A junkie showed up at a guys house - the guy was home, minding his own business and the junkie, who didn't have the ability to drive downtown to get his heroin fix, convinced the guy to take him downtown and get him heroin from his supplier (the guy sold heroin but didn't have any)
So he gets him his heroin, the guy and junkie go back to his house, and the guy, the junkie and his wife all shoot up. The next morning the guy and his wife wake up to find the junkie dead on their floor.
And our job on the grand jury was to indict this junkie for murder.
Well we objected almost unanimously to indicting this guy because we felt the junkie was responsible for his own death, so we voted no.
We brought the D.A back into the room and told him and he talked some more to us about how the dealer supplied the heroin and took it upon himself to get heroin for the junkie , to think it over again...so we met again, talked about how were were comfortable with the guy getting indicting for selling heroin but still balked at the murder charge (maybe it was manslaughter, I really can't remember now).
So we bring the D.A. back in and tell him and he just unloads on us, tells us we don't understand the law and we can just indict on intent to sell because that would also mean he was culpable in the junkies death and we were ignoring the law as it was explained to us. I wouldn't call it angry, but clearly he was exercising his power in the room.
So eventually he wore us down and we indicted the guy for all the counts they wanted.
After that, we have maybe 5 or 6 more cases that we didn't really think the charges reflected the actions, but none of us wanted to go thru the browbeating by the D.A. again.
That's why I say unless you have a strong willed foreman or people willing to confront authority, they are a rubber stamp for what the D.A is pitching.
have you paid your dues, can you moan the blues, can you bend them guitar strings
