There is one less pedophile on the streets of Los Angeles tonight.
The past week and a half I served as first alternate on a jury in an aggravated sexual assault case. The dude is guilty as hell.
A 47 year old man cornered his 13 year old neighbor in the garage of their apartment building as she took out the trash one afternoon. He grabbed her by the wrists, pulled down her pants, pulled down his pants and pushed her up against a car. Just as he was beginning to penetrate the girl's mom came down the stairs looking for her and discovered them together. She immediately called the cops, which is why we got lots and lots of undeniable DNA evidence.
All 14 of us unanimously agreed he was guilty so as the other alternate and I sat in the hall waiting for an hour and a half the real jury made their decision very quickly. I wasn't surprised because I'd been listening. We weren't allowed to discuss the case, but that didn't stop us from posing hypotheticals and discussing law in general and it sounded like we were all pretty much headed to the same conclusion.
You can't argue with the DNA. Unless you're Johnny Cochran.
One of the other jurors asked me to let her know if I use the case in a script. I think I might just do that next time I work on something legal like Bones or something. Unfortunately child rape is not a good topic for a show like Psych because that's the show I'd really like to spec.
I'm glad I got to be a part of the process. In this case the system very much worked because there is no way that man didn't rape that girl and we - okay, they - put him away because of it. Plus, I made a new friend.
I also learned a lot about female genitalia and how sperm is transmitted. So that's kind of cool. Not so much for the guy who's in prison tonight, but he probably should have kept his dick out of that little girl. I feel bad for his wife.
Years ago I was on a jury that convicted a guy of nearly 30 counts of rape & burglary.
ReplyDeleteHe broke into people's houses & raped & sodomized them at knife point-- even a couple (nan & woman) sleeping in their bed.
He left a lot of DNA evidence & we convicted him fairly quickly.Later on, after the trial, we found out the guy had AIDS, which is something the judge kept out of the trial.
I'm a physically secure person, I don't think about this kind of stuff too often... but every once in a while I'm reminded of this guy & how he raped so many people-- adults-- before he got caught. Scary.
HOORAY FOR YOU! If I had to choose another job besides TV Writer, it'd be vigilante killer of pedophiles.
ReplyDeleteHmm...maybe that would make a good show...
But seriously, I'm glad some justice was found for a little girl who needed it...and who knows how many other children that monster could have attacked later in life.