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Originally Posted by dillywho
I served on two criminal trials in Texas several years ago. I was actually shocked that I ended up on one of them. It was a murder case involving a shooting. I was asked if I was afraid of guns, which I was at the time. Then they wanted to know why. It was because I had been accidentally shot several years earlier. I about fainted when I was not eliminated! Juries are really strange, though. This was a clear case of murder, but we had two holdouts for self defense. The defendant had left the residence and the guy inside was hanging out the door, one hand on the screen and one hand on the door jamb, yelling at him not to come back again. The defendant said that when he got to his car, the guy was still yelling. He said, "When he called me a black *******, I reached into my glove box, got my gun, and I shot him dead." We ended up a hung jury because of those two. Instead of a retrial, the guy tppk a plea bargain.
The other trial was a child molestation case committed by a relative on a toddler. Sad!! Another messed up case...or so we thought. We had one gal that would not send the guy away for 20 years because her brother had been incarcerated and she "wouldn't do that to ANYBODY". We ended up settling for 15 years probation. Afterwards, the DA told us that was the best sentence we could have handed down because had it been for the 20 years prison time, he would have served maybe 4 or 5. He also said that what he couldn't tell us during the trial was that the guy had been messing with every kid in the family for the last 10 years; and that he would definitely break his probation. He then would be gone for the full 15 to prison. The judge sentenced him to an additional 30 days in the county lockup prior to being released on probation. The DA said that it would not be pleasant in there, either, since the general population usually takes a really dim view of child molesters. The gal who would not budge, couldn't get out of there fast enough when she heard what the DA said about probation being the better sentence.
Don't Mess With Texas! Probation means something there.
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I had a friend who was a fellow Philosophy major at the University of Nevada, Reno and he was good at poetry and speaking Spanish.
He would sometimes try to get me to go out with him on his evening adventures but I declined as some of them were a bit illegal. One of these was that he picked up or tried to pick up the wife of a very jealous husband and that husband stabbed my friend multiple times in the heart area. He was dead for a few minutes but must have been lucky with the speed of the first responders as they got him back or maybe he died in the hospital or in the ambulance.
He lost his use of Spanish and really had to work on Philosophy.
There was a jury trial of the jealous husband for attempted murder and the jury found it was heat of the moment and not an intentional act. So the guy got off very light and the defense lawyer made a big thing about the proximity of Mustang Ranch a legal brothel near Reno just outside the Washoe County line.
This friend and I went to the movie
Raiders of the Lost Ark a year or so after that and I was terrified that he would have a post traumatic experience with the knife welding thug facing off with Indiana Jones but he thought it was hilarious especially when Indiana shot him.
I checked up on him at his small house once in a while and arrived without notice and he seemed a little nervous but did show me his collection of love letters and how he would sometimes correct the potential suitors grammar and send them back to the senders.
In walked one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen and I was soon shown the door after my friend introduced us. I did notice that she had a good sized wedding ring on her finger.
I soon stopped coming to check up on my friend as he seemed to be up to his old tricks. He was more attracted to already taken women than the many ones he had available to him.
I checked up on him on Facebook and encountered one of his ex-wives who said he still in 2018 marched to his own drummer. We had a strange exchange that I posted something about him and she made a comment and I asked how would you know that and she replied that she was his ex-wife.