Saddled with unease after giving verdict in case of stolen scooter

AMERICA:While a young man goes down for a joyride, BP's ex-chief gets a golden handshake of $18.5 million

FOR TWO days this week, I was juror number 303 at the superior court of the District of Columbia.

Lawrence Smith, the defendant, sat slumped opposite the jury, his dreadlocks spilling over his shoulders. Smith never spoke or showed emotion, but his eyes gave the impression they were burning holes into everything he looked at.

The distribution of roles seemed representative of the US justice system: the judge was Jewish; the lawyers Irish-American; the defendant black. African-Americans comprise 38.2 per cent of the US prison population, though they are only 12.4 per cent of the population at large.

Smith was charged with receiving stolen property and unauthorised use of a motor vehicle. The property in question was a red motor scooter – “a Chinese knock-off” its owner testified – purchased for $1,000 in March 2009. Four months later, neighbours in Dupont Circle saw a young man wheel the scooter away. Smith was not charged with stealing the scooter; we never learned who took it.

Ten days after the theft, officer Jason Bagshaw of the Metropolitan Police department was on patrol in the newly gentrified residential neighbourhood behind Union Station when he saw Smith riding the scooter without a helmet. Bagshaw circled the block, noticed the scooter had no key – often a sign of theft – and stopped Smith. He ran the scooter’s vehicle identification number through the police car’s computer and learned it was recently stolen.

We were shown on oversized photographs how the scooter’s ignition had been broken and various compartments pried open, to enable a thief to start and refuel it without the key. Any reasonable person should have known it was stolen, the prosecutor concluded.

“This is Lawrence Smith and he is innocent,” pleaded the defence.

“The government is going to ask you to convict him based on circumstantial evidence.”

The trial lasted only an hour.

In the jury room, Debbie, who is black, and Susan, who is white, were reluctant to convict Lawrence Smith. In my mind, I called them “the mothers”, because maternal instinct seemed to guide them.

“He’s just a kid who was joy-riding. I’ve seen how these kids do; five minutes before, five minutes after, and it would have been somebody else,” Debbie kept saying.

“I wish the charges weren’t felonies,” Susan moaned.

We pored over the judge’s instructions, copying phrases onto an oversized pad on an easel.

“He’s not a kid, he’s an adult,” one juror reminded the mothers.

“You should determine the facts without . . . sympathy,” another read from the guidelines.

“You must not allow the nature of the charges to affect your verdicts,” a third quoted.

When we could advance no further, we sent a note to Judge Anthony Epstein announcing we were a hung jury. He brought us back into the courtroom and chided us gently. “There is no reason to suppose that the 12 jurors in any new trial will be more intelligent, more impartial, or more competent to decide it than you are,” the judge said.

After seven hours of deliberation, we reached a unanimous decision to convict Smith of possessing stolen property, but to acquit him of unauthorised use. Afterwards, the prosecutor and defence attorney talked to us.

We learned that Smith is 25-years-old, and could be sentenced to up to seven years in prison for the crime we convicted him of. He’s already in prison, and is standing trial on other charges, which his lawyer did not want to reveal. When he was a teenager, Smith stole a truck to escape from a juvenile facility in Minnesota. That was why he chose not to testify in his own defence; we would have learned he had a prior conviction.

I was impressed by the courtesy of Judge Epstein and my fellow jurors, who were never rude, despite moments of tension during our seven hours together.

“I know you’re a good person,” a frustrated juror told one of the hold-outs.

I have a new appreciation of how difficult it is for human beings to reach agreement on even the most basic questions.

Through his law clerk, Judge Epstein gave me permission to write about the case.

If the trial left me with a sense of unease, it was because I couldn’t help thinking of Congressional hearings I attended last year, involving former BP chief executive Tony Hayward and Lloyd Blankfein, the chief executive of Goldman Sachs.

Under Hayward, careless practices led to the explosion of an oil rig that spilled millions of barrels of petroleum into the Gulf of Mexico. Hayward received a “golden handshake” of $18.5 million.

Under Blankfein, Goldman Sachs made $3.7 billion in profits by betting on the collapse of the property market, in which millions of Americans lost their homes. Blankfein received a $12.6 million bonus for 2010, and saw his base salary raised to $2 million. He attended a State dinner at the White House last month.

Meanwhile, Lawrence Smith awaits sentencing for riding a stolen scooter.