Many years ago in Santa Fe, I was summoned to serve on a jury panel which decided one criminal case and one civil case.
The criminal case involved a woman accused of first degree murder for fatally shooting her abusive husband. She had acquired a handgun shortly prior to the fatal shooting, which was a key element in determining whether there had been pre-meditation and a key element required for a first-degree charge. However, the guy she killed was truly a bad human being and probably would have been convicted of physically abusing his meek spouse and her children had she not jumped the gun and taken the matter into her own hands (literally). After a day of deliberation, the jury settled on a voluntary manslaughter conviction. As I recall, the thinking of the jury was that she was a good person who did not really intend to do anything more than threaten the husband with a gun, but was provoked to the point of firing it when she confronted him and he in turn threatened her.
The judge in the case later told me in private that he thought a first degree verdict would have been warranted. However, it was later determined that during the woman’s sentencing, an error was made in applying the state’s new “firearm enhancement” provision. That provision required a longer sentence if a firearm was used in various crimes. I think she was freed on that technicality and probably lived a remorse-filled life that at least I hope was at least better than the one she had endured with her late husband.
The civil case was truly laughable. An ego-centric self-proclaimed author said he was severely injured when his giant Cadillac sedan was gently tapped on the back bumper by a young woman driving a tiny Ford Pinto that was probably 2,000 pounds lighter than the vehicle she struck. Photos of the cars showed the tiniest of scratches on the solid steel Cadillac bumper and a slightly bent thin metal bumper on the Pinto. The author claimed the impact was so great that his teeth became immobile. He found a money-hungry young dentist who verified that assertion as an expert witness. The jury, of which I was foreman, deliberated no more than about 20 minutes before tossing the case. The author claimed that the verdict should be thrown out because the deliberation was so short but the judge ruled against him on that point as well. Anyone who also heard the case would have clearly sided with the jury and ruling against a charlatan who was just out for money. The guy’s book, “Big Jim,” never made it into print as far I could determine.
For the next 50 or so years, I managed to avoid additional jury duty until I got a summons last month to serve on a grand jury that reviewed cases brought to us by the Dona Ana County District Attorney.
As in the “bumper tap” case, many of the crimes were truly laughable.
One memorable case involved possession of a stolen vehicle. The vehicle in question was a van stolen in El Paso that ended up in the suspect’s hands. When police found the vehicle, it had clearly just been repainted black with a crude paint job. During questioning, the police noticed that the suspect’s hands were smeared with black paint. When the vehicle was served, police found a variety of suspect items, including some illegal drugs in the console.
The suspect claimed all of the items in the van were there when he acquired the vehicle from a “shady” guy who had sold the van to him but still had not released its title to him. And as far as the drugs were concerned, the suspect told police:
“If I had known they were in there, I would have taken them.”
Another interesting case involved a woman getting so mad at her boyfriend that she struck him in the head with a medium sized bottle of Cholula hot sauce, then grabbed a three-foot-long TV sound bar and gave him another serious whack. The woman, as I recall from the investigating officer’s report, was rather tiny. Her wielding the heavy soundbar as a dangerous weapon must have been something to witness.
Then there was the case of the clever burglars who struck a group of storage units. They figured no one would initially notice burglaries of about half a dozen storage units if they would just cut the padlock with bolt cutters, steal the contents inside, then replace the damaged padlocks with similar new ones so it looked no one had been there. Their first mistake was that they had forgotten about security cameras on the property. Their second occurred when police stopped them and found a pile of mangled padlocks and bolt cutters inside the getaway vehicle. They also found a cache of items that obviously had been stored and had been clearly gathering dust for some time.
And finally, there was the case of a woman who stole an electric scooter on the campus of New Mexico State University, set fire to three palm trees and then torched the scooter. She explained to campus police that she became enraged when some students laughed at her because she couldn’t initially get the scooter to move, so she vented her anger on the innocent palm trees, then tossed the scooter into the inferno for good measure.
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