opelmanta1900 wrote:They had 2 clarification requests this morning...
The first was clarification on the legal definition of manslaughter...
The second was clarification of the castle doctrine...
The castle doctrine, they probably saw clearly did not apply despite the defendant believing it to have been her castle...
I'm curious what they saw in the manslaughter definition that made them decide murder...
I tried over 50 cases before I ever got a hung jury or a question from a jury. Damnedest thing. Colleagues would get one or the other fairly regularly. After number 50-55, I started to get plenty. Mostly the jury question thing, but my fair share of hung juries, too. It's a strange process.
1. When a jury sends a question out, the attorneys, parties and judge gather to discuss how to properly address the question. There are any number of possible questions, and while most are pretty routine and have established law to address them, some can get pretty weird. No matter what happens, once the jury's question is formally answered, everyone involved in trying the case tries to figure out what the jury is thinking. Even the best, most seasoned attorneys and judges can go a little nuts trying to figure it out.
2. When a jury asks for clarification on a legal definition of manslaughter and still comes back with a murder conviction, that (in my experience, and I've tried at least a dozen murder cases) is pretty odd. Usually that question signals they are likely to come back with a manslaughter conviction or an outright acquittal. In this case, my hunch is that their focus was likely on the defendant's state of mind. Murder usually requires intent or a gross disregard for human life or safety. The specific definition varies from jurisdiction to jurisdiction.
3. The Castle Doctrine is not uncommon, although it has different names. Without researching it for Texas, it generally means that you have an even stronger right to defend yourself in your home. As the saying goes, a man's home is his castle. I'm oversimplifying things quite a bit here, but basically, if someone threatened you with a certain level of harm in a public place, you might not have the right to use deadly force. If the same fact pattern occurred in your home, you might have a greater right to use deadly force, or the barrier to permissibly using deadly force is lower.
4. I thought it was a bit curious that the judge gave the Castle instruction in this case, but it may well be that Texas appellate decisions or statutes mandate it. The fact that the judge gave the instruction and the jury still convicted the defendant of murder means the defendant has one less thing to appeal. Since the jury found her guilty of murder in something like five hours, what looks like a potentially strange decision by the judge ends up looking brilliant if you want the verdict to withstand appeal.
5. Nobody, not even the most experienced and talented attorney or judge, can really know why a jury did what they did without at least knowing the facts and the law, and ideally, talking with the jury afterwards (in Washington, the latter is permitted, but jurors are allowed to refuse to talk and can just go home). My wife, who is a paralegal, and I were discussing this case as the trial progressed, and as I told her, I'd want to read all of the reports and statements (called discovery), then sit through the trial and know applicable Texas law before I could come to any conclusions as to what the proper verdict should have been. Trying to examine it just through the eyes and ears of reporters is pretty useless, IMHO, even when the reporter is really good at his/her job. They almost never have a law degree (although a sharp beat reporter can pick up a fair amount of knowledge of the law over time), and the applicable law is crucial to the outcome of the case. The judges even instruct the jury on the applicable law in the case at bar at the conclusion of the presentation of the evidence. Also, in my experience, few reporters ever sit through an entire trial.
6. I did have a reporter of sorts sit through one entire murder trial I handled. A "researcher" was there to take notes, and the case ended up being reported as part of a "true crime" book put out by a writer famous for writing such books, although to my knowledge, that writer never saw a minute of the trial. We had a lousy case, lost, and because the researcher didn't understand what I was doing and I couldn't explain my strategy to her during the trial, the writer dumped all over me in the book. I'd actually forgotten about that until just now. I really don't care. Some hack who doesn't understand my thought process wants to criticize me for not having better facts and write it up based on the work of some peon? Whatever. All I care about is the verdict. However, you can see the potential bias or flaw in the process. I don't understand what the defense attorney is doing, he won't explain his strategy to me, the case looks bad for them, and the defense attorney doesn't pull some Perry Mason miracle out of his azz, so he must be an idiot.
Sorry for the length. I just thought some insight from behind the trenches might help. For the life of me, I cannot figure out what the motive might have been in this case. Sad, sad, sad. "Senseless killing" is a redundant term in most murder cases, but this one seems especially so. Perhaps the sentencing phase will enlighten us. I doubt it, however.