretty much relied entirely on me so waking up at 6am every day to drive down to disgusting Detroit, hunt for a parking spot and walk my ass in the freezing cold in this nasty infested building for God knows how long to deliberate on some hood rat who did who knows what is definitely not good for my life and I did EVERYTHING I could to get off that jury. Short from just flat out calling the defendant a “nigger” I said and did everything I could to get off that jury, I’m not embarrassed to say that I acted like a total piece of shit to the judge and the attorneys. My mannerisms, my answers to the questions, my fake insinuated connections to someone possibly involved in the case….there were more I can’t even remember them. The judge scolded me more than once and I was SHOCKED the defendant’s attorney didn’t ask for me to be dismissed, even the other jurors when all was said and done said to me “damn I can’t believe they left you on the jury”. But it was done I was on the jury.
It was a murder trial, accessory to murder actually, two 18 and a 19 year old garbage hood rat losers unloaded two AK47 mags into a 17 year old over an iphone and he wasn’t even the one that stole it. To sit here and type out all the specifics of the trial would make this story ten times longer so long story long someone stole one of these losers phones, they rolled into their car with an Ak47, tracked it down to some neighborhood where there was a family gathering happening, then for some reason decided one of the kids there was the thief and they unloaded on him. The actual shooter was on the run still the kid who drove and brought the AK was the one on trial. The kid didn’t say a word the entire trial, just had a scowl on his face and sat slouched in his chair the whole time, he was the prime stereotype of the black kid that you didn’t let your guard down when he walked past you and played the knockout game on little old ladies in his spare time. The only people who came to watch him during the trial were a few other nasty kids, no adults. The victim on the other hand had seemingly his entire family tree over there every single day. They were the country fried chicken eating, pants suit wearing at the family reunion factory working blacks as I like to describe them as, the ones with a strong conservative family unit and they were in constant tears the whole trial while the killers side were in there like it was a ghetto school assembly, the judge had to kick out more than one of them out just for not being able to keep quiet. The trial went on for about two weeks and I was eventually elected the jury foreman, I don’t know why but the other jurors decided I should be it.
The other jurors comprised of two black women, one who was the highly involved in the Church Baptist Christian type and another who was just run of the mill black lady you wanted nothing to do with. Two black guys, both were strangely the hipster type not the black power or ghetto type both nice guys. A random nondescript older decent person seeming white woman. A foreign older woman who had no opinion on anything whatsoever she was just taking up space, I’m not even sure she understood any of it I don’t know if she was Hispanic or some kind of eastern european. A military guy probably around my age, white guy nice guy but the type who had “seen some stuff man” in the military. The last two were cute little innocent white girls who shockingly enough both went to my high school, one graduated a couple years after me but I didn’t know her and the other was much younger. I'm pointing out the races because it plays later.
The trial was not to determine if a murder took place, that was done and decided. The attorneys flat out told us that is not what we are deciding, we are deciding if this punk who drove the car and brought the AK was just as complicit as the shooter. In the eyes of the law yes he absolutely is so then the trial isn’t even about that it’s about does this kid get first degree murder or something lesser. I’m not going to go into all the testimonies and things like that, the only notable ones were the victims uncle who was there when it took place and the girlfriend of the shooter that got away that was witness to a lot of the lead up to the shooting.
So as jurors we’re locked in this room together for a little while every morning before things begin, then again after lunch and during breaks or for whatever reason the judge thinks we shouldn’t be in the courtroom. Everyone was really nice, you get a bunch of random people together it’s rare that everyone got along but we did, I would love to sit here and tell you this person or that person was trash just to make it fun but nobody was they were all just decent normal people. It was during this time where you start to notice which way people are going to go on things. For the early part of the case we spent most of this time talking about how horrible the defendants attorney is. She was a public defender, she was this haggard older grey haired white woman who was a complete disaster. She would show up in bad clothes, unkept hair, she would constantly bicker with the judge even though she was dead wrong on things like she finished her law degree the night before online, her defense pretty much consisted at just scoffing at everyone in the court room and stammering off when she didn’t get her way. She was a complete and utter disaster she had no business fighting a parking ticket let alone defending somebody against murder. The county prosecutor was the most straight laced well spoken person you could imagine who presented everything concise and clearly without fault in total contrast with the defendants attorney it was to the point where you felt bad for the kid and couldn’t believe the injustice of the attorney they assigned to him…..which is EXACTLY what she wanted. This was all we talked about in the deliberation room at the early point of the trial, how it was so crazy that this woman was his attorney. It was until something happened as we were walking back in after the judge had us leave the court room where I realized what was really going on, I’m not going to say what it was but it hit me like a cinder block to the head. She was an excellent attorney, there was no defense for this kid NONE whatsoever, she knew damn well the only shot in hell that she had was to play this little game and to hope she caught a juror in it. We had adjourned after this so it wasn’t until the next morning where I walked into the jury room and told them what I had figured out. It was like 10 people all having an epiphany all at once, everyone felt just as dumb as me that they didn’t figure it out sooner. Even the women who would later fight me during deliberations were at awe of what they just came to realize. Looking back on it I think this was part of why they elected me foreman.
So trial was over and it’s deliberation time, at this point one juror gets to randomly go home. I don’t know why this is a thing but it is, I would have been pissed if I was sent home at this point I wanted to see this until the end. It was the indiscriminate white woman that was sent home and she was not happy about it but there was no choice in it, I wish it hadn't been her. Those of us left went into the back room to deliberate, I decided we should take a vote and then we should each one by one tell everyone why we came to that conclusion without interruption, take notes and then one by one again ask any questions or make any points to what anyone else specifically said. I wanted murder one without a doubt I did not want that kid out walking the same streets that the people I love and care about walk and I wanted it for the victims family especially since at this point they may not even catch the shooter. Everyone had him guilty except for the two black women, the Baptist woman I knew I could turn around but the other I wasn’t sure. The Baptist I knew I could turn her around because she wasn’t really stuck in her rationale, it wasn’t “I’m black and proud” type of rationale she kinda just needed affirmation to be nudged a certain way like she was debating just to debate and inflate her self worth to the rest of us. The other woman absolutely not, she came up with stupid nonsense about “why didn’t the uncle help them when the shooting was happening” and “the girlfriend is lying she just trying to cover herself”. Mind you these arguments meant absolutely nothing to the case, the uncle not running into a hail of gunfire certainly does not discredit him or change anything and the girlfriend probably was lying to cover her own involvement but that has nothing to do with the prosecutions case. I would like to sit here and say she was just some ignorant black woman but no she was smart, she was bringing up this nonsense just to sow any doubt she possibly could whether it had meaning or not, in essence she took the same tact as the defending attorney.
I am very gently arguing while patronizing and then to my great dismay the two young white girls on the jury proceeded to try and reason with this woman logically, watching it build up in real time and knowing I couldn’t stop it made me sick to my stomach because I knew exactly what was going to happen. They slowly but then COMPLETELY lost their minds on this black woman and her willful intentional stupidity. I don’t blame them it was total nonsense but what they did not understand was that throwing logic at this woman only strengthened her resolve, hell it even strengthened the other black woman’s resolve who I was confident I could turn around up until this point. The Baptist wasn’t pushing back at all prior but now she was, in the end they banded together and they both flat out said “we don’t want to see a black youth go to jail” and for them that was that. They were telling me that was their final vote and I need to mark it down and I need to tell the bailiff we’re done. Total disaster and there was no way to stop that train from coming down the tracks, anything I said or did in that moment would have just made it worse. I went into the court room and instead told the bailiff we were done for the day and would continue tomorrow, I asked him if he could tell the jury that it was the judges decision to be done for the day instead of mine as things were becoming heated and I didn’t want more conflict, after speaking with the judge they agreed and did that which saved me.
I had become friendly with the two girls and the military guy at this point, we were taking lunch together every day and I was walking the girls back to their cars every night, this was in the winter in nasty Detroit. When we walked out I scolded the girls and told them to keep their mouth shut from now on, I told them they didn’t know how to talk to black people and if they want this punk to actually go to jail they better learn to keep quiet and put their heads down for these two unhinged ladys. I explained a lot more than that in regards to the whole thing and how it had changed because of their actions, I don’t think I need to go into detail for you guys on that stuff. These girls were not dumb at all but you have to understand where we grew up, myself and these two girls who went to my high school we didn’t have black people around…..hell I live here now and it’s still like that. We had all of 3 black kids in my high school, the only reason I understood what was happening was because my family owned businesses in factory towns so I had to grow up dealing with black people like that regularly. It was terrible but I guess it did at least give me understanding and experience, these two girls did not realize what they were doing when they were trying to be rational with someone who was only looking at the color of their skin which is something I had to deal with regularly.
The next day I purposely came in late, I was more than happy to take a scolding from the judge for it. They can’t start deliberating without me there and I wanted to get there as close to lunch as possible, I made up some excuse about my car not starting….it was disgustingly cold that month in Michigan so nobody batted an eye at it another juror had the same issue a few days prior. If I came in on time we would have had 3+ hours just sitting in there while everyone is angry they had to be there in the cold morning and stewing over everything they thought about the night before, all that was going to happen was these women telling me their decision was final again. By the time I got there and we were sent into the room there was no point in doing anything because it was time for lunch, that gave me a chance to talk to the girls and the military guy some more. I walked with them to the restaurant and told them to swallow their pride and just act contrite, the goal of these black women was not justice their goal was to just get one over on whitey and now it had become to get one over on them too. Don’t argue with them, put on your dumb hat and play into everything they say with enabling sympathy and stay out of my way. I didn’t eat lunch with them I instead walked over to greektown to astoria pastries, terrible pastry shop no matter what you get everything tastes artificially the same but everyone knows the fancy name in Detroit and I must have spent $150 on an assortment of nasty pastries. I again purposely walked in late while they were all sitting there with this giant box of pastries in my hand, everyones face lit up like Christmas. After everyone had a really pretty and expensive for no reason pastry sitting in front of them I asked them to take each other’s hand and then asked Baptist church leader black woman to lead us in prayer which she did. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight she was really proud it seemed that I asked her to do so and it was a very lovely prayer she put a lot into it, it was very nice. The two girls to their credit thanked her and commented how lovely it was as well, I wanted to kiss them on the forehead for it. I then gave this long winded off the top of my head speech about how we are all good people looking to do the right things and none of us had any bad in our hearts, I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t a manipulation tactic but it was also true so it was easy to give the speech. Despite this “strong black” BS from the two women they were not necessarily bad people, the entire group was all decent people which was actually kinda shocking that you could just get 9 random Detroit area people together from all walks of life and they were all pretty normal.
We then started talking about the case and the two girls kept quiet they only spoke up to give out affirmations, the Baptist woman completely changed right off the bat I knew I had her in the bag again which was essential to turn the other woman around. Murder one was gone I knew that, as much as it should have been murder one as being an accessory is the same as pulling the trigger yourself in the eyes of the law and that poor kid would still be alive if it weren't for that piece of shit I knew if I pushed for murder one it would all fall apart. Even some of the others who were set on guilty would have gone against me if I started pushing for murder one again. I acted like I had never even uttered it or considered it and spoke only about 2nd degree which led the still innocent voting black woman to believe that she had a victory, which was fine and what I wanted. You could tell because she kept saying “2nd degree” and pausing for my reaction and all she got from me was dumb affirmation, she was loving that as she had won a battle, mind you letting her win a battle to win a war. I then presented the concept that if we didn’t come to a 2nd degree judgement that we would be a hung jury and all the nonsense that the black woman had presented I very subtly alluded to the prosecution simply “sharpening their knives” for the next trial going for murder one and the next jury may not be a room full of good people like all of us here. I had no idea if any of that shit was true but that one got me there, I saw her deflated reaction and that one got it….I swear the contrast between the look on my face and what was actually going on in my head at that moment was something to behold right there and then. I drove it home with different wording with a sympathetic voice, the two girls had sympathy in their purposely dumb comments and then the Baptist woman spoke up with the same sentiment…….DONE!
Second degree murder life in prison.
On the way out the victim’s family grabbed me and hugged me while crying hysterically, the judge is yelling at me to leave the courtroom but she could kiss my ass at that point. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t get them murder one and if I had triey then might have to just go through this all over again, they may have settled for a plea deal or even worse he may not go to jail at all. I told them I was sorry for their loss and God Bless them and their family I could see they are strong people and I hope they find peace. They couldn’t even get words out they were crying so hysterically, their tears were on the shoulders of my coat as I finally walked out.
That’s it that’s the story, I never followed up with it or looked into it ever again. I was happy to put that kid away but I did not enjoy the experience in any way and took no pride in it beyond that. Every jury summons I’ve had since then I’ve tossed in the trash. I actually did get a drink with one of those girls months after that and we didn’t talk about the trial at all I think she had the same sentiment towards it that I did, although she did tell me the military guy stalked her and got kinda crazy on her after the trial haha…..we talked about that.
Alright gentlemen time for a little Mother Goose session, @homersheineken asked me for this story after I referenced it in a post once:
My apologies to Homer for not typing this out sooner but here we go….
I was summoned for jury duty in disgusting Detroit as I have the misfortune of living in the one of the very few if not only non infested cities in Wayne county. It was my late 20’s, I want to say like 12-13 years ago I’m not sure exactly when because quite honestly I tried to just put the whole thing out of my head after it ended. I’ve been summoned before, you wait downstairs like an idiot with a thousand other idiots, usually you’re just dismissed there but sometimes you go upstairs and wait some more with a smaller group of idiots….never made it past this part I was always dismissed. This time I was actually called into the court room where they are picking a jury and then I made it to the point where I’m on the jury stand with the other lucky idiots and they are asking me questions to determine if anyone wants to dismiss me or not.
I’m a business owner and at this point in my life my business still pretty much relied entirely on me so waking up at 6am every day to drive down to disgusting Detroit, hunt for a parking spot and walk my ass in the freezing cold in this nasty infested building for God knows how long to deliberate on some hood rat who did who knows what is definitely not good for my life and I did EVERYTHING I could to get off that jury. Short from just flat out calling the defendant a “nigger” I said and did everything I could to get off that jury, I’m not embarrassed to say that I acted like a total piece of shit to the judge and the attorneys. My mannerisms, my answers to the questions, my fake insinuated connections to someone possibly involved in the case….there were more I can’t even remember them. The judge scolded me more than once and I was SHOCKED the defendant’s attorney didn’t ask for me to be dismissed, even the other jurors when all was said and done said to me “damn I can’t believe they left you on the jury”. But it was done I was on the jury.
It was a murder trial, accessory to murder actually, two 18 and a 19 year old garbage hood rat losers unloaded two AK47 mags into a 17 year old over an iphone and he wasn’t even the one that stole it. To sit here and type out all the specifics of the trial would make this story ten times longer so long story long someone stole one of these losers phones, they rolled into their car with an Ak47, tracked it down to some neighborhood where there was a family gathering happening, then for some reason decided one of the kids there was the thief and they unloaded on him. The actual shooter was on the run still the kid who drove and brought the AK was the one on trial. The kid didn’t say a word the entire trial, just had a scowl on his face and sat slouched in his chair the whole time, he was the prime stereotype of the black kid that you didn’t let your guard down when he walked past you and played the knockout game on little old ladies in his spare time. The only people who came to watch him during the trial were a few other nasty kids, no adults. The victim on the other hand had seemingly his entire family tree over there every single day. They were the country fried chicken eating, pants suit wearing at the family reunion factory working blacks as I like to describe them as, the ones with a strong conservative family unit and they were in constant tears the whole trial while the killers side were in there like it was a ghetto school assembly, the judge had to kick out more than one of them out just for not being able to keep quiet. The trial went on for about two weeks and I was eventually elected the jury foreman, I don’t know why but the other jurors decided I should be it.
The other jurors comprised of two black women, one who was the highly involved in the Church Baptist Christian type and another who was just run of the mill black lady you wanted nothing to do with. Two black guys, both were strangely the hipster type not the black power or ghetto type both nice guys. A random nondescript older decent person seeming white woman. A foreign older woman who had no opinion on anything whatsoever she was just taking up space, I’m not even sure she understood any of it I don’t know if she was Hispanic or some kind of eastern european. A military guy probably around my age, white guy nice guy but the type who had “seen some stuff man” in the military. The last two were cute little innocent white girls who shockingly enough both went to my high school, one graduated a couple years after me but I didn’t know her and the other was much younger. I'm pointing out the races because it plays later.
The trial was not to determine if a murder took place, that was done and decided. The attorneys flat out told us that is not what we are deciding, we are deciding if this punk who drove the car and brought the AK was just as complicit as the shooter. In the eyes of the law yes he absolutely is so then the trial isn’t even about that it’s about does this kid get first degree murder or something lesser. I’m not going to go into all the testimonies and things like that, the only notable ones were the victims uncle who was there when it took place and the girlfriend of the shooter that got away that was witness to a lot of the lead up to the shooting.
So as jurors we’re locked in this room together for a little while every morning before things begin, then again after lunch and during breaks or for whatever reason the judge thinks we shouldn’t be in the courtroom. Everyone was really nice, you get a bunch of random people together it’s rare that everyone got along but we did, I would love to sit here and tell you this person or that person was trash just to make it fun but nobody was they were all just decent normal people. It was during this time where you start to notice which way people are going to go on things. For the early part of the case we spent most of this time talking about how horrible the defendants attorney is. She was a public defender, she was this haggard older grey haired white woman who was a complete disaster. She would show up in bad clothes, unkept hair, she would constantly bicker with the judge even though she was dead wrong on things like she finished her law degree the night before online, her defense pretty much consisted at just scoffing at everyone in the court room and stammering off when she didn’t get her way. She was a complete and utter disaster she had no business fighting a parking ticket let alone defending somebody against murder. The county prosecutor was the most straight laced well spoken person you could imagine who presented everything concise and clearly without fault in total contrast with the defendants attorney it was to the point where you felt bad for the kid and couldn’t believe the injustice of the attorney they assigned to him…..which is EXACTLY what she wanted. This was all we talked about in the deliberation room at the early point of the trial, how it was so crazy that this woman was his attorney. It was until something happened as we were walking back in after the judge had us leave the court room where I realized what was really going on, I’m not going to say what it was but it hit me like a cinder block to the head. She was an excellent attorney, there was no defense for this kid NONE whatsoever, she knew damn well the only shot in hell that she had was to play this little game and to hope she caught a juror in it. We had adjourned after this so it wasn’t until the next morning where I walked into the jury room and told them what I had figured out. It was like 10 people all having an epiphany all at once, everyone felt just as dumb as me that they didn’t figure it out sooner. Even the women who would later fight me during deliberations were at awe of what they just came to realize. Looking back on it I think this was part of why they elected me foreman.
So trial was over and it’s deliberation time, at this point one juror gets to randomly go home. I don’t know why this is a thing but it is, I would have been pissed if I was sent home at this point I wanted to see this until the end. It was the indiscriminate white woman that was sent home and she was not happy about it but there was no choice in it, I wish it hadn't been her. Those of us left went into the back room to deliberate, I decided we should take a vote and then we should each one by one tell everyone why we came to that conclusion without interruption, take notes and then one by one again ask any questions or make any points to what anyone else specifically said. I wanted murder one without a doubt I did not want that kid out walking the same streets that the people I love and care about walk and I wanted it for the victims family especially since at this point they may not even catch the shooter. Everyone had him guilty except for the two black women, the Baptist woman I knew I could turn around but the other I wasn’t sure. The Baptist I knew I could turn her around because she wasn’t really stuck in her rationale, it wasn’t “I’m black and proud” type of rationale she kinda just needed affirmation to be nudged a certain way like she was debating just to debate and inflate her self worth to the rest of us. The other woman absolutely not, she came up with stupid nonsense about “why didn’t the uncle help them when the shooting was happening” and “the girlfriend is lying she just trying to cover herself”. Mind you these arguments meant absolutely nothing to the case, the uncle not running into a hail of gunfire certainly does not discredit him or change anything and the girlfriend probably was lying to cover her own involvement but that has nothing to do with the prosecutions case. I would like to sit here and say she was just some ignorant black woman but no she was smart, she was bringing up this nonsense just to sow any doubt she possibly could whether it had meaning or not, in essence she took the same tact as the defending attorney.
I am very gently arguing while patronizing and then to my great dismay the two young white girls on the jury proceeded to try and reason with this woman logically, watching it build up in real time and knowing I couldn’t stop it made me sick to my stomach because I knew exactly what was going to happen. They slowly but then COMPLETELY lost their minds on this black woman and her willful intentional stupidity. I don’t blame them it was total nonsense but what they did not understand was that throwing logic at this woman only strengthened her resolve, hell it even strengthened the other black woman’s resolve who I was confident I could turn around up until this point. The Baptist wasn’t pushing back at all prior but now she was, in the end they banded together and they both flat out said “we don’t want to see a black youth go to jail” and for them that was that. They were telling me that was their final vote and I need to mark it down and I need to tell the bailiff we’re done. Total disaster and there was no way to stop that train from coming down the tracks, anything I said or did in that moment would have just made it worse. I went into the court room and instead told the bailiff we were done for the day and would continue tomorrow, I asked him if he could tell the jury that it was the judges decision to be done for the day instead of mine as things were becoming heated and I didn’t want more conflict, after speaking with the judge they agreed and did that which saved me.
I had become friendly with the two girls and the military guy at this point, we were taking lunch together every day and I was walking the girls back to their cars every night, this was in the winter in nasty Detroit. When we walked out I scolded the girls and told them to keep their mouth shut from now on, I told them they didn’t know how to talk to black people and if they want this punk to actually go to jail they better learn to keep quiet and put their heads down for these two unhinged ladys. I explained a lot more than that in regards to the whole thing and how it had changed because of their actions, I don’t think I need to go into detail for you guys on that stuff. These girls were not dumb at all but you have to understand where we grew up, myself and these two girls who went to my high school we didn’t have black people around…..hell I live here now and it’s still like that. We had all of 3 black kids in my high school, the only reason I understood what was happening was because my family owned businesses in factory towns so I had to grow up dealing with black people like that regularly. It was terrible but I guess it did at least give me understanding and experience, these two girls did not realize what they were doing when they were trying to be rational with someone who was only looking at the color of their skin which is something I had to deal with regularly.
The next day I purposely came in late, I was more than happy to take a scolding from the judge for it. They can’t start deliberating without me there and I wanted to get there as close to lunch as possible, I made up some excuse about my car not starting….it was disgustingly cold that month in Michigan so nobody batted an eye at it another juror had the same issue a few days prior. If I came in on time we would have had 3+ hours just sitting in there while everyone is angry they had to be there in the cold morning and stewing over everything they thought about the night before, all that was going to happen was these women telling me their decision was final again. By the time I got there and we were sent into the room there was no point in doing anything because it was time for lunch, that gave me a chance to talk to the girls and the military guy some more. I walked with them to the restaurant and told them to swallow their pride and just act contrite, the goal of these black women was not justice their goal was to just get one over on whitey and now it had become to get one over on them too. Don’t argue with them, put on your dumb hat and play into everything they say with enabling sympathy and stay out of my way. I didn’t eat lunch with them I instead walked over to greektown to astoria pastries, terrible pastry shop no matter what you get everything tastes artificially the same but everyone knows the fancy name in Detroit and I must have spent $150 on an assortment of nasty pastries. I again purposely walked in late while they were all sitting there with this giant box of pastries in my hand, everyones face lit up like Christmas. After everyone had a really pretty and expensive for no reason pastry sitting in front of them I asked them to take each other’s hand and then asked Baptist church leader black woman to lead us in prayer which she did. Her eyes widened and she sat up straight she was really proud it seemed that I asked her to do so and it was a very lovely prayer she put a lot into it, it was very nice. The two girls to their credit thanked her and commented how lovely it was as well, I wanted to kiss them on the forehead for it. I then gave this long winded off the top of my head speech about how we are all good people looking to do the right things and none of us had any bad in our hearts, I’m not going to lie and say it wasn’t a manipulation tactic but it was also true so it was easy to give the speech. Despite this “strong black” BS from the two women they were not necessarily bad people, the entire group was all decent people which was actually kinda shocking that you could just get 9 random Detroit area people together from all walks of life and they were all pretty normal.
We then started talking about the case and the two girls kept quiet they only spoke up to give out affirmations, the Baptist woman completely changed right off the bat I knew I had her in the bag again which was essential to turn the other woman around. Murder one was gone I knew that, as much as it should have been murder one as being an accessory is the same as pulling the trigger yourself in the eyes of the law and that poor kid would still be alive if it weren't for that piece of shit I knew if I pushed for murder one it would all fall apart. Even some of the others who were set on guilty would have gone against me if I started pushing for murder one again. I acted like I had never even uttered it or considered it and spoke only about 2nd degree which led the still innocent voting black woman to believe that she had a victory, which was fine and what I wanted. You could tell because she kept saying “2nd degree” and pausing for my reaction and all she got from me was dumb affirmation, she was loving that as she had won a battle, mind you letting her win a battle to win a war. I then presented the concept that if we didn’t come to a 2nd degree judgement that we would be a hung jury and all the nonsense that the black woman had presented I very subtly alluded to the prosecution simply “sharpening their knives” for the next trial going for murder one and the next jury may not be a room full of good people like all of us here. I had no idea if any of that shit was true but that one got me there, I saw her deflated reaction and that one got it….I swear the contrast between the look on my face and what was actually going on in my head at that moment was something to behold right there and then. I drove it home with different wording with a sympathetic voice, the two girls had sympathy in their purposely dumb comments and then the Baptist woman spoke up with the same sentiment…….DONE!
Second degree murder life in prison.
On the way out the victim’s family grabbed me and hugged me while crying hysterically, the judge is yelling at me to leave the courtroom but she could kiss my ass at that point. I told them I was sorry I couldn’t get them murder one and if I had triey then might have to just go through this all over again, they may have settled for a plea deal or even worse he may not go to jail at all. I told them I was sorry for their loss and God Bless them and their family I could see they are strong people and I hope they find peace. They couldn’t even get words out they were crying so hysterically, their tears were on the shoulders of my coat as I finally walked out.
That’s it that’s the story, I never followed up with it or looked into it ever again. I was happy to put that kid away but I did not enjoy the experience in any way and took no pride in it beyond that. Every jury summons I’ve had since then I’ve tossed in the trash. I actually did get a drink with one of those girls months after that and we didn’t talk about the trial at all I think she had the same sentiment towards it that I did, although she did tell me the military guy stalked her and got kinda crazy on her after the trial haha…..we talked about that.
Thanks so much for sharing! What a great story! Glad I pressed for it.
I didn't get a notification for it though, I just randomly clicked on the random thoughts thread and saw it!