Participants:
Also featuring:
NPCs by Chinatown
| Scene Title | Jury Duty |
|---|---|
| Synopsis | When an unregistered Evolved phaser breaks into a casino hotel's vault area and blinds a security guard with a .22, the jury must decide whether or not to convict him of three separate charges. Please forgive the gratuitous ignorance of real life court proceedings. |
| Date | July 19, 2010 |
South Manhattan — Criminal Courthouse
It is a beautiful day! Birds singing, children carolling on their big yellow school buses, the sky a horrible shade of cerulean with cotton-skein puffs of clouds moving across it at a pace like music, licensed people grilling delicious hotdogs on the street, sparrows squabbling with jackdaws over bits of gunky candy while the subway grilles gargle tiny pools of iridescent water and Central Park is privvy to an orchestra of cyclists and skirt-suits on lunch-break.
New York City in Summer can be a lovely thing.
Pity for those on jury duty, inevitably cooped up in one of the most hideous buildings on Centre Street. At least the air-conditioner is only partially broken, judging from the fact that the entire ceiling seems to be channelling an awful droning in through the ventilation grille poised above the end of the long table. The temperature is somewhere between sticky and siesta, and there's a water cooler in one corner of the room, next to the tall window whose latch seems to have been cunningly fused to a solid block of corroded rust perhaps in a bid to prevent escape.
They are sworn in as they come, each of the twelve jurors, an unlikely mix of mutants, non-Evolved, suits and one middle-aged Hispanic woman who came in with a bright scrap of knitting and a giant pair of glasses perched on the end of her long nose. There's a freckly blond of a college student with a logoed T-shirt of Morningside Heights' community college hovering around next to the door, chain hanging heavy from his wallet, alternately eyeing the clerk who is doing the swearing in her dour drone of a voice and the dense folder sitting in the middle of the desk, between still-empty cupholder slots.
Great. This is going to be be fun.
Right now, John Logan's little harem of titillating pasty twirling and g-string prancing on a stage while men and women alike leer and put money in the jar is really fucking appealing, and preferable than having to stand around after being sworn in. Red suit, heels, hair back, she's looking like the traditional businesswoman who had the misfortune of having her name plucked out of a computer and then made it through the question and answer, then selection period only to be told to get her ass back so she could do her American Duty and legally pass judgement on her peers.
Mentally she calculates how badly it would damage her nails if she used them to unseal the god damned window and run. How much of a contempt fine would that be? And how come the defense hadn't objected when she'd stated her profession. Casino Floor Manager. Serioursly? That was a shoo-in to get dismissed. Welcome to New York.
As she raises her hand and murmurs after the bailiff, Daphne Millbrook is still wondering if it's not too late to run off to Canada. She should have ignored the summons. Paid the fine. Evaded arrest if they came for her for contempt of court. It already feels like hours to her, and she's already perjured herself, saying no, no, not Evolved. The case is one too close to home for comfort too.
She moves away to let the next person swear in, crossing her arms and bouncing on the balls of her feet as she glances to the clock and back to the goings on. "Speedy trial is such a relative term," she mutters to herself, a roll of her dark eyes at the ceiling.
Delilah was just a little excited when she did get the summons; but when the day finally rolls around, it has been getting progressively worse. The swearing in was easy enough, though for a moment she paused on whether or not to present her registration- she did, just in case, even if her ability is still in limbo. She is now stuck in a literal box of concrete, with a funky conditioning system and a window that she only glimpsed over, forlorn. Now, the redhead finds herself along the one wall where the stuttering ventilation sits, staring up at it as if she might be able to somehow relocate it with her mind. Her dress is simple in cut and color, a navy blue against the cream of the wallpaint.
Come on! Get closer! Why is there not a fan in here? Delilah sighs, looking away from the wall towards the rest of the room, in quick observation of the others again. The stuffiness makes her feel blimpish, to say the least, and judging by her guarded hand on her stomach, she doesn't really want to be seen as such. Juries really are motley crews, aren't they?
Nadia showed up early today, possibly the first one here, and has been waiting since then. Currently, she's decked out in her layered tank top and capri pants, and she is sporting one of her many scarves. Damn, first a bus getting hijacked, and now she gets to decide if someone goes to jail or not. Life is not fair, really. Life is not fair, it seems. She's been sitting in the corner since she was sworn in and presented her registration without batting an eyelash, and now she is waving a piece of paper as a makeshift fan and reading a book, Darkly Dreaming Dexter, and the frown on her face is slowly growing larger.
As a consequence of certain fabulous personalities being fashionably tardy, there are only eleven of the proper jurors to swelter together for the first twenty minutes of the exercise, amid increasingly mutinous murmurs and a few punctuating gurgling sloshes of the level of water in the big tank bubbling down. The clerk, Leslie Johnson, has pressing matters with maintenance to attend and bustles out, declaring that the last juror— one Toby Marsden— had called to notify the court that he would be but a few minutes late, and left them to wilt systematically.
"I'm in the middle of a damn merger, and I really don't have time for this." The lanky, vulpine-faced suit who had arrived only minutes after Nadia is the first to address the rest of the jurors proper. "I say we get as much done as we can before this 'Toby' guy comes in and gives us his vote. The twelve of us have to agree on each of the charges, guilty or not guilty, and then we're out of here. Who do we want to vote as foreman?" There is something immensely aggressive about his stare, the stoop of his brow, which leaves little room for the imagination as to who he's voting for.
He is unfortunately interrupted by an acerbic clicking of knitting needles, and the woman sitting to Delilah's left looks up, through her glasses. "I would like to nominate the young lady here," he says, nodding at the Englishwoman. Her voice is edged faintly with the rhythm and consonants of a Spanish accent. "It is our duty to make sure the youth of our nation gets a chance to explore civic responsibility, no?"
A frown recurves the older gentleman's severe mouth, and he sets his eyes on Delilah's large belly rather pointedly, before moving to her ringless fingers.
"I'll second that, for who will be the foreperson. Something to put on her resumee down the road" When Delilah's out of the home for unwed mothers and on her own two feet, or so Ina thinks. Looks can be deceiving and she's just gonna for the moment, judge a book by it's cover. Not so for the person they're here to decide ones fate about. "Miss…." Ina looks to Delilah, fishing for a name.
Of course Daphne had already greeted Delilah earlier when they sat down for the trial, so she smirks a bit when her fellow Den-mate is chosen to be Foreman. "Works for me," she says with a backwards shrug, head tipping toward shoulder as she glances at the clock again. She then glances at the redhead, then flicks her gaze to the suited man, knowing that if Dee doesn't take the position, he's likely to be the one to get it. And do they really want that?
When the older man begins his short tirade into getting the job done and getting out, Delilah is pulling out a chair to sit herself down. At the mention of 'young lady', she looks up and around, only to realize the woman is talking about her. Oh! She looks back at the knitter in time to catch the rest, and blink back to the man. Unfortunately for him, she has since learned of that particular look, as per her getting it at least once a week. It only stands to increase when her circumference does. All that he gets from the redhead is a chilly narrowing of her eyes on him, however.
Lilah is not ready for being seconded much less thirded. Daphne's inclusion is less surprising, but she gets a 'what are you doing?' look regardless- and then she makes that little visual gesture to the man, and Dee seems to process it.
"Miss Trafford." Ina inquired, and she answers to the table. By her tone, she does not terribly mind being chosen. Provided it becomes unanimous.
The frown never leaves poor Nadia's face; she looks up from the pages of her book as the lanky suit starts talking, staring at him almost as if she wishes he had just kept quiet. The hispanic woman draws a warm smile from the Morroccan girl, and she offers a slow nod; the smile certainly doesn't last, though, as she promptly recalls that, oh yeah! She's on jury duty. "I agree with her." She gestures quietly toward the knitting woman, sighing softly as she bookmarks her book and puts it in her ever-present oversized bag. No use trying to read right now.
So it goes: the boy with the chain, the fretful old man curled up at the far corner of the desk, and the heavy black woman who's obviously slightly drunk despite her neatly pressed skirt all fall rapidly into majority agreement.
The man in the suit does a sinosoidal wiggle thing with the line of his mouth, which apparently can't make up its mind whether or not he's going to fake a smile or concede with a frown. In the end, neither really wins out. "All right," he sighs, pushing the manila folder over toward the pregnant Englishwoman. "Well," he says, very slowly, "that makes sense," in the kind of voice that indicates clearly that he doesn't think it does, but whatever.
The folder stares up at Delilah like she owes it money, filled with densely laddered papers, diagrams on Xerox-mottled grids, tabs poking out. Ina has seen enough legal files to know that it isn't nearly as thick a case-file as someone with a good lawyer and a few more months of litigation would have aggregated: all signs point to not much of a fight, even before the review.
"I'll presume you have all been paying close attention, and I'll assume that by know you all know the timeline of events." When Delilah finally begins, she casts a look over the table before finding a specific tab in the folder to pry it open. Part of her wouldn't be surprised if it leapt up and bit onto her fingers. "I'll read off a charge, then we will be going clockwise and putting in our two cents. If you've got a strong opinion, be polite about it or I'll go call court security. Got it?" For being so friendly looking and generally accepting, Delilah sure knows how to get to business. Perhaps she's learned a thing or two from her friends that are only now proving useful in the Real World.
"On the most cut and dry charge of attempted murder." The place she has opened to in the folder seems to be the guard's statement, rather than someone else's. "McAllister came to find him in the vault at eleven-forty-three, Hernandez seemed to have panicked and shot him. Now, I don't know what kind of security backtracks to check an unopened vault in the middle of a walkaround- if he was doing half hour shifts- but regardless of why he was there, he still got shot in the face."
"Guilty." Man could have easily just put his gun down. It wasn't like anyone was going to just up and shoot him for being in the vault. Ina doens't divulge her inward reasoning outward, but lays out her vote. Guilty.
Daphne's brow twitches at Ina's jump on guilty. "I don't know. We don't know what happened in the vault — there's no footage of it, and the security guy could have lied about what happened, and the defendant was sorta too drunk I think to really remember. But … you know, if he was that drunk, that's a really really good shot. It doesn't fit, you know? If he was trying to hit him, that drunk, he probably wouldn't have unless he's sniper quality shot. I … I don't know. Murder is just a little too strong of a word for me, and there's other things that don't fit with the theft and stuff — but that's another charge." She glances around the table, dark eyes narrowed thoughtfully. "I'm undecided just yet."
"Well, he could've just hit the guy. He could've threatened him with the gun, and made him get on the ground." She frowns. "He could have just shot the guy in the knee or something. Alcohol is never an excuse, really." Nadia frowns, quietly rubbing her mouth as she ponders. "I'm going to have to say Guilty on this one." She crosses her arms, leaning back in her seat.
The door swings open suddenly with a bang, and the sterile light from the hallway frames the body of the once-absent Toby Benton-Ward. Hip cocked, and wearing a bright pink polo and khaki shorts to combat the heat (though with that filmy red scarf around his neck, is he really trying to combat the heat?), the be-sandaled man is bright and smily and pushing his sunglasses up into his sandy blonde hair. "He-lloooo!" he declares, wandering in and casting sunny and apologetic smiles on everyone. "So sorry! Things came up, but I'm here now! Tell me, what's going on? Did I miss anything? So sorry." Flopping into the one open chair, he plucks up his file and skims over it, reviewing it and such. "My god, it is hotter than Heck out there, lordy lordy lordy. Sweltering!"
The Hispanic woman twists her mouth thoughtfully, and then lifts the blunt end of her needles to push her glasses up her nose. She tilts forward slightly, looking carefully across the table at the papers that the young Englishwoman is holding up. "Murder in the second degree," she observes, thoughtfully. "I'm sure he didn't think a lot about it, but I have to say, firing several bullets on that poor man…"
It is about then that Toby explodes in through the doors, and he draws exactly twenty-two pairs of eyes, blinking owlishly in the soupy air boxed into the room. The old man coughs halfway through a drink of water, wetting dots of water onto his liverspotted wrist.
Oddly enough, it's the aggressive merger-man in the suit who is staring at Delilah's presentation with fixed chagrin, a vein throbbing faintly on his brow. He doesn't appear to have noticed Toby coming in at all. The struggle locks his jaw and turns him slightly purple at the edges, which is rather interesting, like close-quarter combat contracted into an arena the size of one man's skull. "Actually," he says, and the word escapes him like a pressurized hiss of gas through a grille. His reluctance is probably going to lead to hernia, shortly, if he doesn't forgive himself. "Anybody who takes a .22 to a bank vault probably isn't out to murder anybody.
"It's what we use for recreational shooting, most of the time. Or small game, like rabbits, and people are a lot bigger than rabbits."
"You're one of those NRA freaks, aren't you?" the community college boy observes, a brow lifted, and something grudging unfolding on his pale face.
Delilah can't help but stare as Toby prances his way inside from the courthouse; the first part was bad enough, now it almost looks like the older man is going to have a heart attack.
"Okay, Ken, you just- settle in- we're discussing the attempted murder charge." She looks back to the man in the suit after fielding Toby just a little.
"I know what size the gun was. He may have indeed just taken it to scare someone- which it would undoubtedly do- but the fact remains that he shot a man in the face with it, even if he had just somehow ended up in the vault. Stress based manifests are the most common. So if he had the gun just to scare someone, that would surely make more sense than the vault. We don't know what really happened in there, but we know that McAllister got away with one less eye. The only thing that makes me wary to say guilty on the charge is that Hernandez was intoxicated during the events."
Ina has to stop from rolling her eyes a little as she looks away from the window she's leaning against, tapping her fingers on her forearms where they're crossed.
"He fired two rounds into the man, in the face. Not the chest, not the legs or the knee's, he shot the face. Means he had the weapon in hand and he pulled the trigger. Maybe the rent a cop had a gun in his hands too and had it lifted. either way, he shot, he aimed for the head and even monkey's will occasionally manage to hit the broad side of a barn if you give them enough time. It's attempted murder, not actual Murder. Therefore, Guilty." But everyones voted and there's more to still go down the list to. "Next> I'm pretty sure we can revist whichever charges we disagree on. We know he has plenty."
"My problem is that there had to be someone else in that vault at some point," Daphne says with a shake of her head. "There's no freakin' way he could get out all that stuff in what, like 15 minutes or whatever. I mean, that's a totally different point, forgive me for jumping ahead," it's what she does, "but there might have been other issues that we just don't know about. I'm skeptical on the actual attempted murder. Did he almost kill the guy? Yeah, but so do people who accidentally run into someone with a car, and they don't get thrown in jail, and that's just as deadly of a weapon."
She points her finger at the old man who made the point of the 22 not being much of a murder weapon. "Maybe even more of one."
Her dark eyes sweep the room. "Remember, if there's even a reasonable doubt, it's not-guilty. I think we need to go over the other charges and return like Dee here says. Er, Miss Anderson. 'Cause we need to look at those other issues, because those are what cause the doubt for me. It's not black and white. There's something missing here." She glances at Delilah. "What was next? The endangerment thing? I think entering a public place with a loaded weapon counts as that, I'm okay with that one." See, she's reasonable!
Nadia's gaze is unsurprisingly drawn to Toby, and her brows also almost immediately raise. Really, Toby? Really? She shakes her head once, and after offering the pink-shirted man a small wave, her attention immediately reverts to the matter at hand, getting out of here. "At the same time, though, he could have certainly chosen to shoot the guy in the foot or the knee, which might cause a lot of bleeding, but wouldn't shoot the guy's eye out. Alcohol is never an excuse. Alcohol didn't make him pick up a gun and shoot a guy." She nods slowly to Ina, leaning back in her chair and crossing her arms, waiting to see which issue takes the table first before putting in her two cents.
"Oh, is that what we're doing? Okay," Toby says cheerfully, still glancing through the packet. He's quiet while everyone talks but shifting a little in his chair, he gestures to Daphne. "I have to say, given what I know, I have to agree with her. I'm a little foggy on whether he's guilty or not on that charge. I say we revisit it after we've gone through the other stuff, hmm? Endangerment, though, yes. Waving a gun around is a little dangerous for a threat. If he really wanted to just threaten, it'd be empty. So, I vote Guilty on Endangerment." He folds one leg over the other and looks up to see Nadia, and a warm smile starts there towards her before he turns it on the rest of the room. (As if it wasn't warm enough already.)
Angry NRA man scowls fiercely, and shakes his head. "I say we should downgrade the charge," he says, stubbornly. He finally moves to remove his jacket, since the combination of his temper and the half-dead AC is conspiring to make him out like more of a pig than his cause would necessarily benefit from. "We can come back to it, but that's my vote. Assault with a deadly weapon. At most.
"Put that down." There's an emphatically expectant gesture of his hand in the air that makes the doddering old fellow a little ways down the room wince slightly, but by now, the older fellow has patted his mouth and hand dry with a square of napkin that the skeptical community college kid handed him.
As for reckless endangerment, the ungentlemanly gentleman needs only a few seconds to remember that he hates being here and hates Hernandez for being responsible for that, too. "Guilty," he agrees instantly, waving a hand. "And for running around unregistered and intoxicated, with an ability he states clearly he knew about. Obviously, every one of those mutant types should know better. What are you wearing?" This last question is self-evidently directed at Toby.
The Hispanic woman furrows her brow slightly, blinking dark eyes through the myopic transparency of her glasses. "I don't think it's right to talk about those abilities like all of them are similar to guns," she cautions, starting a new row with her knit. "My niece is Evolved, and she grows flowers."
"Well, your niece isn't here," the man retrots, crossing his arms. "It's not like they'd let anybody like that in here, anyway."
Delilah coughs. It is not 'oh, I've got a bit of spit in my throat' coughing, but 'EXCUSE ME' coughing, directed across the room at the old man.
Anyway. "His inability to register is not what is on trial. Leave it." The young woman sits up much straighter now, taking a firm hold of a pen to scribble something on her personal notepad. She's not as incapable as she may seem at first glance."I agree on downgrading the attempted charge to assault, for the record. I'm also in agreement with a guilty verdict on the matter of endangerment, though not as hard a sentence. He didn't go in waving it around, but he still took it in."
"I'd like to come back to the first two and move onto the larceny charge, unless anyone has something important to input right now."
"I can get behind assault with deadly" A wave of her hand and raise of brow as Toby's sending that smile everywhere. Keep it in the pants buddy and turn it down a few notches. "Guilty on endangerment, drunk is not an excuse. Not at all and lets not bring other people's evovled abilities into this mix. We're here about this man's actions, the use of his ability included in it and the focus should be on that. If you can't forget about the rest of the world and the genetically different people who are in it, then you shouldn't be here, but you are, so focus" Ina perhaps a little more sharply than she intended, speaks up.
"The blonde here though, brings up a point. 800 pounds of goods. How on earth was he going to move it? For that matter, why didn't he move out of the vault when he found himself in it. Was he just resting or …" Or what? He phased in, why didn't he phase out.
Daphne's eyes narrow to nearly slits as the man starts talking about mutants and she opens her mouth to speak but snaps it shut when Delilah cuts it off. She turns to listen to the others, nodding, feet bouncing under the table a bit. "Okay, this is where things get sketchy. That sort of heist? You don't go into that drunk — and you don't pull it off drunk. Not that he pulled it off, but the stuff's gone, so someone did. My guess is not him," she says, speaking fast.
"So if he did it, he had partners, I can promise you that. There's no way even a phaser could get that much stuff, 800 pounds of stuff, out of the vault in fifteen minutes. I just don't see it." She used to work with a phaser. It wasn't within his ability range, but that doesn't mean Hernandez's power works the same.
"To be honest, this whole case, there's just… man, if he had a halfway decent lawyer, they could have gotten him to tell them where the stuff is in exchange for a plea bargain, you know?"
The speedster reaches for her water bottle, spinning the cap off just a touch too quickly in her restless state. "The money's gone, but he was still there — it just doesn't add up. There's a missing factor."
It is all Nadia can do to keep herself from glaring daggers at the rather rude man talking badly about 'mutants'. Mostly, she just narrows her eyes and offers an exhasperated shake of her head. Bastard. "I think guilty on both accounts. We don't pat people's hands and baby them when they get behind the wheel of a car while drunk and seriously hurt someone in an accident, we put them in jail. It's a choice that he made, and now he has to live with the consequences." Her eyes flit toward Daphne, brows shooting up. "This…is horribly true." That's all she says on that, for now. Toby is offered a warm smile in return, though she doesn't share it with the rest of the room like he does.
Toby just rolls his eyes at the attack on mutants, and offers a friendly smile. "The ladies are right: his lack of registration isn't a factor in this case. So! Best we move on, hmm?" The man folds his hands in his lap, though the question as to what he's wearing gets lifted brows and another genial smile. "Why, Ralph Lauren, of course. What're you wearing? Love it!" He even offers a wink and a smile.
As the discussion wears on, his brows lift at Daphne's contribution, and he nods. "Yeah, it doesn't make sense to me. Something about this — lots of somethings — don't add up. So what do we have on this? Hmm?"
The cantankerous businessman is, for once, nonplussed entirely into silence. Of course, a lot of people just spent a couple of seconds yelling at him in turn, but each of those also provided reasonable suspicion that probably would have snowballed into harsher accusation. Mutants: in the room with him? Ergo, the true hero responsible for his sudden ceasefire is probably revealed by the fact that he is eyeing Toby like he had just drunkenly whipped out a wildly inappropriate .22 of his own. He frowns, opens his mouth, and then his jaw lapses shut again.
"If he did do it," the knitter points out, "he could be hoping that his strange ability casts enough doubt on the case that he can wait through a minimal sentence then get out and be a rich man, yes? He is a construction worker, with an ability that allows him to walk through walls. If anybody could move that much material in so short a time, it would be him." She tilts her chin downward slightly, peering owlishly over the tops of her glasses frames.
The Bergen College kid seems to be getting drawn into the conversation without wanting to, but his eyes merely flicker close, before dodging away, levelling a glare at the window. Every time he's about to talk about something, he seems to bite it back, mouth in a sullen line.
"Er," the older man finally speaks up, reedily, blinking. "Ehm. Hem. Well, but who else could have done it if, if—" he raises a knobby forefinger to point at Delilah's file, the black-and-white screenshot of the vault's foreground, empty. "If the cameras didn't see anything/"
"He has a bad lawyer because he can't afford a good lawyer. That file should be at least three more inches thick with appeals and everything else that even a half decent lawyer would be able to put in, push on people for better evidence, investigate the camera's surveillance and who knows what else. This guy, possibly a patsy. If he went in there and got caught once, whats to say that he wasn't already in there before, planned this ahead of time and had things set up. popping in and out over time and just happened to get caught by the security guard who came down early or what have you." Ina points out.
"He also has a history of medical issues with his back." Delilah rifles through the folder to present the doctor's exclamation and medical history. "There is no way that one drunken man, with back problems, can rifle through all of those boxes and subsequently relocate the eight hundred pounds of goods. More importantly, where is the evidence that he stole anything at all?"
"This manager person claimed it was all gone, but they never found the evidence that he stole it, or the pony-sized deposit of loot from all the patrons. Not one bit of it was found. Where is it? Between McAllister's last round at the vault and the police, he didn't even have half an hour to move it. I can't believe that he stole it." Dee seems to have made up her mind about it even after the others put something in.
"He has a bad lawyer because he can't afford a good lawyer. That file should be at least three more inches thick with appeals and everything else that even a half decent lawyer would be able to put in, push on people for better evidence, investigate the camera's surveillance and who knows what else. This guy, possibly a patsy."
There's a motion with her hand again, waving it around. "If he went in there and got caught once, what's to say that he wasn't already in there before, planned this ahead of time and had things set up just so, so that he could - when the time was right - Pop in and out say over an hour or whatever the period was between rounds after setting up something, working with others to organize this all. He just happened to get caught by the security guard who came down early or what have you." Ina points out. "This man, is either really stupid, and he's a patsy, or he's really damned smart and going like our lovely knitter says here and hoping that the confusion and everything, gets him off with a slap on the wrist and a pretty paycheck in the end. Wouldn't you be willing to do a bit of time like that if you had something waiting at the end"
"Coulda phased it up or down," Daphne says, pointing. "Roof or basement. And if my blonde brain can think of that, then the police should have, and they'd have the money. It doesn't make sense, I'm telling you. I can't see him being able to get it away fast enough when he was drunk off his ass, remember, even if he was super fast and a phaser. Unless it's stuck in the middle of the wall." She blinks at that, and frowns. Possible. Very, very possible.
"Even if it is," she points out, glancing at Ina, "it's the prosector's job to prove Hernandez stole the money, and they didn't. They can prove he was there but they can't prove no one else was. That is not enough."
She looks around at the table. "A teleporter mighta been able to get in — working with Hernandez, or without him. Maybe the manager is an Unregistered with a … a shadow-dimension pocket, and he stole the stuff, taking advantage of the situation after Hernandez stumbled in three sheets to the wind," she speaks quickly, a little excited as she considers the possibilities. "The point is we don't know and to me that's more than a reasonable doubt. Without the money and stuff as evidence — that, boys and girls, is a shadow of a doubt. More than a shadow. It's not up to us to solve the case or figure out these factors. It's up to the prosecutors, and they didn't do their job. Period."
Daphne crosses her arms and leans back, lips pursed and chin lifted.
The quiet girl in the corner peers quietly at Daphne, rubbing her chin thoughtfully. "Could be in a wall…but I agree with her," Nadia gestures to Daphne. "I don't think we have enough information to properly make a verdict on this case. We don't know where there money is, and we don't know how he got it out of there so quickly. This guy could be taking the fall for someone much worse, even." She shrugs quietly.
Toby just smiles at the cantankerous man, cheerfully. What? But as more theories are presented, he nods, and ponders. "It's true. There's definitely not enough evidence here to support him being charged with larceny. There are too many unknown factors. Even if he phased it through the walls, clearly they haven't found the loot, and as the lovely young lady pointed out, yet again, doubtful he could have moved it all in the time frame. Right? So I vote Not Guilty, myself." Nodding definitively there, he smiles cheerfully (again) and leans back in his chair.
"The drunkenness doesn't fit," the woman agrees, over her knitting. "I never heard of a thief celebrating stone-drunk, before he had the money to do it with, and doing it right there where he was stealing everything. Whoever did it was very clever, and we're all baffled about how. It is what they say," she glances through the other jurors that have spoken, nodding, sending the green, beaded strings of her glasses swinging to tap her own cheeks. "Reasonable doubt. That is the legal term, yes?"
"There is nothing reasonable about the doubt," the man— everyone knows which, by now— huffs, pulling at his buttondown where it clings stickily to his skin, increasingly murderous, and increasingly uncomfortable for it. "He's a phaser. A poor man with girlfriend trouble or whatever, probably figuring he'd base his lie on a little bit of truth to fatten up his alibi, which is ridiculous anyway. He made a mistake— maybe he was drinking so hard because he felt guilty. What are the odds of that guy just showing up right there, on the day of a heist of seventy-hundred-thousand dollars, eh? What are the odds?"
The college student is staring Daphne like she's grown a second head, an edge of concern showing on his narrow face, before he glances sharply away as if to deny the association. He shrugs his bony shoulders awkwardly, like a badly-handled puppet, before creasing his face with a slight frown. Blinks, a slow realization, as he raises his eyes to stare across the jury.
"Does that mean we're hung on the last verdict?"
"Making up theories is not what we're here for. We're here to decide if he did what the prosecution claims he did." Other than this, Delilah seems receptive to what Daphne is explaining, and the ones that follow. Most of them. "And what the prosecution claims is not able to be backed by physical evidence. Simple as that. If we're hung, there's a mistrial, and he doesn't even get time unless the case is retried. I'm sure we can all agree that would be bad."
"The point is that they didn't prove he took the money. If they didn't prove it, even if you think it's probably and plausible that he did, but you can't be sure, you vote not-guilty. Even if he gets out. That's how it works," Daphne says with exasperation, thought she cants her head and widens her eyes at the boy who's staring as if to say what?
"Look. We downgrade the shooting thing to assault with a deadly weapon. We agreed he's guilty on the reckless endangerment. He is gonna get some time for those things. But they didn't prove he took the money. As far as coincidence, I'm not saying it's likely. What's more likely is that he had a partner who isn't on trial here. I'm not making theories to prove what he did — I'm just showing that there are sooo many possibilities that you can't say one plus one is two, because you don't have the whole equation. Something is missing. Besides the obvious." The money. "What happens after isn't the issue here. And he can probably get a mistrial anyway. His lawyer is a moron."
Nadia peers quietly at Daphne. "I think that we should keep the shooting thing at attempted murder. You don't shoot someone in the face when you're not trying to kill them. An arm, yeah. A leg, yeah. Face, though, that is pretty difficult to mistake for a non-vulnerable body part, and he shot twice. On everything else, I agree with you." She leans back in her seat, rubbing at her chin and peering up at the ceiling thoughtfully and fanning herself with the makeshift fan made of paper.
Toby frowns a bit in thought, but he shakes his head. "He was drunk, and I don't know that at .18 blood-alcohol level if he was aiming for the head he could hit it. He may have been aiming for another body part and missed that. But…I haven't handled a gun in my life. So." He waves a hand. "The rest I agree with. I'm not sure about whether it's aggravated assault or second degree."
"I have handled many guns in my life," the businessman bristles at Nadia, as if she had actually argued otherwise. "Legally. And that's shit for a murder weapon.
"But he must have stolen that stuff. This Hernandez character is clearly an idiot and an amateur in many departments including his own legal defense, but that doesn't mean he isn't malicious. You can say what you want about lofty principles," he makes an irritable flap of a long-fingered hand in Daphne's direction, "but everyone knows we're here to catch bad guys, and Hernandez is a bad guy. Even his alibi makes him out to be a bad guy. Who goes rampaging on a woman, in a hotel, with a loaded weapon? However you slice it—"
"There's no crime called 'being a bad guy,'" the college kid abruptly snaps, scowling fiercely. "Christ. I say not-guilty. If that's the best that this big motherfu—" he lapses into a brief silence, colors, obviously reconsiders having spoken at all. "That this big creepy casino could've done with the pros— prosecution in half a year, that's one weak-ass case. Isn't it?"
Delilah is shuffling through the folder again, eventually producing something to slide out on the table. "If it changes anything, the other bullet hit the wall behind McAllister at waist level. It may have been the first fired, we can't tell for sure." This feels like she is in an episode of Law and Order. It makes her feel a bit empowered, but all the same this is a very serious thing.
"We're here to examine evidence, the police catch the bad guys. We just see to whether or not they did it right. And right now, I'm seeing endangerment and assault, and no larceny charge because there is no actual evidence of theft. That part is only 'He said, She said'."
This is why she hates Jury Duty, There's rules and there's procedure that has everything to do with things being done legally. If this was vegas, that man would have been taken out faaaar into the desert, beat to within an inch of his life and left to either die because he didn't make it to the road in enough time or… well, you know how it goes. "He shot someone. Regardless of whether he was aiming, there is a man less an eyeball and it could have been worse and we could be sitting here and arguing actual murder. Guilty on assault if not attempted murder, guilty for endagerment and I can't make up my mind with regards to the larceny, there's not enough evidence to point either way"
Surprised at the boy's outburst, Daphne gives him another odd look, then shakes her head at the suited man. "It's so weird you're like adamant about it not being a murder weapon but you won't consider the fact there's no evidence he actually stole anything, except the fact the stuff is gone." Her eyes turn to Delilah, then Ina and nods. "Not-guilty on larceny. The murder and assault thing — I just don't think it was necessarily intended. See, the gun, one at the waist, one at the head? That seems like… stumbling and flailing drunk. Which is reckless, and endangering, and probably assault, but I'm not sure I can say it's murder."
She shrugs, starting to fidget a bit, the restlessness getting to her. "I'm willing to discuss that point, but I'm a no-budge on the larceny. No evidence, not guilty." The speedster nods to the door. "When they showed us the little video about our civic duty — if we can't agree on a point, they can retry that charge, and keep the others. Maybe one side or the other will get lawyers that know what the hell they're doing next time," she scoffs.
Toby claps his hands together and rubs them. "Well! If that's the case, then yes, I believe there was flailing and a lucky shot involved. Well— unlucky shot. I think it's not-guilty on Larceny. Guilty on aggravated assault. Guilty on Endangerment. And if we can't agree on Larceny, then we turn in a hung verdict. Right?"
If hostilities increase any further, between Mr. NRA and the fresh-faced thing in his little khakis, there would probably be a whole other set of lawsuits on their hands. As it is, the older man has eleven other people to fight with, apparently, and the jury is left to hang in the sweltering balance for another hour and forty-five minutes, during which a second giant tank of water is rolled in to replace the one drained in the corner, oscillating across the same bitter territory.
It's the NRA who finally breaks, naturally. Tosses his hands up in the air, muttering about how the homosexuals (glaring, with the obvious assumption) and the mutants (everybody except the knitter) and the illegal labor (the knitting hag) and everybody else with something wrong with them (Ina, who is unfortunately attractive, sharply-spoken, inoffensive in ethnicity, an dotherwise difficult to pin atrocities upon) is going to inundate America in ridiculous equivocation and he was planning to move to the Bahamas on what he was about to make, anyway. The line is drawn where he doesn't care enough, and by then, an infant-sized cap has formed fully in the Mexican woman's hands and the elderly man is beginning to warble about diabetes. There's a quirk of odd revelation to quiet Nadia's mouth as she lifts herself from her chair, sweet-tempered and raised well enough to bid her fellow jurors good work and good-bye, in turn.
Of course, it isn't until Delilah shifts away from the desk, the manila folder heavy in her hands, that the air-conditioner gives a final rattle and thrum, fully restored to life.