A Glimpse into the American Justice System

This post is first in a three-part miniseries based on my jury duty experience.
See part two here
and part three here. 

As many of you know, I just had the opportunity to serve as a juror... for two. full. weeks.

It was intense.

The case was involving two semi trucks that crashed just outside the town I live in, in August 2010.
It was a rear-end crash: an underride from the perspective of the back truck, and the man in the back truck died. You don't need to know the details; it's not fun.

The charges were two: one, that the driver in the front truck, Mr. Kozlov, had driven below the posted legal speed limit (on Interstate 80 in Nebraska, the lowest legal speed is 40 mph), specifically, that he had been driving 13.5 mph at the time of the collision and had therefore been responsible for the death of the other man (manslaughter, murder without the intention of doing so);
and two, that Mr. Kozlov had intentionally given misleading information in his statements to law enforcement officers regarding the speed he had been going (he maintained for three years that he had been driving 60-65 mph). This is known as false reporting.

After two weeks of hearing the testimonies of witness after witness, watching the lawyers for the defense and prosecution do everything they could to make the facts fit what they wanted the jurors to believe, we were presented with the evidence and told to make a decision.

It was a complicated process, but suffice it to say that we did not have enough trustworthy information to prove him guilty of manslaughter.
We did decide that he was guilty of false reporting.

I gained a great respect for what judges and lawyers do, and especially for what juries are expected to do. It's not an easy thing. What we kept coming back to was the fact that Mr. Kozlov was "innocent until proven guilty" "beyond all reasonable doubt." There was plenty of reason to doubt that he was guilty. We just didn't have enough trustworthy information to declare him guilty of manslaughter, specifically, of breaking the law and driving too slow. No one saw it. No one could satisfactorily prove it.

We declared him innocent.

I'll get to the spiritual implications of this in another post. And I have another story to tell, too.

But right now I'm reflecting on the incredibly difficult jobs that judges, lawyers, and jurors have. Judges have to correctly apply the law during court cases. They have to really know their stuff, remain neutral about a situation, and then decide consequences based on a jury's decision.

Lawyers have to do everything in their power to prove their side of things, whether they're the defense or prosecution. I will say that I don't like lawyers very much, as much as I know there are plenty of lawyers out there who are good and decent people. But it's part of a lawyer's job to be a jerk in the courtroom. You can't be kind if you're trying to force the truth out of people. Plus, lawyers never swear to tell the truth. They can say whatever they want to try to sway the jury to their point of view. It's not a job I'd want, for sure.

I definitely have the most respect for jurors. They aren't trained in law, but they're expected to correctly apply what they've been told about the law. They're given a ton of information and told to decide, based on the facts they have, whether a person is guilty or innocent. And they're not the ones being paid several hundred dollars an hour. We got paid $35 a day (and I'm not complaining; it's about as much as I would have made working part-time at the library for those two weeks). But in my opinion, we had the hardest job of anybody. We were told that as a group of twelve people, we had to come to a unanimous decision. It was an amazing group of people that I worked with, but we didn't all think the same way by any means. We weren't all 100% thrilled with the way things turned out. I'm quite pleased about the not-guilty verdict for the manslaughter, but I wasn't entirely convinced that the man also committed the false reporting. But a few people weren't entirely convinced that he hadn't driven below the speed limit, either. What we were able to do was say, "you know what, I'm convinced enough. It's not that I have no doubt whatsoever, but we have to make a decision based in reasonable doubt." And that's what we did.

One of the jurors made an interesting comment at one point. He said something like, "Whatever decision we make regarding this man, he will have to face a much bigger judgment one day. If it turns out that he's not innocent, he'll have that on his own conscience, and he will have to answer for himself someday, to a much more important Judge than we are."

I take comfort in that. We made the best decision we could with the knowledge we were given. And the rest? It's up to God.


Have you ever served on a jury? What was your experience like?

Stay tuned...I have more stories to share from my jury duty experience!

Marriage :: Defined

Well, now I know how to get all my Facebook friends excited: ask them to share their opinions on the topic the Supreme Court is currently debating.  (If you would like some background information, you can read it here, here, and here.)

I realize that there are a lot of issues involved in this.

-How do we define marriage?
-WHO defines marriage?
-Is homosexual marriage a right?
-Should the government have a role in marriage at all?
-Who decides who can get married and who can't?

Disclaimer:  I'm going to state some of my beliefs here.  I understand many of you may disagree with me, and that's OK.  I'd love a discussion in the comments.  I just ask that we all respect each other as people created by God.

For me, the bottom line is GOD.  God supersedes the government in authority.  God's Word contains the directives for daily life.  Obedience to God is the best way to live.  So I stand by God's definition of marriage.

Genesis 2:23-24: The man said, "This is now bone of my bones and flesh of my flesh; she shall be called 'woman,' for she was taken out of man."  For this reason a man will leave his father and mother and be united to his wife, and they will become one flesh.

Genesis 1:27-28: So God created man in his own image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them.  God blessed them and said to them, "Be fruitful and increase in number; fill the earth and subdue it."

God created marriage to be between one man and one woman.  (Side note: his directive to "be fruitful and increase in number" would be impossible to fulfill if marriage had been designed to also include same-sex couples!)

Now, should the government have the right to define what marriage is?
I acknowledge that our government isn't perfect.  It may even be described as corrupt.  And I realize that governments have been used in the past for great ill.
That doesn't negate the fact that government was originally instituted by God for the order and benefit of society.  (In 1 Samuel, God chose the first king, Saul, for the people of Israel.)  In the United States, our government has outlawed such sins as murder and theft, and sexual sins such as incest, rape, and child pornography.  I believe that therefore homosexuality can be decreed by our government as illegal.

This brings me to the next point... is homosexuality a sin?
I believe it is.  I believe that anything outside God's design for marriage is sinful.  And the Bible does speak to this.  Genesis 19:1-11 make it clear that homosexual behavior is punishable.  Leviticus 20:10-17 condemns homosexuality, incest, adultery, and bestiality.  1 Corinthians 6:9 clearly condemns homosexuality, along with other sins.

Romans 1:24-28 states, "Therefore God gave them over in the sinful desires of their hearts for the degrading of their bodies with one another...Even their women exchanged natural relations for unnatural ones.  In the same way the men also abandoned natural relations with women and were inflamed with lust for one another.  Men committed indecent acts with other men, and received in themselves the due penalty for their perversion."  It is helpful to read this passage in its full context: Romans 1:20-32.  Also see this article for a helpful discussion of the topic.

Now, I must make the most important point.
Do I condemn homosexuals?

NO!

I cannot condemn any sinner.  Why?  Because I, too, am a sinner.  It is up to God to condemn sin.  I saw an excellent quote on Facebook, that has been attributed to Rick Warren (although I can't verify that):

Our culture has accepted two huge lies.  The first is that if you disagree with someone's lifestyle, you must fear or hate them.  The second is that to love someone means to agree with everything they do.  Both are nonsense.  You don't have to compromise convictions to be compassionate.

Jesus said, "Love one another as I have loved you."  Jesus loves everyone equally.  That's the kind of equality I'm all about!  He does not love any person more or less for the choices they've made.  However, Jesus did tell the prostitute caught in her sin, "Neither do I condemn you.  Now go and sin no more."  (John 8:10-11)

Jesus died a horrific death on the cross so that the sins of all people, of all time, would be paid for.  He wants all people to be in heaven with him someday.  All people have been created by God, and God loves them all, so very much!  Whether your sin is drunkenness, gluttony, sloth, greed, murder, lust, theft, homosexuality, or any other sin, Jesus has died to eliminate that sin.  He has died for you (and me!) because he loves us.  And he doesn't want us to be separated from God for eternity.

So am I going to say homosexuality is wrong?  Yup.  Am I going to say it's something no one should do?  Yes.  Am I going to back the government if it makes a law that homosexuality is illegal?  Well, I'm not going to complain... but the government hasn't outlawed my sinful habits of rudeness, laziness, and meanness.  The government isn't required to make such a decision.

Will I continue to strive to love everyone around me equally, with the love of Jesus?  You bet.  Because that's how God does it.


Linking with: Upward Not Inward, Deep Roots at Home, Raising Homemakers, We are THAT Family, To Love, Honor and Vacuum, Messy Marriage