Disorderly Conduct trial - Verdicts

The jury was ready with its verdicts at 1:30PM in a disorderly conduct trial that I've been attending this week, less than two hours after hearing instructions and leaving for lunch and deliberations.

As you may have read earlier in the week, Judge Weech granted a directed finding (of not guilty) in favor of the defendant on a charge of disorderly conduct, stemming from a January 2009 alleged incident.

On the remaining three charges, the defendant was found not guilty of what to me was the most serious charge, that of engaging in alarming and disturbing a mother of a a 6-year-old girl by taunting the child with threats of burning off her fingers with a lighter. Now, that sounds pretty serious, doesn't it? The defendant was not charged with threatening harm to the child, but rather for allegedly disturbing the peace of the mother. At this time someone ought to be wondering why the defendant wasn't charged with threats to the child.

Here might be the reason. It never happened. Why not? If it had happened, don't you think any mother would have called the police?

In fact, the mother of the child, her mother, and her grandmother all testified that the police were called and that the police came on that Tuesday, April 15, 2008. They all lied - they lied under oath. They committed perjury. Why can I be so confident of that? Because there isn't any police report on April 15, 2008. The police were never there.

It was not until three days later, after two other alleged neighborhood squabbles, that the child's mother informed the police of the alleged incident involving her 6-year-old daughter!

And the Assistant State's Attorney repeated the lies during closing arguments. Now, it could be that he had not read the police reports. Perhaps he didn't detect the discrepancy between the statements of his witnesses and the written reports on file with the Crystal Lake Police Department. Should he have?

And, yes, the alleged incident on April 15 was reported. But it was not reported until April 18.

And even though the testimony about the April 16 alleged incident was convoluted and confusing, what the jury heard was enough to give them belief beyond a reasonable doubt that it happened. There was an opportunity on cross-examination to destroy the testimony of the prosecution, but the opportunity passed.

On the April 18 event, testimony again was conflicted. Had I been the defense attorney, I would have put the defendant on the stand and asked her if she was mad that evening. Why might she have been mad?

She had just been arrested and taken to the Crystal Lake Police Department. Her car was towed, even though it was only a block from home and a neighbor had offered to drive it to her house. She told me the officer refused to allow the neighbor to drive her car home, and so the defendant incurred a tow bill. Home was one block away!

And then she had had to walk home from the Crystal Lake Police Department! The distance? Almost two miles!

If you felt you had been unfairly arrested and hauled to jail, and then had to walk home, do you think you'd be steaming? Might you be inclined to sound off at a neighbor who had had you arrested several times before? And then who had not shown up in court for those trials?

But the jury never heard any of that, because the defendant did not take the stand in her own defense.

My opinion? The four charges should have been heard by four different juries. My guess is that the abundance of testimony on four difference incidents, whether truthful or not, influenced the jury.

Now the jury did a good job, based on the evidence they heard. But they didn't hear somethings that I think they should have heard. What they didn't hear was enough to tilt the scale against the defendant.

Had the prosecution's witnesses been discredited early on, because of their combined lies about the police coming on April 15, the jury might have questioned everything those witnesses said. Who could have provided facts to the jury? Either or both of the Crystal Lake Police officers. Obviously, the State was not going to ask them to give testimony that might have discredited the prosecution witnesses.

But the defense could have - and should have.

If you are going down, you've got to go down swinging. If you go into the ring (and that's what the jury trial was), then you stay on your feet as long as possible, get in as many punches as you can, get up when you are knocked down, and you fight right to the bell.

Before Monday ever arrived, I believed the trials should have been heard separately. And that was the first thing that Judge Weech brought up.

Sentencing on the two convictions will be April 1, 10:00AM.