Jurors' sound legal decision breaks their hearts

The empty table that joined our 12 chairs symbolized our challenge. We had no hard evidence to place on it. After intense deliberation, the tabula rasa was covered only with crumbs of turkey wraps and the jostling of competing memories and speculation.

Our group was a model of diversity: Six men, six women, black and white, blue-collar and white-collar, college student and senior citizen. Our impressions about the trial were as varied as the accents in the room.

"Didn't your heart go out to Sara's mom?"

"The doctor looked so shifty."

"That's not what I had in my notes."

"Why didn't the defense call a witness to support his character?"

"What if he's innocent?"

"What if he's guilty?!"

We entered the room as without stated biases, but the veneer of impartiality soon scraped off under the pressure of deciding the defendant's fate and Sara's request for justice.

Two camps formed: jurors who "simply believed" Sara, and those who - like me - felt the state fell short of proving its case beyond a reasonable doubt.

But this divide rested on a profound commonality: Each juror confessed strong feelings that the defendant was guilty. For all our diversity, I wondered whether race was influencing our assessment. Defensively, one juror professed warm feelings for his own Pakistani doctor. The jurors insisted it was the defendant's alienating demeanor, not his race, that had sapped their empathy.

Our first straw vote - six "guilty," six "not guilty" - reflected the group's ambivalence about the right verdict and each juror's inner struggle to define justice. The straw vote offended my rational sensibility. How could six seriously think the state had met its burden of proof?

Gripping a tiny piece of chalk, I scratched my reasoning on the dusty chalkboard with the impatience of a Pictionary player. "The defendant is presumed innocent.... The prosecution established no motive, no previous pattern of suspicious behavior.... All evidence derives from the questionable testimony of a disturbed child who'd been taking a cocktail of antipsychotic drugs!"

The group was not convinced.

"Are you saying Sara's lying? .... You want to set him free?!"

I invoked the maxim, "It's better for 10 guilty men to go free than one innocent man to be punished." My rhetoric was aggressive because I was sure the evidence simply didn't add up to a guilty verdict.

The next straw vote, however, left only three "not guilty" votes - I'd won no converts. Tension began to thicken.

Despite the obvious split, the group was bonding in very personal ways.

We began the third and final day of deliberation with silent prayer. Strangers shared intimate details of their lives. We acknowledged how fallible we felt. Several jurors talked about the role faith played in their views about the case. We no longer felt stuck in an elevator.

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