TexasCHLforum.com

*Update*
The final participant, the one who stayed in the car because he wasn't "dressed out as good as the others" was sentenced. He got a lot of leniency for a) not going inside and b) testifying for the prosecution in the two cases that went to trial. The rest of the robbers were wearing dark pants and long sleeve shirts while he had on white shorts and a short sleeve shirt. I guess he'll call those his "lucky shorts" from now on.

Article from Star-Telegram

Great job by the Tarrant County DA, the detectives, the officers, and the witnesses!


Here's the final shakedown (all of the older 4 also had just under 2 years in county jail awaiting trial):
Juvenile (had the rifle, hit the father during the beating): 10 years

Ring leader (our defendant, plead not guilty, plenty of priors, severely beat the father): 99 years

JD (went inside, changed plea to guilty after our trial): 20 years

DC (man in article, plead guilty, had a .45, stayed in car, cooperated with state): 10 years deferred adjudication / probation

PG (juvenile's brother, left fingerprints in car that they tried to burn, perjured himself during ring leader's trial to say that juvenile (found guilty), ring leader (found guilty), and JD (plead guilty) weren't there): 45 years

. . . like I tell my kids: if you get caught in sin, lying only makes it worse!

SQLGeek wrote:You just better hope it's not during football season!

That same court I was in is about to start a capital murder trial that is expected to go for a few weeks. Even as an optimist, I can admit that the novelty could eventually wear off.

For full disclosure, I work from home, so it was also a nice change to get out in the rat race for a week and be in downtown. Again, I wouldn't want to do it every day. I'd be on blood pressure medicine by the third week of driving in that traffic.

Jaguar wrote:It was not because I don't want to do jury duty as I have served on juries since then, just didn't feel the punishment would fit the crime. JMHO, IANAL, YMMV.

FWIW, I am also not a lawyer.

The way they explained it to us is that we had to be able to consider those punishments as a range for that category of crime, not in reference to the actual case before us. They were saying, "If the facts justified it and the law allowed it." It was still hypothetical at that point.

There were three types of dismissals:
- Those could NEVER give Life for aggravated robbery (they couldn't think of ANY case extreme enough to justify this). (The defense attorney tried to change a few of these people's minds. . . he wanted them back in the eligible pool.)
- Those who could NEVER give probation for aggravated robbery *See below for my imagined scenario
- Those who could NEVER give 20 years for burglary ++ See below for my imagined scenario

That's the what I meant by creativity. They were asking us, "For aggravated robbery - without knowing anything about THIS case, could you consider A to Z?" It sounds like your guys were telling ya'll a lot more about the case at that time than we knew about ours.

* So, how can I imagine giving somebody guilty of aggravated robbery probation?
It could be a starving mother with a baby who stole milk from Wal-Mart, and on her way out the confronted her and she picked up a baseball bat from somebody else's cart and acted like she was gong to hit the security guard. Maybe she is in her late 30's, was abandoned by her husband, and has never committed a crime in her life. The facts lead to the same charge our defendant had, but I could consider giving her probation.

++ A 97 year old great grandmother (widow) lives alone and leaves her house only 1x / week to go to church. She uses a portable oxygen tank when she leaves and has a permanent unit in her house to help her breathe. She keeps all of her cash for medicine and food in an envelope on her dresser. A thug across the street knows about her money. He's had 15 prior felony burglary convictions, 4 drug dealing convictions, and 2 aggravated robbery convictions. He waits until she leaves for church, kicks the door down, smashing the frame, steals all of her money, and for kicks smashes her oxygen machine. I think I could give him the 20 year maximum for a felony burglary sentence.

hi-power wrote:I've always hoped to be picked to sit on a jury. I think it would be very interesting.

The baliff told me that the best way to get picked is to just stay quiet. The talkers eventually volunteer themselves off of the jury. I really wanted to stand up and share my imaginary scenarios above to help people think through the range of punishment issue, but I resisted. It went against my natural chemistry, but I zipped it unless I was asked a direct question.

I am closely related to a couple of LEOs, which I'm sure the prosecution loved. I've also got a family member on a deferred probation for a felony, which I'm sure the defense liked. The only thing either asked me about was my eyesight, since I had indicated that I have a vision impairment and they'd need to consider that when presenting evidence. Apparently that didn't bother either side.

My wife served a few years ago on a contract dispute between two corporations. Hers was mind-numbingly boring. She warned me that this might have ruined me for any future jury service.

I still haven't gotten into my social analysis of the jury pool, which might say more about the state of our society than the facts of the trial itself.

I'll try to bullet point the main conclusions and can expand if anybody has questions. I found it possibly the most interesting part.

I was juror #26 in the pool. #43 ended up making it. The jury was incredibly diverse, but we also happened to be 100% white. I can assure you with every bit of integrity in my body that race or ethnicity played ZERO roll in our decision. The defendant had a fair trial. Race and ethnicity wasn't even discussed in the room.

Still, I can't help to think that his family looked at us and had thoughts like, "This is rigged!" or "How is THIS a 'fair' trial?"

Our profiles included a myriad of backgrounds, education levels, age, experience, perspective, and income levels:
- Retired female teacher from FWISD
- Mom w/ college-aged children from NY who lives in Grapevine
- 22-year old female college student at KU who was home for the summer
- Mid-30's doctor's wife from Mansfield
- Retired engineer (two maters degrees) from Lake Worth
- Homemaker from California who lives in Keller and has two grown children
- late-20s female DINK from Kansas that lives in Keller
- Mid-50s administrative professional
- mid-40s kind of polite and humble hard working East Texas man who is a union metal worker in Arlington (I'd describe him as an "aw-shucks" guy with the kindest intentions)
- Professional working mom with high-school aged kids and a degree from Texas Tech
- Middle aged female mother from Arlington
- me (early 30s)

The sad part is what happened during jury selection. The room of 70 was incredibly diverse. I was curious and interested in participating, but honestly had a family trip the next weekend that I ended up canceling. Before I mentioned the trip to the judge, I watched the room and decided that what I was seeing was offensive enough that I didn't want to use my trip (I had no money committed at the time) as an excuse.

In the hallway before they start the interviews, you expect all of the typical negative talk and bombastic statements about how "I'm going to say something extreme like, 'I hate cops' or 'Hang 'em all' to get out of here and get home." I didn't participate, but that seemed to be the norm. None of these people, however, followed through on these statements once they were seated in the courtroom after lunch, speaking in front of the judge, and having their words recorded.

But, when people realized that they could be declared ineligible as a juror by not considering the full range of punishments allowed under the law for the crimes, the campaigning began. It was my honest observation that the ones lobbying the most were my age and younger. Furthermore, one by one, the ethnic and racial diversity of the jury pool waned as people made purposeful statements to make themselves ineligible. The jury could have easily been half Hispanic, had black representation, or Asian representation on it. If some in these communities feel that our justice system is broken, those who were in my pool need to realize that participation is the only way to improve it.

I doubt the defendant - if he did notice the racial composition of the jury and felt it was unfair or "typical" - I doubt that he took time to remember back to jury selection and how many people were going out of their way to get sent home.

I was actively noticing this behavior by age on Monday as it was happening. I didn't notice the racial and ethnic component until the next day when I realized we all had one glaring thing in common. Then I thought of the two guys directly in front of me, and some other folks on their row - all who spoke up and became ineligible. For these cases, if somebody can't think of a scenario where each extreme of the punishment spectrum might be appropriate, there's either a crippling lack of creativity or they're being convenient to slip out the back door and abdicate their role in the justice system to somebody else.

It might be fair to say that some of those who essentially dismissed themselves had excusable situations. If you work on straight commission as one nice middle-aged black man told me he did, that could be a costly week. At the same time, everybody is inconvenienced somewhat by jury duty.

Still, I can only imagine if the trial was one step more public and got the attention of the national media. Who knows what kind of rhetoric might have been expressed on the courthouse steps if the talking heads showed up and looked us over one time.

Regardless, I can affirm with a clear conscience that the defendant was fairly convicted and sentenced based on the facts alone. This observation is part of what my wife calls my "natural tendency to overthink things", but nonetheless, I still found it interesting.

Quick background for those who haven't gone through the process:
We had 70 people in our jury pool, each randomly assigned a number (1-70). The first 12 are the jury. If one of them is ruled ineligible by the court or is stricken by an attorney, then #13 is the next juror. If two members of 1-12 are dismissed, then #13 and #14 are in the jury. Nobody gets to pick a juror. . . there's an elimination process and the lowest 12 remaining constitute the final jury.

Eligibility from the court's perspective (not a complete list):
1) You must be a resident of the county
2) You cannot have served on a jury in the last two years
3) You must be willing to consider the full range of punishment for the categories and severity of crime that the law allows.
For instance, aggravated robbery can carry from 5 years to 99 years or Life. For sentences of less than 10 years, it is also eligible for "community supervision" aka probation. If you cannot envision a scenario where somebody would deserve Life for aggravated robbery, you are deemed ineligible to be a juror by the court. Likewise, if you could never envision ANY situation in which aggravated robbery should be given probation, you will be dismissed.

Dismissals by the court do not count as a "strike" from either side.

Once the court has ruled which jurors are ineligible, the defense and prosecution may each strike up to 10 jurors. They do not have to offer a reason, and in fact, their strikes are confidential. They could use their strikes on the same people and not know it.

The prosecution and defense each get a turn to interview the jury pool. . . a process called voir dire.

Interestingly, I recognized the defense attorney's assistant at their table as soon as we entered the courtroom for the first time after lunch. She had been in the hallway all morning listening to our conversations, letting us assume she was part of the jury pool.

VMI77 wrote:Executions in this state need to occur with far greater frequency.

I'd like to see cases where there is no dispute about guilt (a very public murder, clear and convincing video or overwhelming eyewitness testimony) proceed through the system in an expedited manner. A trial could be underway in a few months or a year. A death sentence could be carried out in months or a year after sentencing. When there is absolutely no dispute about guilt e.g. Jack Ruby, the Colorado theater shooter, Gabby Gifford's shooter, there's no reason to draw the entire process out for ten to twelve years.

We actually gave him 99 years for each of the 11 aggravated assault charges we had, plus 20 years for the burglary charge, but since the charges all came from one criminal act, the sentences run concurrently.

The DA had 10 more charges (each victim is a separate charge) held back in case anything went wrong in our case.

Here's the Star-Telegram Crime Reporter's Live Blog of Sentencing Day

And, kudos to Tarrant County and our bailiff for making it as enjoyable as possible. I registered online and got my court assignment via email the week before, so I got to show up an hour later on Monday. Plus, after the first day, the pay is decent. They cut me a check for just over $140 for the week.

The Annoyed Man wrote:Yer gettin' soft, fickman. It should have only taken 15 minutes to find him guilty, and 5 minutes to hang him.

All joking aside, there were many gut check moments where this weighed heavy on me. I wanted to see justice done, but I mulled over the facts obsessively wondering "has the prosecution met their burden?" I was there after the defense rested, but the rebuttal witnesses for the prosecution removed any lingering hesitation I might have had.

The sentencing took *longer* because there were a few softies in our mix. One was an overwhelmed 22 year old female college student who was home for the summer. The other was a very tender-hearted suburban mother from a left-coast state. They were genuinely sweethearts and very naive in an endearing way.

I was the presiding juror, so I methodically took them back through the evidence to turn their compassion to the victims: we listened to the 911 tapes again*, I asked for the photos of the beaten victim, and for the photos the criminals took of themselves in their gear. I figured neither of them were experienced around guns, so I asked for the pistol with the blood on it to be brought into the room. I guessed correctly that they'd be nervous just being around a firearm with zip ties all over it. I'm assuming their imaginations considered that thing pointing at them or hitting them in the face. I also reminded them that every time the defendant hit a new level of maturity, all he did was commit more mature crimes. He had been escalating his crimes for years, and all he had left was murder or capital murder. We finally got a unanimous vote.

Then I had a mountain of paperwork to sign. That took at least 20 minutes!

*I didn't realize they'd make us go back into the courtroom with a full audience to hear the tapes again. When the audio began, the defendant couldn't hold back a smirk. He smiled for a few seconds, fought it back, smirked, then finally got his face back to neutral. A few waffling jurors saw it. The other striking thing from the tapes is that when the dad who had been beaten got back inside, the first 911 calls were frantic. The operator asked if he had been shot, and he was in such bad shape that nobody could tell.

One more lesson reaffirmed:
The police arrived less than 90 seconds after the first 911 call. The criminals were long gone. The officers started first aid and began taking witness statements.

The police effort was great, and they had some arrests a few days later, but they weren't on scene in time to intervene. The victims couldn't call during the event because the BGs took all mobile phones, had four gunmen in the house, and had the victims face down on the floor.

C-dub wrote:

Hoosier Daddy wrote:

C-dub wrote:

fickman wrote: 10) A friend of the criminals had moved school districts and was invited to the party that got robbed. He gave them the idea for the party, the address, and posed as a victim. They returned his stuff to him later that night at the after party.

I don't understand this one.

Inside job.

More and more, I think the old time cowboys had it right. Hanging thieves really cuts down recidivism.

Ah ha! I still had to read it a couple more times, but got it now.

Sorry for not being clear. . .

There were five actors in the crime. They had grown up with criminal #6. #6 had moved to a new school district and met these new friends but maintained ties with his old crew. He tipped off the old crew that the party was going to happen, acted like a victim, and showed up at the criminals' after party a few hours later to retrieve his "stolen" stuff.

The DA is going after everybody:
1) Juvenile, sentenced to 10 years
2) The driver, cooperating with the DA (does not have a deal), pleading guilty and hoping for leniency
3) The defendant's buddy and brother of the juvenile, pleading guilty, awaiting sentencing, and will now face perjury charges
4) Our defendant, sentenced to 99 years. He had an adult felony conviction for burglary of a motor vehicle, has plead guilty to two other felony burglaries, is guilty of taking a firearm to school, is guilty of possessing a firearm as a felon, and had juvenile convictions for: burglary of habitation, burglary of motor vehicle, 2x cocaine possession, shooting a BB gun through the window of a driving car, and more.
5) Another actor in the crime who was pleading guilty until a week or two after our verdict. He changed it to guilty and accepted 20 years.
6) The DA is building the case and hopes to file charges

The funny thing is that I bet the criminals thought, "Oh, a party! We'll go in, blend in, nobody will notice us, then we'll pull out our guns." Their understanding of a high school "party" was probably debauchery, wildness, alcohol, and a lack of supervision. I'd assume they had no concept for what the "good" kids do when they get together. It turns out that this was mostly kids from the gymnastics team and a church youth group. There was no alcohol. They played cards and talked on the back patio while listening to music until dark, then went inside to watch a movie. When the BGs came in, they were noticed immediately.

Our defendant was going to an alternative school but his mom and sisters had gotten together to sign an apartment lease for him. He had three buddies crashing there, and he was on his own for three weeks before this happened. The apartment was essentially furnished with stolen goods. His dad was an illegal immigrant who committed a violent felony and was deported when the defendant was a kid.

The defendant's brother testified for his alibi. What was it? The night of the crime, at exactly the moment the crime was happening, he met the defendant at a gas station to give him some money he owed. He never mentioned this to any detectives or prosecutors (who could have gotten video surveillance) until the day he testified. He had priors for drugs and lying to the police. He will also face perjury charges now.

I ended up on this trial a few weeks ago:
Link to Star Telegram Article

There's lessons all over the place on this one.

• The criminals acquired most of their guns by burglarizing houses. They started skipping school and burglarizing houses when they were in 9th grade.
• The victims had a gun cabinet, but all of the guns were locked inside of it in the parents bedroom. This actually had two negative impacts:
  1) They couldn't get to the guns to use for defense
  2) The criminals saw the guns and - because they heard an ambulance and thought it was the police and left early - they actually went back later that night to see if the house was empty so that they could steal the guns.
• The dad who showed up to pick up his son and got beaten severely tried a martial arts disarm move. He was overpowered when he was clubbed with the barrel of the firearm. They broke his orbital bone in his eye (near the nose), gave him a concussion, and he required more than 35 staples to close the back of his head up.
• The criminals were stupid.
  1) They returned to the crime scene that night.
  
  2) They had an after party and bragged to their friends, reenacting the events. Two of those friends testified for the state.
  
  3) They tried to burn the Lexus they stole because the drive wasn't wearing gloves. They lit paper on fire, threw it in the seats, closed the doors, and drove off. The fires went out when they closed the doors.
  
  4) They stole cell phones from teenagers, most of which had tracking apps on them. The police had a nice, clear map of everywhere they went.
  
  5) They defaced one victim's Facebook page from his phone. His phone company located the phone and found the final location.
  
  6) Our defendant left the uncleaned gun in a seat pouch in his car, with the victim's blood on it. He had it in his car at school when a drug/bomb dog sniffed it - unrelated to the police investigation.
  
  7) The criminals took photos of themselves in their masks while pointing their guns at the mirror.
  
  8) Two of the criminals conspired to plead not guilty and one was going to take the fall for everybody, but did so by writing letters to each other in jail through an outside forwarder. The jail provided the DA with copies of every letter. The defendant's witness didn't know the DA had the letters until they showed them to him on the stand.
  
  9) We found out afterward that our defendant had been offered a 20-year plea bargain and didn't take it. The one remaining perpetrator who was still pleading not guilty changed to guilty and accepted 20 years about two weeks later.
  
  10) A friend of the criminals had moved school districts and was invited to the party that got robbed. He gave them the idea for the party, the address, and posed as a victim. They returned his stuff to him later that night at the after party.
  
  11) The long gun was actually a pellet gun. One of the handguns was a commemorative revolver that was welded and inoperative. The other two in the house had a .380 and a 9mm while the driver who stayed a block away had a .45 ACP. The driver testified for the state.
  
  12) They used one guy's nickname and his real name during the event. A witness recalled hearing the names and told the detective two days later. The name was our defendant's. They drove his car, and he was portrayed as the ring leader of this group of thugs.

-----
If any of you think I'm crazy for posting this, let me know and I'll pull it down. Otherwise, I'm willing to answer any questions. It was an eye-opening week for sure. I've spent a lot of time putting myself in the homeowner's shoes and in the dad who showed up to pick up his son's shoes. And the shoes of the kids at the party. (Her little brother had a friend over to play video games for the evening, they even put them on the floor at gunpoint and stole their wallets. The brother's friend had $2. They took it.)

I was also thinking of you guys here, and how we often discuss holding people who do evil with guns accountable. Once the prosecution satisfied their responsibility to prove the case beyond a reasonable doubt, a message needed to be sent to the victims about the value of their lives and to the community about how we feel about these sorts of crimes. Even the defense attorney admitted during closing arguments - after the DA's rebuttal witnesses testified - that we'd heard "devastating evidence".

It took us one hour to find him guilty on Thursday and two hours to agree on the sentence on Friday.