Juror Gives Interview after Verdict

One Karen Read juror, Juror #4, has now spoken to the media. Here is a link to the interview:

https://www.tmz.com/

Juror 4 said he thought Read was actually innocent, but that others based their not guilty votes on reasonable doubt.

As evidence for his view that there was no collision, this juror pointed to the video tape of Read’s SUV taken after the time of the alleged collision, in which the taillight was still ”lit up red” when “it shouldn’t be red,” if a collision had smashed the taillight red plastic lens into many pieces. I wish Juror #4 had said more about how he interpreted or viewed the video showing red coming out of the taillight.

This juror said he has no way of knowing whether the police investigation was corrupt and did not base his verdict on that. But there were definitely “lots of holes” in this investigation (for instance, police didn’t go inside the house at 34 Fairview Rd), and he thought these holes were what created reasonable doubt in the minds of other jurors.

The juror reported that there were some people leaning guilty at first, but they didn’t begin with a straw vote. Instead, they discussed the evidence for each charge from top to bottom.

I found it interesting that this juror defined beyond a reasonable doubt as requiring 100% certainty. He said 99.9% was not good enough to satisfy the standard.

As to why the jurors recalled their initial verdict slips, the juror’s explanation wasn’t entirely clear. At first, he seemed to say the withdrawn slips and final ones were the same. But then he seemed to say they added the OUI conviction on the final slips

When asked whether all the hoopla outside the courtroom affected him, the juror said it did not. But then he added that it made the jury’s job more difficult and that he did see the crowds outside when he arrived every morning. It is bothersome that the jury was aware of the public demonstrations outside.

Jeffrey Abramson, Professor of Government and Law Emeritus, Univ. of Texas at Austin, and author of We, the Jury: The Jury System and the Ideal of Democracy (Harvard Univ. Press).

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