The CDC has issued a press release on an increase in the number of measles cases in the U.S. this year, with 131 cases reported so far. Of those measles patients, 95 were eligible for vaccination but 63 of them were not vaccinated because of their--or most likely their parents'--belief that vaccines are "dangerous."
I'm not sure how much evidence there need to be to convince parents that the MMR vaccine, and/or the preservative in it, do not cause autism. Obviously, piles of evidence accrued from gigantic longitudinal studies of thousands of children over many years are not enough. (see here, here, here, here, and here, for starters.) Will an epidemic of preventable, deadly infections be the only thing that will change some people's minds?
If people want to put themselves in harm's way because of their willingness to believe a bunch of pseudoscientific wackaloons, that's their problem. It's a terrible shame that they're putting their kids at risk too.
Sunday, September 21, 2008
Trickery and Sex in the Firefly World
This is not news in the scientific world, but it’s news to me—I ran across this in some reading I have to do for a seminar tomorrow. Further evidence that bugs are awesome:
Fireflies, lightning bugs, or Lampyrids (if you were the nerdy type). Who didn’t spend innumerable summer evenings in childhood chasing after these beetles, empty pickle jar in hand? But you might not have known of the high drama and Shakespearian trickery that was going on among these insects right there in your own childhood backyard.
There’s multiple species and genera of Lampyrids in North America, each with its own characteristic flashing pattern. Males and females of the same species locate each other for mating using these unique signals. However, females of the genus Photuris have evolved a deadly trap: they lure males of other genera by imitating their own females’ flashes. When the males come a-courtin’, the Photuris females pounce, and devour them with gusto.
You may wonder how the Photuris females ever mate, if they’re always on the prowl for dinner during mating time. Turns out that male Photuris capitalize on their female’s predilection for firefly meat by imitating the flashing patterns of males of other genera—the very insects that the female is trying to lure to their death! Some Photuris males go even farther in their imitation, by flashing not only the right pattern, but also at the right time of night, in the right location, to be even more convincing as the potential prey.
In some species of Photuris this imitative behavior has gone so far that the species has completely lost the ability to produce its own unique flashing pattern, instead conducting all its business using signals stolen from others.
I’m unaware of any papers that detail what happens next, after the flash exchange—how does the male Photuris end up as the mate, and not the dinner of the female? I’ll do some more searching because this has piqued my interest, and let you know if I find an answer.
Fireflies, lightning bugs, or Lampyrids (if you were the nerdy type). Who didn’t spend innumerable summer evenings in childhood chasing after these beetles, empty pickle jar in hand? But you might not have known of the high drama and Shakespearian trickery that was going on among these insects right there in your own childhood backyard.
There’s multiple species and genera of Lampyrids in North America, each with its own characteristic flashing pattern. Males and females of the same species locate each other for mating using these unique signals. However, females of the genus Photuris have evolved a deadly trap: they lure males of other genera by imitating their own females’ flashes. When the males come a-courtin’, the Photuris females pounce, and devour them with gusto.
You may wonder how the Photuris females ever mate, if they’re always on the prowl for dinner during mating time. Turns out that male Photuris capitalize on their female’s predilection for firefly meat by imitating the flashing patterns of males of other genera—the very insects that the female is trying to lure to their death! Some Photuris males go even farther in their imitation, by flashing not only the right pattern, but also at the right time of night, in the right location, to be even more convincing as the potential prey.
In some species of Photuris this imitative behavior has gone so far that the species has completely lost the ability to produce its own unique flashing pattern, instead conducting all its business using signals stolen from others.
I’m unaware of any papers that detail what happens next, after the flash exchange—how does the male Photuris end up as the mate, and not the dinner of the female? I’ll do some more searching because this has piqued my interest, and let you know if I find an answer.
Thursday, September 11, 2008
The Darwin Particle
My father works with the particle accelerator at Fermilab in Illinois. As a child, when I would visit him at work and we would walk through the underground tunnels where the beam-control equipment was kept, the towering machines on each side of the walkway would terrify me: they thundered, blinked, screamed "Warning: Radiation" to me at every turn.
Now CERN has built an even bigger, scarier accelerator. And all I have in my lab is jars of termites.
Fortunately, we biologists now have our own accelerator to terrify our progeny with. At last, the final secrets of evolution are within our reach.
Now CERN has built an even bigger, scarier accelerator. And all I have in my lab is jars of termites.
Fortunately, we biologists now have our own accelerator to terrify our progeny with. At last, the final secrets of evolution are within our reach.
The Black Widow Spins Her Deadly Web... Well, Sometimes.
I always get disproportionately excited when I read about a new discovery showing behavioral complexity in invertebrates. Of course, now that we understand the incredible intricacy of honeybees' language, these sorts of things shouldn’t surprise me too much. But I still love this stuff, wherever it pops up.
Black widows alter their web architecture to be better insect traps as they get hungrier. A neat little paper in this month’s issue of Animal Behavior [76(3):823-829] describes how this happens.
When a black widow spider is well-fed, it uses that energy with gusto—spinning out lots of thread, but making a chaotic, disordered cloud of a web near the opening to its hideout. This kind of web is called a ‘tangle-based’ web, and for all that thread, isn’t really that sticky.
However, take a spider who hasn’t been fed for a week, and watch her spin a web. That jumble becomes a well-engineered, efficient killing machine. Instead of making a jumble of undifferentiated, generic thread, the spider uses three different kinds of silk structures to spin a very specific trap (using less thread overall):
(This image is taken from the original paper)
SH is the silk sheet, a flat plane on which the spider can easily maneuver, supported by a network of threads (ST). Anchoring the web to the substrate are the very sticky gumfooted threads (GF), which are kept under constant tension.
The researchers set up homes for 112 juvenile black widow females, fed half of them every day for a week, and the other half nothing for a week. After the members of each group spun their characteristic webs, the webs were imaged to quantify the structural differences between them. Then the researchers saw what happened when half of each group was then moved to the other group’s webs, and then fed.
Under most metrics used, the researchers found that it was indeed much easier for black widows of both types to catch prey when the spider was using a hungry spider’s three-thread design, rather than the chaotic mass of thread of a fed spider. It seemed that the silk sheet made it easier for the spider to sprint out towards its prey. The prey may have alerted the spider to its presence by touching the gumfooted threads and sending out vibrations, and perhaps was slowed down by those threads’ especial stickiness.
Why would black widows switch between a poor web and a good web, though? Wouldn’t it be better to just maintain the efficient functionality of the three-thread design whether the spider was hungry or satiated? This is especially head-scratching when you consider that it uses up more silk to make the jumbled webs of the full spiders. The spider would be using up energy both to modify the web as well as to make the loads of silk needed to the tangle-based web.
Consider this though: the authors point out that many spiders are prone to killing more prey than they can eat, and just leaving the extra prey rolled up in silk on their webs. It’s also been documented that some spiders may just eat themselves to death if able to catch too many prey. Perhaps the switch to the poorly-trapping tangle-based web is a smart move by the black widows, at the very least saving them the energy of pursuing and killing more prey than they can use, at the most sparing them a fate like Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote. The authors also suggest that the tangle of web of a fed spider might serve as a predator defense in those times in which it doesn’t need the web to serve as a food trap.
I think the behavioral plasticity that can be built into such a small animal is really fascinating, and the adaptability of the webs of these spiders is just another example of that. So three cheers for the black widow (one for each part of her web)!
And one more that we aren’t one of the flies who get caught by her web when she’s hungry…
Black widows alter their web architecture to be better insect traps as they get hungrier. A neat little paper in this month’s issue of Animal Behavior [76(3):823-829] describes how this happens.
When a black widow spider is well-fed, it uses that energy with gusto—spinning out lots of thread, but making a chaotic, disordered cloud of a web near the opening to its hideout. This kind of web is called a ‘tangle-based’ web, and for all that thread, isn’t really that sticky.
However, take a spider who hasn’t been fed for a week, and watch her spin a web. That jumble becomes a well-engineered, efficient killing machine. Instead of making a jumble of undifferentiated, generic thread, the spider uses three different kinds of silk structures to spin a very specific trap (using less thread overall):
(This image is taken from the original paper)
SH is the silk sheet, a flat plane on which the spider can easily maneuver, supported by a network of threads (ST). Anchoring the web to the substrate are the very sticky gumfooted threads (GF), which are kept under constant tension.
The researchers set up homes for 112 juvenile black widow females, fed half of them every day for a week, and the other half nothing for a week. After the members of each group spun their characteristic webs, the webs were imaged to quantify the structural differences between them. Then the researchers saw what happened when half of each group was then moved to the other group’s webs, and then fed.
Under most metrics used, the researchers found that it was indeed much easier for black widows of both types to catch prey when the spider was using a hungry spider’s three-thread design, rather than the chaotic mass of thread of a fed spider. It seemed that the silk sheet made it easier for the spider to sprint out towards its prey. The prey may have alerted the spider to its presence by touching the gumfooted threads and sending out vibrations, and perhaps was slowed down by those threads’ especial stickiness.
Why would black widows switch between a poor web and a good web, though? Wouldn’t it be better to just maintain the efficient functionality of the three-thread design whether the spider was hungry or satiated? This is especially head-scratching when you consider that it uses up more silk to make the jumbled webs of the full spiders. The spider would be using up energy both to modify the web as well as to make the loads of silk needed to the tangle-based web.
Consider this though: the authors point out that many spiders are prone to killing more prey than they can eat, and just leaving the extra prey rolled up in silk on their webs. It’s also been documented that some spiders may just eat themselves to death if able to catch too many prey. Perhaps the switch to the poorly-trapping tangle-based web is a smart move by the black widows, at the very least saving them the energy of pursuing and killing more prey than they can use, at the most sparing them a fate like Monty Python’s Mr. Creosote. The authors also suggest that the tangle of web of a fed spider might serve as a predator defense in those times in which it doesn’t need the web to serve as a food trap.
I think the behavioral plasticity that can be built into such a small animal is really fascinating, and the adaptability of the webs of these spiders is just another example of that. So three cheers for the black widow (one for each part of her web)!
And one more that we aren’t one of the flies who get caught by her web when she’s hungry…
Saturday, September 6, 2008
On the Jury—Part II
This entry is a follow-up to last week’s “On the Jury—Part I.” If you haven’t yet read that entry, do so before reading this one.
After the closing arguments had taken place, the judge gave us his final instructions and we were sent into the deliberation room. I was very apprehensive at this point. After hearing all of the evidence throughout the two days of the trial, I did not feel supremely confident that the defendant had committed the crime. In fact, the thought that we might convict him and send him to jail put knots into my stomach. My worry was that I was the only one who would feel this way, and I would have to argue against eleven rabid, blood-thirsty conviction cowboys, I would have to refuse to budge, everyone would hate me, and the jury would be hung. At least this way the defendant would have a chance, though. My worst fear was that my innate agreeability would allow me to be convinced and the defendant would go, possibly innocently, to jail, and I would hate myself for the rest of my life starting the next morning.
No pressure.
Filing into the deliberation room, everyone was visibly on edge. Some made too-loud jokes and laughed nervously. Some looked down at the floor and didn’t talk to anyone. Everyone was very polite to one another. Our foreman was an older woman with a gentle demeanor who had been burglarized and robbed many times without ever having had a conviction, but was nevertheless chosen to be on the jury. She read again to us from the judge’s printed instructions and the legal descriptions of the two crimes we were meant to deliberate on: burglary in the first degree and theft over $500. Then it was silent. “Well,” said the foreman. “Should we begin?”
It turns out I needn’t have worried about being the only one with doubts. From a quick survey of the jury after the first few brave people had spoken up, everyone was feeling uneasy about the case. We began compiling a list of the holes in the case on a whiteboard in the room. The board quickly filled up with all the jury members’ particular hang-ups with the evidence. Where was the physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime scene? Why weren’t the watches ID’d as the Jones’ until today? Did the defendant’s complexion really change from uneven and pockmarked to smooth and even between March and August? Why didn’t they bring in a bloodhound to do a definitive trailing of the path of the burglar? Where were the jacket and the hat? Why didn’t they do a line-up of the defendant with other young black guys of light builds? Why on earth did no one check up on the defendant’s alibi? The list went on. Excited chattering groups quickly broke off from the main group, each discussing their own certain takes on the evidence. I was sitting near a middle-aged Hispanic hairdresser and several young women of my age: a black woman, a woman of color of indeterminate race, and another white woman. All of us expressed our disgust in the incompleteness of the evidence and the police’s investigation. The hairdresser weighed in with her professional opinion that the defendant was not, in fact, wearing cornrows in his mugshot.
The mood in the room became almost spirited once we realized, with relief, that we were all more or less on the same page. We opened up the burglar’s backpack, given to us with all of the other physical evidence for our deliberations, and passed around the odd contents remaining after the Jones’ property had been returned to them. There were red and gold candy wrappers covered in Chinese characters and some sort of flyer with an unknown Asian script on it. All the women I was sitting with guffawed when a pink-wrapped Maxi pad was removed from the pack. I hypothesized that the burglar had stolen the backpack and bike from a Chinese girl on his way to the Jones’ neighborhood and everyone laughed in agreement. And an item that one of the lawyers had briefly mentioned to be a “band-aid” was actually a disposable razor blade. “Good thing they actually looked hard at the contents,” somebody noted sarcastically.
The watches were passed around with a slightly different attitude. They were, indeed, gorgeous and expensive watches. Very heavy, with an aura of wealth and success. People handled them gingerly in their plastic evidence bags. I noted to the group that the gold Omega watch that was ID’d by Mr. Jones on the stand that day was of a standard, classic design, shared with most men’s watches. Of course it was gold, which made it more special, but imagine how many watches there existed that looked more or less like this one. There were no engravings or other unique features. We didn’t have the appraiser’s report that would have listed this watch among the other appraised jewelry inherited from Mr. Jones’ deceased parents, either. “I bet these don’t belong to that boy,” said one of the jurors. We murmured an agreement. “But I’m not totally sure they belong to those people either.”
Everyone wondered about Mrs. Coons’ ID of the burglar and the defendant as looking “just like DeAngelo Barksdale from The Wire.” “Hey, have any of you guys ever seen The Wire?” asked one of the jurors. We all looked around the table at each other. “Wow, a room of twelve people where nobody watches cable tv!” somebody exclaimed. So that piece of evidence went by the wayside because of all of us were pop-culturally incompetent.
“I am so angry with all of the lawyers and the police for putting us in this position!” exclaimed a middle-aged real estate agent with a strong twang from the other end of the table. “I can’t believe that they expect us just to send this guy to jail with this kind of evidence.” There were vigorous affirmations of this sentiment from all around the table. At this point, we had been deliberating for about an hour or so. The conversation had slowed. The foreman asked us if we were ready to start deciding the actual verdict. We were.
She suggested that we go around the table, each of us stating what verdict we would give and a brief statement of why. And so we did. Everyone had his or her own reason that was the strongest in their mind. The stutterer came out slowly and red-facedly with his verdict of not guilty from lack of definitive evidence. The African immigrant with the strong accent and the young Hispanic man—who was probably profiled by the police all the time—both opined that the police hadn’t bothered to go any farther in their search than the first black man they saw, and thus the defendant should be not guilty from lack of strong evidence. I said not guilty, for an overall lack of evidence but especially the seemingly bogus watch ID. The real estate agent with the twang was most unconvinced from the lack of DNA or fingerprint evidence. Others had their own reasons.
One juror, a middle-aged, well-spoken white man, agreed that the evidence was, in fact, less than would be desired in a number of instances. “But how would you explain the witnesses’ positive ID’s of the defendant if he weren’t the guy, though? I just don’t know.” He was the only one who did not say “not guilty.” After everyone had said their piece, there was a pause, and all heads turned toward this one man. He looked around and then looked down. “I agree with things that people have been saying,” he started. “I’m uneasy because of the witnesses’ identification of the defendant,” he continued. “But I’ll say ‘not guilty,’ too,” the man finished in a rush of quiet words.
With relief palpable in the room, the foreman filled out the verdict form and went through the double-knock routine at the door to inform the judge’s clerk, a young, type-A law student. After several minutes we were called back in to the courtroom. We filed in, while clerks, defendant, lawyers, and the audience—the defendant’s friends—stood silently, watching us. I noticed gratefully that neither Mr. Jones nor his neighbors were in the courtroom. I didn’t want to have to feel their hatred when we let the man off whom they were convinced was guilty.
“Who will speak for you?” questioned the courtroom clerk.
I pointed at the foreman, and she stood up and said, “I will.”
“How do you find the defendant for the charge of burglary in the first degree?” asked the clerk.
“Not guilty,” said our foreman, enunciating clearly.
With this, a movement went through the courtroom. The defendant’s friends gasped, exclaimed, cried out, began hugging each other. The defendant stood, immovable, face a mask, as he had been throughout almost all of his trial.
We repeated the same verdict for the second charge. Some other stuff might have been said, but I didn’t notice because I was watching the defendant go over to his friends and be overtaken by a mass of jumping, giggling, back-slapping, bear-hugging, and crying. I wondered if two of them lived in the Jones’ neighborhood after all. Tears came to my eyes and my hands were shaking. One of the friends looked over to us and said, “You guys did good today. Real good.” I looked down, too overcome to look at them any more.
When I got home, the first thing I did was to look up The Wire’s web page and find out who plays D’Angelo Barksdale. It’s an actor named Larry Gilliard, Jr. Feeling apprehensive, I went to Gilliard Jr.’s bio. When it came up, I squinted at the small picture in disbelief and enlarged it.
The character D’Angelo Barksdale looks nothing like the defendant. Nothing. NO. THING. I actually laughed out loud as I stared at the picture. I just couldn’t stop laughing. Sure, they are both young black men with slight builds. But their faces are totally different. The defendant’s face was defined, in my opinion, by large eyes with very heavy lids that I never saw reveal more than half of his eyeballs. He also had a very broad nose and well-defined cheekbones. Larry Gilliard, Jr. has light lids over his fully-visible eyes, and a more oval, smoother face. It’s hard for me to describe how little they look like each other. I even went and looked at a picture of Gilliard Jr. as he appears in the tv show, in case I was thrown off by the preppy sweater and smile he wore in his actor profile. No, even in a picture of him playing a street punk he looked nothing like the defendant. For Mrs. Coons to describe the defendant as looking just like D’Angelo Barksdale would be like her describing, say, Audrey Tatou as looking just like Natalie Portman because they’re both young, slender white women with short brown hair. I mean, it’s totally ridiculous. It’s the kind of mistake you’d make if, for example, you were a Mozambican living in the bush who really didn’t have any interaction with white people at all, and only saw them occasionally on other people’s tvs when the electricity was working.
Looking at this picture made me feel more confident that we had done the right thing as a jury. There was clearly an element of racism in the conviction, although it seemed unconscious. The witnesses had obviously seen a real burglary and the real burglar. But they were eager to help their neighbor, and were unfamiliar enough with black men in their every day lives. So much so that they were able to convince themselves that this young black man with suspicious goods in his pocket and sweat on his shirt was in fact the very same young black man they had seen robbing their friend’s house. The police really don’t have enough resources to thoroughly investigate every burglary, and didn’t bother to look too hard for evidence to fill in the gaps after getting the positive ID from the neighbors. No one was lying. No one was trying to mislead anyone. But people make mistakes and oversights out of a conviction of something. But they weren’t able to convince us with their conviction due to a lack of real, hard evidence. Although the defendant had very likely robbed somebody that day, suspicion alone could not convince us of the link between the defendant and this particular burglary. In my firm belief now, after the trial, we the jury were able to make the right decision to not send him to jail. To my surprise, the system of American justice—at least in this one case—worked as designed.
After the closing arguments had taken place, the judge gave us his final instructions and we were sent into the deliberation room. I was very apprehensive at this point. After hearing all of the evidence throughout the two days of the trial, I did not feel supremely confident that the defendant had committed the crime. In fact, the thought that we might convict him and send him to jail put knots into my stomach. My worry was that I was the only one who would feel this way, and I would have to argue against eleven rabid, blood-thirsty conviction cowboys, I would have to refuse to budge, everyone would hate me, and the jury would be hung. At least this way the defendant would have a chance, though. My worst fear was that my innate agreeability would allow me to be convinced and the defendant would go, possibly innocently, to jail, and I would hate myself for the rest of my life starting the next morning.
No pressure.
Filing into the deliberation room, everyone was visibly on edge. Some made too-loud jokes and laughed nervously. Some looked down at the floor and didn’t talk to anyone. Everyone was very polite to one another. Our foreman was an older woman with a gentle demeanor who had been burglarized and robbed many times without ever having had a conviction, but was nevertheless chosen to be on the jury. She read again to us from the judge’s printed instructions and the legal descriptions of the two crimes we were meant to deliberate on: burglary in the first degree and theft over $500. Then it was silent. “Well,” said the foreman. “Should we begin?”
It turns out I needn’t have worried about being the only one with doubts. From a quick survey of the jury after the first few brave people had spoken up, everyone was feeling uneasy about the case. We began compiling a list of the holes in the case on a whiteboard in the room. The board quickly filled up with all the jury members’ particular hang-ups with the evidence. Where was the physical evidence linking the defendant to the crime scene? Why weren’t the watches ID’d as the Jones’ until today? Did the defendant’s complexion really change from uneven and pockmarked to smooth and even between March and August? Why didn’t they bring in a bloodhound to do a definitive trailing of the path of the burglar? Where were the jacket and the hat? Why didn’t they do a line-up of the defendant with other young black guys of light builds? Why on earth did no one check up on the defendant’s alibi? The list went on. Excited chattering groups quickly broke off from the main group, each discussing their own certain takes on the evidence. I was sitting near a middle-aged Hispanic hairdresser and several young women of my age: a black woman, a woman of color of indeterminate race, and another white woman. All of us expressed our disgust in the incompleteness of the evidence and the police’s investigation. The hairdresser weighed in with her professional opinion that the defendant was not, in fact, wearing cornrows in his mugshot.
The mood in the room became almost spirited once we realized, with relief, that we were all more or less on the same page. We opened up the burglar’s backpack, given to us with all of the other physical evidence for our deliberations, and passed around the odd contents remaining after the Jones’ property had been returned to them. There were red and gold candy wrappers covered in Chinese characters and some sort of flyer with an unknown Asian script on it. All the women I was sitting with guffawed when a pink-wrapped Maxi pad was removed from the pack. I hypothesized that the burglar had stolen the backpack and bike from a Chinese girl on his way to the Jones’ neighborhood and everyone laughed in agreement. And an item that one of the lawyers had briefly mentioned to be a “band-aid” was actually a disposable razor blade. “Good thing they actually looked hard at the contents,” somebody noted sarcastically.
The watches were passed around with a slightly different attitude. They were, indeed, gorgeous and expensive watches. Very heavy, with an aura of wealth and success. People handled them gingerly in their plastic evidence bags. I noted to the group that the gold Omega watch that was ID’d by Mr. Jones on the stand that day was of a standard, classic design, shared with most men’s watches. Of course it was gold, which made it more special, but imagine how many watches there existed that looked more or less like this one. There were no engravings or other unique features. We didn’t have the appraiser’s report that would have listed this watch among the other appraised jewelry inherited from Mr. Jones’ deceased parents, either. “I bet these don’t belong to that boy,” said one of the jurors. We murmured an agreement. “But I’m not totally sure they belong to those people either.”
Everyone wondered about Mrs. Coons’ ID of the burglar and the defendant as looking “just like DeAngelo Barksdale from The Wire.” “Hey, have any of you guys ever seen The Wire?” asked one of the jurors. We all looked around the table at each other. “Wow, a room of twelve people where nobody watches cable tv!” somebody exclaimed. So that piece of evidence went by the wayside because of all of us were pop-culturally incompetent.
“I am so angry with all of the lawyers and the police for putting us in this position!” exclaimed a middle-aged real estate agent with a strong twang from the other end of the table. “I can’t believe that they expect us just to send this guy to jail with this kind of evidence.” There were vigorous affirmations of this sentiment from all around the table. At this point, we had been deliberating for about an hour or so. The conversation had slowed. The foreman asked us if we were ready to start deciding the actual verdict. We were.
She suggested that we go around the table, each of us stating what verdict we would give and a brief statement of why. And so we did. Everyone had his or her own reason that was the strongest in their mind. The stutterer came out slowly and red-facedly with his verdict of not guilty from lack of definitive evidence. The African immigrant with the strong accent and the young Hispanic man—who was probably profiled by the police all the time—both opined that the police hadn’t bothered to go any farther in their search than the first black man they saw, and thus the defendant should be not guilty from lack of strong evidence. I said not guilty, for an overall lack of evidence but especially the seemingly bogus watch ID. The real estate agent with the twang was most unconvinced from the lack of DNA or fingerprint evidence. Others had their own reasons.
One juror, a middle-aged, well-spoken white man, agreed that the evidence was, in fact, less than would be desired in a number of instances. “But how would you explain the witnesses’ positive ID’s of the defendant if he weren’t the guy, though? I just don’t know.” He was the only one who did not say “not guilty.” After everyone had said their piece, there was a pause, and all heads turned toward this one man. He looked around and then looked down. “I agree with things that people have been saying,” he started. “I’m uneasy because of the witnesses’ identification of the defendant,” he continued. “But I’ll say ‘not guilty,’ too,” the man finished in a rush of quiet words.
With relief palpable in the room, the foreman filled out the verdict form and went through the double-knock routine at the door to inform the judge’s clerk, a young, type-A law student. After several minutes we were called back in to the courtroom. We filed in, while clerks, defendant, lawyers, and the audience—the defendant’s friends—stood silently, watching us. I noticed gratefully that neither Mr. Jones nor his neighbors were in the courtroom. I didn’t want to have to feel their hatred when we let the man off whom they were convinced was guilty.
“Who will speak for you?” questioned the courtroom clerk.
I pointed at the foreman, and she stood up and said, “I will.”
“How do you find the defendant for the charge of burglary in the first degree?” asked the clerk.
“Not guilty,” said our foreman, enunciating clearly.
With this, a movement went through the courtroom. The defendant’s friends gasped, exclaimed, cried out, began hugging each other. The defendant stood, immovable, face a mask, as he had been throughout almost all of his trial.
We repeated the same verdict for the second charge. Some other stuff might have been said, but I didn’t notice because I was watching the defendant go over to his friends and be overtaken by a mass of jumping, giggling, back-slapping, bear-hugging, and crying. I wondered if two of them lived in the Jones’ neighborhood after all. Tears came to my eyes and my hands were shaking. One of the friends looked over to us and said, “You guys did good today. Real good.” I looked down, too overcome to look at them any more.
When I got home, the first thing I did was to look up The Wire’s web page and find out who plays D’Angelo Barksdale. It’s an actor named Larry Gilliard, Jr. Feeling apprehensive, I went to Gilliard Jr.’s bio. When it came up, I squinted at the small picture in disbelief and enlarged it.
The character D’Angelo Barksdale looks nothing like the defendant. Nothing. NO. THING. I actually laughed out loud as I stared at the picture. I just couldn’t stop laughing. Sure, they are both young black men with slight builds. But their faces are totally different. The defendant’s face was defined, in my opinion, by large eyes with very heavy lids that I never saw reveal more than half of his eyeballs. He also had a very broad nose and well-defined cheekbones. Larry Gilliard, Jr. has light lids over his fully-visible eyes, and a more oval, smoother face. It’s hard for me to describe how little they look like each other. I even went and looked at a picture of Gilliard Jr. as he appears in the tv show, in case I was thrown off by the preppy sweater and smile he wore in his actor profile. No, even in a picture of him playing a street punk he looked nothing like the defendant. For Mrs. Coons to describe the defendant as looking just like D’Angelo Barksdale would be like her describing, say, Audrey Tatou as looking just like Natalie Portman because they’re both young, slender white women with short brown hair. I mean, it’s totally ridiculous. It’s the kind of mistake you’d make if, for example, you were a Mozambican living in the bush who really didn’t have any interaction with white people at all, and only saw them occasionally on other people’s tvs when the electricity was working.
Looking at this picture made me feel more confident that we had done the right thing as a jury. There was clearly an element of racism in the conviction, although it seemed unconscious. The witnesses had obviously seen a real burglary and the real burglar. But they were eager to help their neighbor, and were unfamiliar enough with black men in their every day lives. So much so that they were able to convince themselves that this young black man with suspicious goods in his pocket and sweat on his shirt was in fact the very same young black man they had seen robbing their friend’s house. The police really don’t have enough resources to thoroughly investigate every burglary, and didn’t bother to look too hard for evidence to fill in the gaps after getting the positive ID from the neighbors. No one was lying. No one was trying to mislead anyone. But people make mistakes and oversights out of a conviction of something. But they weren’t able to convince us with their conviction due to a lack of real, hard evidence. Although the defendant had very likely robbed somebody that day, suspicion alone could not convince us of the link between the defendant and this particular burglary. In my firm belief now, after the trial, we the jury were able to make the right decision to not send him to jail. To my surprise, the system of American justice—at least in this one case—worked as designed.
Tuesday, September 2, 2008
Your Vote Needed!
Hi folks
There is a call for submissions on a new site called Carnival of Evolution, which publicizes good original writing on evolution in the blogosphere. I think I'd like to send something over.
What is the best evolution-related post so far on this blog, in your opinion? Leave your vote in the comments.
Thanks!
There is a call for submissions on a new site called Carnival of Evolution, which publicizes good original writing on evolution in the blogosphere. I think I'd like to send something over.
What is the best evolution-related post so far on this blog, in your opinion? Leave your vote in the comments.
Thanks!
Saturday, August 30, 2008
On the Jury--Part I
On Monday and Tuesday of last week, I served on the jury of a criminal trial. It was my first time ever being called in for jury duty, and I got called in for the first trial that day in the Montgomery County Circuit Court. Beginner’s luck, I guess. I’m really glad I got chosen, because it was an extremely enlightening look into the process of justice in my county—haphazard, gray, but in the end as fair as we could possibly muster. We hoped.
There was a parade of eyewitnesses, each with his or her own details to add, own perspective, own biases, and own errors. Read through this account of the incident and of the testimony of the witnesses and the police officers on the scene. You’ll agree, I think, that it would have been a hard case to decide. What would you have done?
The case was a break-in. The defendant, a black kid from south-east DC, was being charged with first-degree burglary of a home in the wealthy Maryland suburb of Olney, and with the theft of goods from that house. There was one thing we knew for sure in the case—that the house was broken into, and things were stolen. The rest, including and especially the involvement of the defendant, was frustratingly ambiguous.
This picture illustrates the neighborhood and the action that occurred during and after the crime. (You'll probably want to click on it to see a larger version.) The house with the red square around it was the one burglarized, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and their two daughters.
Just after 12pm on St. Patrick’s Day of this year, Mrs. Adams, a part-time nurse, was sitting in a chair at her bedroom window (at house marked by “A”), suffering from back pain. She noticed then a young black male with a backpack riding a bike down the street (red arrow). “That’s odd,” she told the jury she was thinking, “school is in session now—why isn’t he at school?” (“That’s odd,” she didn’t tell the jury she was thinking, “why is there a black kid in our neighborhood?”) She immediately noticed that his height was 5’8”, the same height as her son. She also noticed that the kid rode his bike straight into the gap between the Jones’ house and the Butler’s house (B). Then he came back to the front of the Jones’ house, and rang the doorbell. Then, oddly, he started jumping up and down in front of their windows, waving his arms madly and peering inside the house. There was no response from inside. He walked over to their garage, looked in the garage window panels, and finally went back around the side of the house.
Mrs. Adams immediately called Mrs. Butler, a stay-at-home mom. “Mrs. Butler,” she asked, “do you see a bike parked alongside the Jones’ house? She did. “I think something funny is going on. I’m coming over, let’s watch their house.” From Mrs. Butler’s big picture windows they couldn’t see the back of the Jones’ house. But they strategized that with a vantage point on the other side of the Jones’ house, at the Coons’ house (C), they might be able to catch what was going on. Mrs. Adams called Mr. Adams, who worked from the basement of their house. As he was coming over with his digital camera, they spotted Mrs. Coons, a stay-at-home-mom, carrying her baby out with her to get the mail. Mr. Adams ran over to her and told her to go back inside for safety; something was going on. They both went over to her place and set out to wait on the Coons’ back porch, camera ready.
Then, inside the Butlers’ house, Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Butler heard a loud, rhythmic banging from the back of the Jones’ house. The women called 911 and reported a probable burglary at the Jones. On the 911 tape, the jury heard Mrs. Butler, frantic and trying to be calm, shakily telling the operator what was going on, with Mrs. Adams in the background telling Mrs. Butler to tell the operator the few descriptive details she noticed about the burglar when she saw him on the bike—race, height, that was about it. Minutes passed. Neither the Adams or Mrs. Butler or Mrs. Coons saw anything. Mrs. Butler grew increasingly frustrated on the phone, begging the operator to send the police faster, demanding to know why they weren’t coming.
Then, suddenly, the burglar appeared on the Jones’ back deck, walking down the steps. He looked up, and made eye contact with Mrs. Coons for a second. Mr. Adams was fiddling with his camera at the time, switching between movie mode and still mode once he realized his card is full. He only managed a shot of the sky in his rush to take the picture and never saw the burglar’s face. Mrs. Butler saw the side of the burglar’s face and gave this description to the 911 operator: “He’s got on blue jeans, a gray jacket with navy blue panels down the sleeves, and a black skullcap. Slight build, young African-American man.”
The burglar hopped on the bike, backpack bulging, and took off through the backyard, along the treeline (aqua line). “He’s getting away!” Mrs. Butler wailed to the operator. “You’re just going to let him go!?”
At this point, Mr. Adams, a trained runner, jumped into action, leaping off the Coons’ porch and sprinting after the escaping burglar through the grass. He started to gain on the bike. “You’d better ride faster!” Mr. Adams taunted the burglar. The burglar looked back and saw Mr. Adams’ approaching figure, deciding to leap off the bike and start running on foot (first tick mark). Mr. Adams started to gain more ground on the fleeing burglar. “You’d better run faster!” he jeered. The burglar seemed to agree, dropping the backpack (second tick mark). At that point, the burglar seemed to disappear into thin air.
Mr. Adams looked to the right, a downhill slope into naked trees, and didn’t see anyone. But to the left was the beginning of an abandoned road, partially obscured by a large mound, which he couldn’t see around. (You can see the road, a narrow strip, coming up out of the bottom of the picture just after the end of the aqua line, going north). Afraid of being jumped, Mr. Adams proceeded slowly around the mound. Nothing. Gone. The burglar was nowhere in sight. In capitulation, Mr. Adams turned slowly around and returned to the abandoned backpack and bike, carrying them back to the house.
At that point the police had arrived and the women were giving their statements to the officers who had arrived at the house. Mrs. Coons had had the best view of the burglar, when they had looked each other in the eye. She told the police that he looked a lot like D’Angelo Barksdale from The Wire. He had a very broad face and a medium coloration, she said, with an uneven complexion, as if he had had pockmarks. The police took the bike and backpack as evidence. They also tried to fingerprint the bike and the house, to no avail. Mr. Jones was called and summoned home from his job as a bank manager.
Meanwhile, about 10 minutes after the burglary, the defendant was seen by a cruising police car running out of a nearby cul-de-sac (yellow arrow), drenched through two shirts with sweat, wearing a purple tshirt and jeans. No jacket. His hair, in a buzz cut, was exposed. No hat. He had on very distinctive white and purple shoes, matching his shirt. He was 5’8”, African-American in his late teens or early twenties, and of a fairly light build. The police were on the alert and pulled up behind him, making him stop. He told them his name and where he was from—southeastern D.C., 30 miles away. Then they asked him what he was doing so far from home. He came to see a friend, the defendant stated. The friend wasn’t home, so he was on his way to his girlfriend’s to get a ride home. The police officers asked where the friend and the girlfriend lived, and the defendant indicated this. The location of their houses was not recorded and was subsequently forgotten by the police.
Have you been on the pavement the whole time? asked the police. The defendant indicated in the affirmative. Then how come you’ve got mud all over your shoes? The defendant shut up and stared at the pavement.
He was put in handcuffs by the police and sat down on the curb to wait. The witnesses were driven past the defendant in a squad car. That’s him, said Mrs. Butler. That’s definitely him. In his pockets the police found a pocketknife and two expensive men’s watches.
The defendant was booked later that night.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were sorting through their goods that were recovered from the backpack. This task was made more difficult by the fact that Mr. Jones had recently inherited a lot of jewelry from his newly-deceased mother and father, and the couple was not intimately familiar with all of the jewelry. The thief had ransacked their living room, where there were the inherited jewelry boxes, recently back from the appraiser’s, as well as a Wii, a Game Boy, and games for each of the game systems. All of this stuff was stolen, and all the contents of the backpack were immediately returned to the Jones’ after it was identified as theirs. The missing Game Boy and the games were not found inside the backpack.
One of the police officers showed up with the watches and pocketknife from the defendant’s pockets. The couple was not able to identify them as theirs. The police took those items as evidence, where they stayed for months, claimed by no one.
Meanwhile, a canine unit arrived. The officer, Mr. Adams, and the dog—a German shepherd named Vlerk*, re-traced the steps of Mr. Adams’ chase. The dog took off running, following the path of the chase. Now, one thing about German shepherds is that they are not bloodhounds. They do not follow a particular scent. They are trained to follow the most recent human scent, along with scents of recently-disturbed vegetation. The dog led them to the abandoned road, just after the point where the backpack had been dropped. At first Vlerk led the officer down to the right on the road, but then he got confused and stopped. The canine officer helped Vlerk re-establish a trail, one that led instead up to the left, past the mound of earth and north on the abandoned road. The dog led them enthusiastically to the first cul-de-sac north along the road. Then he stopped again. No trail was re-established. The officer and the dog poked around some of those houses there, looking for a thrown-away jacket and hat. None were found after a couple minutes. They wandered aimlessly up the abandoned road, across the through street, and north off the map. They didn’t find anything after 20 minutes and so everybody went home.
This is the story we heard at the trial, knit together from the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Butler, Mrs. Coons, two patrol officers, the canine officer, and Mr. Jones. However, there are some additional points I’d like to make about the testimony.
When both Mrs. Butler and Mr. Adams were brought up to the stand, they were asked to describe the defendant as they saw him that day sitting on the curb in handcuffs, detained by the police. They both said that he was a young black man, lighter build, about 5’8”, with cornrows, looking exactly like the defendant in the courtroom. The problem was, as we saw later in the mugshot, he was wearing no cornrows that day. He had grown his hair and braided in the rows only since being in prison awaiting trial.
Another interesting moment came when Mr. Jones finally took the stand, near the end of the second day of the trial. The prosecution lawyer had him look at photos all of the stolen loot found in the backpack, and re-identify everything as his. Then, he brought up the watches found in the defendant’s pockets. “Do you recognize these?” asked the prosecution lawyer. “Yes. Yes, that gold one, that is definitely one I inherited from my father. That is it.” This was the first time he had identified that watch as his in the five-plus months since the burglary had occurred.
We never heard from the defendant.
There is also a geographical note that should be made. Notice on the map the orange line. This line is accentuating a 6’ tall fence that runs all along the left side of the abandoned road as it runs north. The prosecution assumed that this was the general route the burglar had taken. But if the defendant were guilty, look at the route he’d have to take to get from his last-seen position at the end of the chase to the location where he was stopped by the police—he’d have to leap this 6’ tall fence, or he’d have to run all the way north to the end of it, turn back and run south along the other side of it and end up in that other cul-de-sac, and then turn around again and run out of it before being spotted by the police cruiser.
How do you see the evidence in this case? How would you have ruled if you were on its jury? Leave your comments; I’m curious to see how other people view this situation. After a couple days, I’ll write a post about our deliberations and our verdict.
*This is the only name that is not changed in this blog post.
***POSTSCRIPT
one important note on the testimony that I forgot to add. When Mrs. Coons came up to testify, she identified the defendant as also looking like D'Angelo Barksdale, just like the burglar she saw face to face. However, she was hesitant, as she did not notice an unevenness of coloration like she saw on the burglar that day. No pockmarks, either. So she determined she was "75% sure" the defendant was the burglar.
There was a parade of eyewitnesses, each with his or her own details to add, own perspective, own biases, and own errors. Read through this account of the incident and of the testimony of the witnesses and the police officers on the scene. You’ll agree, I think, that it would have been a hard case to decide. What would you have done?
The case was a break-in. The defendant, a black kid from south-east DC, was being charged with first-degree burglary of a home in the wealthy Maryland suburb of Olney, and with the theft of goods from that house. There was one thing we knew for sure in the case—that the house was broken into, and things were stolen. The rest, including and especially the involvement of the defendant, was frustratingly ambiguous.
This picture illustrates the neighborhood and the action that occurred during and after the crime. (You'll probably want to click on it to see a larger version.) The house with the red square around it was the one burglarized, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Jones and their two daughters.
Just after 12pm on St. Patrick’s Day of this year, Mrs. Adams, a part-time nurse, was sitting in a chair at her bedroom window (at house marked by “A”), suffering from back pain. She noticed then a young black male with a backpack riding a bike down the street (red arrow). “That’s odd,” she told the jury she was thinking, “school is in session now—why isn’t he at school?” (“That’s odd,” she didn’t tell the jury she was thinking, “why is there a black kid in our neighborhood?”) She immediately noticed that his height was 5’8”, the same height as her son. She also noticed that the kid rode his bike straight into the gap between the Jones’ house and the Butler’s house (B). Then he came back to the front of the Jones’ house, and rang the doorbell. Then, oddly, he started jumping up and down in front of their windows, waving his arms madly and peering inside the house. There was no response from inside. He walked over to their garage, looked in the garage window panels, and finally went back around the side of the house.
Mrs. Adams immediately called Mrs. Butler, a stay-at-home mom. “Mrs. Butler,” she asked, “do you see a bike parked alongside the Jones’ house? She did. “I think something funny is going on. I’m coming over, let’s watch their house.” From Mrs. Butler’s big picture windows they couldn’t see the back of the Jones’ house. But they strategized that with a vantage point on the other side of the Jones’ house, at the Coons’ house (C), they might be able to catch what was going on. Mrs. Adams called Mr. Adams, who worked from the basement of their house. As he was coming over with his digital camera, they spotted Mrs. Coons, a stay-at-home-mom, carrying her baby out with her to get the mail. Mr. Adams ran over to her and told her to go back inside for safety; something was going on. They both went over to her place and set out to wait on the Coons’ back porch, camera ready.
Then, inside the Butlers’ house, Mrs. Adams and Mrs. Butler heard a loud, rhythmic banging from the back of the Jones’ house. The women called 911 and reported a probable burglary at the Jones. On the 911 tape, the jury heard Mrs. Butler, frantic and trying to be calm, shakily telling the operator what was going on, with Mrs. Adams in the background telling Mrs. Butler to tell the operator the few descriptive details she noticed about the burglar when she saw him on the bike—race, height, that was about it. Minutes passed. Neither the Adams or Mrs. Butler or Mrs. Coons saw anything. Mrs. Butler grew increasingly frustrated on the phone, begging the operator to send the police faster, demanding to know why they weren’t coming.
Then, suddenly, the burglar appeared on the Jones’ back deck, walking down the steps. He looked up, and made eye contact with Mrs. Coons for a second. Mr. Adams was fiddling with his camera at the time, switching between movie mode and still mode once he realized his card is full. He only managed a shot of the sky in his rush to take the picture and never saw the burglar’s face. Mrs. Butler saw the side of the burglar’s face and gave this description to the 911 operator: “He’s got on blue jeans, a gray jacket with navy blue panels down the sleeves, and a black skullcap. Slight build, young African-American man.”
The burglar hopped on the bike, backpack bulging, and took off through the backyard, along the treeline (aqua line). “He’s getting away!” Mrs. Butler wailed to the operator. “You’re just going to let him go!?”
At this point, Mr. Adams, a trained runner, jumped into action, leaping off the Coons’ porch and sprinting after the escaping burglar through the grass. He started to gain on the bike. “You’d better ride faster!” Mr. Adams taunted the burglar. The burglar looked back and saw Mr. Adams’ approaching figure, deciding to leap off the bike and start running on foot (first tick mark). Mr. Adams started to gain more ground on the fleeing burglar. “You’d better run faster!” he jeered. The burglar seemed to agree, dropping the backpack (second tick mark). At that point, the burglar seemed to disappear into thin air.
Mr. Adams looked to the right, a downhill slope into naked trees, and didn’t see anyone. But to the left was the beginning of an abandoned road, partially obscured by a large mound, which he couldn’t see around. (You can see the road, a narrow strip, coming up out of the bottom of the picture just after the end of the aqua line, going north). Afraid of being jumped, Mr. Adams proceeded slowly around the mound. Nothing. Gone. The burglar was nowhere in sight. In capitulation, Mr. Adams turned slowly around and returned to the abandoned backpack and bike, carrying them back to the house.
At that point the police had arrived and the women were giving their statements to the officers who had arrived at the house. Mrs. Coons had had the best view of the burglar, when they had looked each other in the eye. She told the police that he looked a lot like D’Angelo Barksdale from The Wire. He had a very broad face and a medium coloration, she said, with an uneven complexion, as if he had had pockmarks. The police took the bike and backpack as evidence. They also tried to fingerprint the bike and the house, to no avail. Mr. Jones was called and summoned home from his job as a bank manager.
Meanwhile, about 10 minutes after the burglary, the defendant was seen by a cruising police car running out of a nearby cul-de-sac (yellow arrow), drenched through two shirts with sweat, wearing a purple tshirt and jeans. No jacket. His hair, in a buzz cut, was exposed. No hat. He had on very distinctive white and purple shoes, matching his shirt. He was 5’8”, African-American in his late teens or early twenties, and of a fairly light build. The police were on the alert and pulled up behind him, making him stop. He told them his name and where he was from—southeastern D.C., 30 miles away. Then they asked him what he was doing so far from home. He came to see a friend, the defendant stated. The friend wasn’t home, so he was on his way to his girlfriend’s to get a ride home. The police officers asked where the friend and the girlfriend lived, and the defendant indicated this. The location of their houses was not recorded and was subsequently forgotten by the police.
Have you been on the pavement the whole time? asked the police. The defendant indicated in the affirmative. Then how come you’ve got mud all over your shoes? The defendant shut up and stared at the pavement.
He was put in handcuffs by the police and sat down on the curb to wait. The witnesses were driven past the defendant in a squad car. That’s him, said Mrs. Butler. That’s definitely him. In his pockets the police found a pocketknife and two expensive men’s watches.
The defendant was booked later that night.
Meanwhile, Mr. and Mrs. Jones were sorting through their goods that were recovered from the backpack. This task was made more difficult by the fact that Mr. Jones had recently inherited a lot of jewelry from his newly-deceased mother and father, and the couple was not intimately familiar with all of the jewelry. The thief had ransacked their living room, where there were the inherited jewelry boxes, recently back from the appraiser’s, as well as a Wii, a Game Boy, and games for each of the game systems. All of this stuff was stolen, and all the contents of the backpack were immediately returned to the Jones’ after it was identified as theirs. The missing Game Boy and the games were not found inside the backpack.
One of the police officers showed up with the watches and pocketknife from the defendant’s pockets. The couple was not able to identify them as theirs. The police took those items as evidence, where they stayed for months, claimed by no one.
Meanwhile, a canine unit arrived. The officer, Mr. Adams, and the dog—a German shepherd named Vlerk*, re-traced the steps of Mr. Adams’ chase. The dog took off running, following the path of the chase. Now, one thing about German shepherds is that they are not bloodhounds. They do not follow a particular scent. They are trained to follow the most recent human scent, along with scents of recently-disturbed vegetation. The dog led them to the abandoned road, just after the point where the backpack had been dropped. At first Vlerk led the officer down to the right on the road, but then he got confused and stopped. The canine officer helped Vlerk re-establish a trail, one that led instead up to the left, past the mound of earth and north on the abandoned road. The dog led them enthusiastically to the first cul-de-sac north along the road. Then he stopped again. No trail was re-established. The officer and the dog poked around some of those houses there, looking for a thrown-away jacket and hat. None were found after a couple minutes. They wandered aimlessly up the abandoned road, across the through street, and north off the map. They didn’t find anything after 20 minutes and so everybody went home.
This is the story we heard at the trial, knit together from the testimony of Mr. and Mrs. Adams, Mrs. Butler, Mrs. Coons, two patrol officers, the canine officer, and Mr. Jones. However, there are some additional points I’d like to make about the testimony.
When both Mrs. Butler and Mr. Adams were brought up to the stand, they were asked to describe the defendant as they saw him that day sitting on the curb in handcuffs, detained by the police. They both said that he was a young black man, lighter build, about 5’8”, with cornrows, looking exactly like the defendant in the courtroom. The problem was, as we saw later in the mugshot, he was wearing no cornrows that day. He had grown his hair and braided in the rows only since being in prison awaiting trial.
Another interesting moment came when Mr. Jones finally took the stand, near the end of the second day of the trial. The prosecution lawyer had him look at photos all of the stolen loot found in the backpack, and re-identify everything as his. Then, he brought up the watches found in the defendant’s pockets. “Do you recognize these?” asked the prosecution lawyer. “Yes. Yes, that gold one, that is definitely one I inherited from my father. That is it.” This was the first time he had identified that watch as his in the five-plus months since the burglary had occurred.
We never heard from the defendant.
There is also a geographical note that should be made. Notice on the map the orange line. This line is accentuating a 6’ tall fence that runs all along the left side of the abandoned road as it runs north. The prosecution assumed that this was the general route the burglar had taken. But if the defendant were guilty, look at the route he’d have to take to get from his last-seen position at the end of the chase to the location where he was stopped by the police—he’d have to leap this 6’ tall fence, or he’d have to run all the way north to the end of it, turn back and run south along the other side of it and end up in that other cul-de-sac, and then turn around again and run out of it before being spotted by the police cruiser.
How do you see the evidence in this case? How would you have ruled if you were on its jury? Leave your comments; I’m curious to see how other people view this situation. After a couple days, I’ll write a post about our deliberations and our verdict.
*This is the only name that is not changed in this blog post.
***POSTSCRIPT
one important note on the testimony that I forgot to add. When Mrs. Coons came up to testify, she identified the defendant as also looking like D'Angelo Barksdale, just like the burglar she saw face to face. However, she was hesitant, as she did not notice an unevenness of coloration like she saw on the burglar that day. No pockmarks, either. So she determined she was "75% sure" the defendant was the burglar.
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