On August 12, 2011, my life had changed forever. I awoke that morning to my mother calling me on the phone for our normal morning conversation over coffee. After some small talk was out of the way, she asked me if I had heard about the shooting that occurred in our town the previous night. She said that the shooter was my age. Suddenly, my heart dropped, and I instantly knew that something was wrong. I was not sure what yet, but my intuition was telling me that something was not right. I quickly got off the phone with my mother and took to the internet to try to find information about the shooting. No names had been released yet, but the address of the shooting was released. The address was that of one of my best and oldest friends. He lived at the address posted on the internet with his pregnant girlfriend. My jaw dropped. The news had reported that, the night prior, he had shot his girlfriend in the head with a new handgun that he had purchased that day. In disbelief, I tried to call his cell phone. He did not answer. I then called those who belonged to our close friend group to inform them of the news. We agreed to spend time together that night to try to make sense of what was happening. One of those friends was named godfather to their baby. The night came, and there were many tears shed and drinks finished.
The next morning, I received a phone call from a law firm based out of Brooklyn, NYC. It was my best friend’s lawyers. They had found my name on a police discovery and needed to speak with me about my relationship with the defendant. I met with them, and they decided that they wanted to use me and the proclaimed godfather of the child as a character witness during the trial. I showed up to the trial on the dates that I was subpoenaed to attend, but they did not want to use us for this portion of the trial. During his trial, there were a few issues that the prosecution ran into. For example, the prosecution called in a weapons expert to prove that the argument of the defense (the gun misfired while he was cleaning it) was not valid. While the weapons expert was handling the gun and explaining how it was impossible for that type of gun to misfire, the gun used by the defendant misfired inside of the courtroom. This was only one example of many of the complications during the trial for the prosecution. Never-the-less, the first verdict was read: the jury found him guilty of murder. Even with all the mishaps that gave evidence that my friend may have been telling the truth, the jury still found him guilty of 1st and 3rd degree murder. The next step was to figure out if he was to be tried for the death penalty or life imprisonment. But what made those jurors come to their verdict, even with evidence supporting the defendant’s story?
Looking at this scenario from an applied social psychologist’s standpoint, I would like to focus on juror prejudice. There are four different forms of juror prejudice: specific, normative, interest, and generic (Gruman, 2016). While I cannot comment on any interest or generic prejudice because I was not permitted to speak with anyone on the jury, I do believe that there was specific and normative prejudice when dealing with this trial. Specific prejudice occurs when a juror is unable to be objective because of principles or feelings that affect their decision making (Gruman, 2016). Because the trial was for the murder of a pregnant woman, a juror may have looked at that fact and already decided that he was guilty so that the woman and child can get justice for their death. Normative prejudice happens when the juror wants to appease the opinion of the public, so they do not take all evidence into account during the trial that could go against public opinion (Gruman, 2016). Like my example given earlier, it is hard to believe that the gun misfiring in front of the jury during the trial did not provide any doubt to any of the jurors. This could be in part because of how the public views violence against women and children.
I did eventually participate in the trial as a character witness in 2013, two years after the shooting. Testifying in that trial was one of the most difficult experiences that I ever had to and have had to do since. His lawyers attempted to move the trial to a different location because of the local media frenzy surrounding the case, but that motion was denied. He was not sentenced to the death penalty, but to life imprisonment for 1st and 3rd degree murder. While big-named local newspapers wrote about the trial in a seemingly biased manner, grassroots publications also wrote about the trial. They shared the same doubt that I did, and they did not have any bias towards the situation. I’ll always remember the last words of their last article about the trial, “We may never know if *name withdrawn* murdered *name withdrawn* and their unborn child. I am not sure if we ever will, but anyone can see that there is uncertainty surrounding this trial and how it was conducted. I hope that whoever deserves justice receives that justice one day.” He was recently denied for another appeal in 2020. It still breaks my heart to read their names.
References
Gruman, J. A., Schneider, F. W., & Coutts, L. M. (Eds.). (2016). Applied social psychology : Understanding and addressing social and practical problems. ProQuest Ebook Central. Retrieved from https://ebookcentral.proquest.com. Accessed on 3/7/2021.