Random Thoughts...

Back in January, I was unfortunate enough to get called for Jury Duty.  I was extremely glad after the 2nd day that I was dismissed (apparently they didn't want a woman engineer on the jury).  I only had a few details of the case when jury selection was started.  We knew what the charges were against the individual (the biggest being attempted murder for shooting a woman in the face), but we didn't know a lot of the details.

As I sat through jury selection, I honestly can't say whether I would have been able to give this guy a fair trial.  The few details that came out were that he had shot a woman in the face....not once...but 4 times!  While I don't understand why someone would shoot another person, I could see that maybe the face was an accident (doesn't make it any better that he shot the woman, but maybe he had really bad aim).  However, 4 times!  That's not an accident...that's intentional.

After I was dismissed, I went and read some more about the case.  It was a 19-year-old who was infatuated with a 29-year-old woman.  They both did drugs, and she was a dealer.  He was jealous that she was spending time with other men and when she told him to go away, he decided to shoot her.  The case came down to whether him shooting the woman was intent to kill or just to get back at her.

The jury ended up finding him not guilty on the murder charge, but guilty on everything else (assault, burglary, and weapons possession).  The kid turned down a plea deal where he would get 9.5 years in prison...dumb kid.  While I feel badly that the guy is going to prison for quite some time, I'd rather have him there than on the street.  The judge recently sentenced him to 31 years in prison.

One of the weird things in the article was that the probation officer said that the suspect was "pleasant", but the judge's comments were that he wondered how a "pleasant" man nearly killed this woman.  The defense attorney at the end tried to pin this all on the kid's upbringing...that he had a difficult upbringing and that's why he shot this woman.  Its a load of baloney!  If a person doesn't understand that shooting a person in the face is a bad thing...they DO NOT belong in society.  It doesn't matter what sort of upbringing a person has, the way to resolve a problem is not to shoot the other person!

I'm definitely glad this guy is in prison and that he will be there for a long time.  Now, if only I didn't have to pay the taxes to keep his sorry behind in jail.