BoldlyRide

This week my boss, the Big Dog, was engaged in that peculiar mixture of trial by combat and trial by ordeal known as a jury trial. Unfortunately, the jury hung on the most serious charge. Post trial interviews revealed that they "were sure he was guilty" but didn't have enough evidence to convict him on that count. They were distracted with wondering why certain witnesses weren't called (Not called because they said they didn't see anything), some less than scintillating police procedures, and witnesses (both prosecution and defense) whose testimony differed at trial from the written statements they had provided near the time of the incident. The jurors indicated that if there was even one part of a witness' testimony that seemed to be a lie, they disbelieved the entire testimony. Now the Big Dog gets to decide whether he wants to retry the case. I'm thinking that it would be even more difficult now to get a guilty verdict, with all this testimony on record to potentially contradict the testimony that might be given later.

While the Big Dog grappled over at the grown-up court, I got to do a probable cause hearing on a 17 counts of fairly obscure crimes; my witnesses were officers who had never done PC hearings before - and the facts were messy. Especially messy were 2 charges related to the same incident. During the hearing I discovered that the evidence would not support the charges as set forth. Fortunately, when I looked to the judge for my own sort of bailout, he acknowledged probable cause for the crimes, but allowed me to correct the language to match the facts.