Reply #209: Reminds me of the only jury I sat on.

[ieoeja]

100% of the evidence favored the plaintiff. The entire defense was, "he doesn't look too injured to me." Sure, all we had to ignore all the medical evidence that said he was injured because, you know, he didn't LOOK injured.

The first vote went 9-3 in favor of the defense. That was nine White people voting for the White defendant, with two Black people and one White (me) voting for the Hispanic plaintiff.

I didn't point out the obvious racism since insulting people is no way to convince them of anything (hey, DUers, you read that?). I simply pointed out the 100% evidence fact and asked them to argue. They tossed out a few arguments, but none of them really had any heart in their arguments. They knew they couldn't really justify it and would probably have reached the proper verdict if not for what happened next.

They asked the other two people why they voted for the plaintiff.

"He wouldn't sue if he wasn't really injured," replied one.

"I think he's lying, but he was probably talked into this by his slickster lawyer, and I don't want to see him get stuck with the legal bill when the defendant's insurance company can cover that," replied the other.

For the next few hours every attempt to bring it back to the 100% evidence point was ignored. The nine wanted to argue against the above two points instead. And they had plenty of heart for arguing against those two points.

Ultimately, we awarded the plaintiff property damage, but nothing for personal injury. Then the judge asked us to stay afterwards to be interviewed by all the lawyers because, "this ruling makes absolutely no sense whatsoever." Even the defense attorneys told us it made no sense. I didn't stick around. I just tossed out, "it was racism, and I'm not going to sit here and argue about it." Then got up and left to a chorus of denials.