5mo ago

'He is innocent': Juror urges clemency for Alabama man facing execution

Archived at https://web.archive.org/web/20250225121039/https://apnews.com/article/alabama-death-penalty-robin-rocky-myers-f69bfe8b3df1d057f3954e90b77463e0

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Puckett said she and a few other jurors had doubts about the allegations. But she feared if the case ended in mistrial, another jury would sentence Myers to death. So, Puckett said she agreed to a compromise — find him guilty but recommend life in prison.
Goddamn is that some bad decision making.
- I tend to agree, but there is maybe a little nuance here (archived)
  Although I believed Mr. Myers was innocent at the time of trial, I made a terrible mistake. The other doubting jurors and I wanted to spare Mr. Myers’s life. But we were afraid that if we were a hung jury and there was a mistrial, a subsequent jury might find Mr. Myers guilty and sentence him to death. As a compromise, we worked out a deal with the jurors who were determined to find Mr. Myers guilty. We agreed to join them and unanimously find him guilty, but then we voted to give him life without parole.
  The jury voted for life without parole 9-3. I left the courthouse feeling like that compromise saved Mr. Myers’s life. I thought, at least he would still be alive to be a father to his young son, whose testimony at trial moved many of us to tears. We had been told the judge could override our sentence but that it was such a rare occurrence that we didn’t worry about it. That practice is now illegal, and it should be. Seeing it happen in Mr. Myers’s case was a betrayal of the care we jurors put into considering his fate. It was unjust.
  Ultimately, if you ever find yourself in a position where you are concluding that voting to convict an innocent person of a crime is the best way forward you made a mistake in your reasoning somewhere and you need to go back to step one, but I can appreciate thinking that you have to do what you can to work around corrupt systems. Like, highly educated and professional defense attorneys tell clients who say they're innocent to plead guilty for a lesser sentence all the time, it's no wonder jurors get the same ideas.
  
  Her job was not to bargain for this man - that is his lawyer's job. Her job was too make a finding of innocent or guilty and she knowingly convicted a man she thought was innocent. His blood is on her hands.
  THIS is why so many innocent people plead guilty to lesser crimes rather than leave their fate in the hands of 12 idiots.
  
  The real travesty is that a death penalty is still a possibility in any society.
  Were that not a plausible outcome, these jurors wouldn't have had to wrestle with the moral dilemma of having their actions potentially lead to the death of another human.
- Bizarro jury nullification, where it's okay to give life in prison to someone you think is innocent. And the idea probably originated from someone who would tell you that it's wrong to inform people that jury nullification exists.

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