Juror number two

I sent a guy to jail today. A skinny, bespectacled 29-year-old father of four with no criminal record. I didn't want to.

The "victim" was twice his size and regularly beat the hell out of his wife, the defendant's sister-in-law. From here on out, I'm going to refer to the "victim" as the plaintiff, even though it was a criminal trial, not a civil one.

The plaintiff started it. He went to the subsidized apartment where his pregnant wife had fled to be with her mother. He hung out in the parking lot drinking with his friend, knowing his wife's family hated him for abusing her. He started what turned into a melee by threatening to kill her sister and the defendant. He tried to knock a baby out of a stroller before grabbing a child's tricycle and swinging it at the crowd with no regard to people's safety.

The defendant, granted, had been drinking, too. He went to his car and retrieved a butcher knife and came back to the fight trying to get the plaintiff to back off. All the witnesses were lying, had a ridiculous number of children, had criminal records and had refused to speak to the police. The only thing I know was true was the plaintiff got poked with a knife and was taken to the hospital by his wife and friend.

Once he got to WakeMed, the staff called the police. The plaintiff was treated for a superficial wound less serious than the one I gave myself a couple of months ago when the screen door hit me. The plaintiff was treated with Bactine (no stitches) and released in just over an hour. The RPD confiscated his clothes, and found in his pocket a dime bag, even though the plaintiff had testified to us that he didn't smoke pot. Testimony showed that once he was released from the hospital, he made his wife take him back to the scene to look for his weed because he thought it had fallen out of his pocket during the melee.

If only the jab hadn't been in the plaintiff's back, I could have voted for acquittal on the defendant's claim of self-defense. I hate that there wasn't a clause for "defense of others," because it seems clear to me that's what he was doing. At the very least, I was able to stand up in the jury room and say, "With intent to kill was not proven and I will not vote for it."

If only the hospital hadn't been required by law to call the police, I could believe ghetto and family justice could have served the plaintiff for all the abuse he inflicted on his poor, young wife. I know that's not right, either, but at least I would have been spared the burden of first-hand knowledge that this world exists, the burden of sending a young man to jail for trying to protect the members of this violent, irresponsible, criminal family he married into from even more violence.

I was heartsick when I left the courthouse. I can't feel bad about doing what I was tasked to do: impartially enforcing the law as it is written. But my heart was heavy with guilt about the things I should be doing for people who didn't get the blessings and opportunities I was born into. I SHOULD be a mentor. I SHOULD go back to school and become a social worker or a teacher at an inner-city school. But I won't do those things. My M.O. is to throw money at things that bother me, so I can say I'll write checks to Planned Parenthood and Interact before tax time.

Will that help? Probably not. And therein lies my shame.