. . . but then, it was NYC, not Arizona. It was an attempted rape case that was pretty open and shut. A young woman who was a student at Fashion Institute of Technology. As she walked home from classes late one night in Chelsea, she was suddenly grabbed and pulled behind an attendant's booth of an open-air parking lot. Lucky for her, a cop was walkikng his beat further down the block, heard her screams and decided to check it out. The cop pulled the guy off of her before he was able to do very much, although his penis was out of his trousers. The defendant didn't testify, nor did the defense provide any witnesses. In fact, the defense lawyer even admitted that his client had assaulted the woman, but insisted his intent was not to rape, but only to humiliate. It was not a convincing argument.
But even though the state's case was rock solid, and the defense really couldn't refute any of the actual evidence, the members of that jury, to a person, were all very concerned that the defendant receive a fair trial. So we took the time to go over every piece of testimony and evidence that had been presented during the two-day trial -- asking ourselves if we could find any holes in it, indeed asking oruselves if there were anything at all that would have introduced even a hint of reasonable doubt about the man's guilt. And there simply wasn't anything, and so we convicted him. Afterwards, while we were certgain we had made the correct finding, most of us still felt terrible about it, because knowing that your determination means that another human being will likely spend years or even decades in prison is just not a pleasant thing to think about, even if it was the right decision (and that's as it should be).
I came away from that experience feeling quite proud of my fellow jurors. But to get back to your point, I fully realize my experience may not have been at all typical.
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