AC

The jury that I recently served on was hung because: 1. Three jurors refused to discuss the evidence with an open mind. At the start of deliberations, they declared: “I will never change my mind on this. You could never convince me otherwise.” They demanded a hung jury verdict in the first hour of deliberations - simply because our initial vote was split. That was a violation of jury instructions. 2. Very few of the jurors were able to take the entire case in context, and parse through all the testimonies and evidence to decipher what we believed was the truth. They wanted to pick 1 testimony as the perfect telling and did not know how to decide given discrepancies between them all. 3. Two jurors kept objecting to points of discussion because of “bias” that they claimed we were invoking into our deliberations. These jurors claimed that some of the evidence submitted during trial could not be considered by the jury because it would “trigger our biases.” They kept interjecting “that’s bias” or “you’re just biased” or “that’s your bias tainting the evidence.” Other jurors responded to this defensively and would back down at the accusations. 4. One juror in particular - totally woke - viewed the entire world as groups (oppressors) and individuals (victims) and so would not accept anything as true, right, or good that could come from the group (they were the accusers), and defaulted to the individual (the accused) as the only possible honest person. She refused to accept any testimony or evidence offered by the group, and became visibly shaken and angry if any other juror questioned the integrity or testimony of the accused - a testimony that was filled with errors and contradictions. She was also very condescending to all others. 5. Multiple jurors declared it was “impossible to decide the facts of the case” because there was no video evidence. They lamented that we don’t have “surveillance like in the UK” in all public places, and as such it would be impossible to determine the facts of this case. If t hey could not see the events, they would not believe them. 6. Several jurors could not understand the written law, even after being provided explanations and instructions from the court. They simply could not comprehend. Not that they disagreed, but they could not understand. 7. Two jurors kept interrupting the process of discussion saying “you’re wasting our time” and they kept telling us they wanted to vote and go home and put this mess behind us. Alas…a hung jury was the right outcome. Not because of the case, but because of the deficiency of the jury.