We have a verdict

As I mentioned in my posting on Oct 31, I've been on jury duty for the last month. Thursday morning we concluded deliberation and delivered the verdict.  I'm no longer under the judge's admonition to not speak about the case so I'll offer a few reflections of my own here.

The defendant was stopped by a police officer for expired registration tags. When the officer walked up to the side of defendant's car, and the defendant took off at high speed through residential streets. Since the defendant had a head start, the officer lost him even though he pursued. The officer took a gamble that the defendant got on the highway going West so he began to search the highway. After several miles he called off the pursuit because he couldn't see the defendant's car. When the officer exited the highway, he happened to come up behind the defendant's car on the exit ramp. As soon as the defendant saw the officer behind him, he took off again traveling approximately 55-65 through residential streets. The chase ended when the defendant ran a red light and collided into another car entering the intersection. The driver of that car was a young college student at Berkeley. The student received multiple blunt injuries to his head during the accident and died after being taken off of life support a few weeks later. Upon analysis, the defendant was determined to have between 0.077 and 0.094 percent blood alcohol and was on methamphetamine.

After the deliberations we, the jurors, were reflecting on the whole process. We all found it amazing how so many lives were effected by this one 7-minute event. There are hundreds, if not approaching a thousand, people whose lives were altered, changed, shifted, reorganized, because of this single 7-minute car chase - police, firemen, EMTs, doctors, nurses, jurors, friends, family, co-workers, etc. And one person died.

We have such a huge infrastructure for dealing with people once a suspected crime has been committed. But how good is our infrastructure for spotting young kids who are getting off on the wrong track and helping them and their families?

There were four teachers on the jury ranging from K-4. They all said that they know which kids are on the wrong track. I wonder what it would take to intervene at that point in a child's (and their family's) life in a way that gets them back on track. What would that take?

-Steve

Comments

[Candy Priano]

I would like permission to post this story on the kristielaw.org website: http://www.kristieslaw.org/

[JeffYoung]

I would like to post this story on my blog so that I can post a response to it there.

[Steve]

Hello Candy and Jeff,

Both of you can use trackbacks to reference this posting to make your own comments in your blog.

-Steve