They have little doubt that the scruffy college sophomore and his big brother built a couple of pressure cooker bombs and blew up the finish line of the 2013 Boston Marathon. Three people died, including a little boy and, later, an MIT campus cop. Countless other lives were forever changed and nobody in the birthplace of liberty feels quite as safe as they did before.
Don’t take my word for it. Let the good people of the jury pool tell you for themselves:
“I am set in my ways and this kid is GUILTY.”
“If I get picked I know how I’m voting. Guilty.”
“Everyone thinks he is guilty.”
“Caught red-handed, should not waste the $ on the trial.”
“We all know he’s guilty so quit wasting everybody’s time with a jury and string him up.”
“Waste of time, they should have already killed him.”
“They shouldn’t waste the bulits [sic] or poison; hang them.”
People actually wrote these things on their official juror questionnaires.
And it continued in person, in court. One woman looked like a promising prospect — until she said she agreed with friends, who told her we should “just skip the trial and go straight to sentencing.”
Not so fast, people. That’s not who we are. I can’t help but think of the trial drama “Twelve Angry Men” and that famous line written by Reginald Rose: “It’s not easy for me to raise my hand and send a boy off to die without talking about it first.”
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Let’s hope we don’t see her again.
A young stay-at-home mother acknowledged that she was anxious at first, but now would welcome serving on the jury because “it would get me out of the house.” She seemed level-headed in her responses, so she might make the cut. She thought she could vote for the death penalty “as a juror.”
The death penalty is the real elephant in the courtroom. Many people from Massachusetts just can’t go there. Some haven’t given it much thought, and really, why would they in a state that hasn’t had a death penalty on the books in a generation? The last time the state executed somebody was in 1947.
“I’ve killed spiders, and that’s about it,” said one woman who, like many others questioned, said she won’t really know where she stands until she’s actually facing the reality of voting for someone’s death. In theory, she says, “I’d prefer not to have that option, but I could go there.”
I heard two prospective jurors, a man and a woman, say they were shaking as they grappled with the difficult questions about their ability to send another person to the death chamber.
A young man with a purple ponytail who works part time at a tanning salon made no secret of his strong feelings and was quickly shown the door. “I will not make that decision to put another human being to death,” he stated.
I can’t figure out whether Boston has some of the dumbest people on the planet — or some of the shrewdest. If your goal is to get out of jury duty, some of these folks have mad skills. Consider the guy who wore a “Boston Strong” sweatshirt to the first day of jury selection. He hasn’t been seen since.
“All my friends have said I’d be crazy not to make some crazy statement to get off this case,” said a woman who works in a bank. She played it sane.
A middle-aged man provided a peek at what was going on in the jury room: “When I was in the first room and they were saying they were going to do anything they could to not be picked, I was ashamed for them — and ashamed of myself for feeling the same way,” he confessed.
But, he added, “Somebody has to do this.”
Nobody told him it would be wicked hard.
