Tavish McGregor

HUMA 1100
Kim Anderson
December 8th, 2015
Reflections on Jury Duty
Serving on a Jury in a criminal trial gave me a great opportunity to use the critical
thinking skills I have gained from this class. One would think that going into a criminal case is
straight forward, but it is more like the movies than you would expect. There are a lot of things
presented by both sides that may or may not have anything to do with the case in question. Its
almost as if they want to distract you from the main focus of the case by presenting a bunch of
fluff. For example, the defendants lawyer kept on bringing up her bitter divorce from the
plaintiff. Their divorce in no way had anything to do with the events that took place the night of
the alleged aggravated assault, but he was using this as a ploy to try and gain sympathy from us,
the jury.
The prosecution presented a range of witnesses from the ex-husband, his son, the cops
that showed up, and the neighbor from up the street. It was our job as jurors to decide who we
felt was telling the truth, based on their motives and what they may have to gain or lose
depending on the outcome of the trial. Again there was a lot to wade through. We had to
determine if we really believed that the defendants former step-son could really see what was
going on between his father and the defendant. He was over fifty feet away from the incident
when it took place, and it was dark outside. We had to decide whether the son or the cops were
correct about the sons whereabouts on the seen when the police showed up, their stories were
different. We also had to determine whether or not the fact that the ex-husband would most likely
not have to pay $25,000.00 to the defendant if she was found guilty played a part in his desire to
prosecute the case.
It was all the factors and many others that really made me use my critical thinking skills.
Analyzing and evaluating the arguments presented by both sides was not easy at first. When the
trial first started I was convinced that the defendant was guilty as guilty could be. After the
arguments were presented and more facts came to light I slowly changed my mind. It went from
being a cut and dry case in my mind to one that had many facets. Even though a lot of the
information was not pertinent to the case itself it did help give insight to the character of some of
the people involved, and allowed us to do our best to seek the truth. Even though I went into the
trial thinking Guilty, guilty, guilty, I was able to gather the facts as they were presented, use
my analytical skills, and come to the same conclusion as the rest of the jury. That the defendants
story was the one most likely to be true, although ultimately since none of us were there we will
never know what really happened.