HERE COME THE LAW!!

Thank God my jury duty is over!!!

Don't get me wrong jury duty was rewarding, challenging and thought provoking but it was also something that doesn't pay enough - if it did I am sure everyone would be a little more happier and open to going. During my five day jury duty I met a beautiful girl named Pattie who I bonded with and became friends with - we laughed a lot and shared so much about our own lives. Not once did we speak about the trial but we wanted to...

The trial was essentially about a guy and a girl and the drama between them both. The girl wasn't on trial - she brought four charges against her babies daddy and even though some of the charges were warranted, at the end of the day all of this shit
could have been avoided if their lives were a little more balanced and they knew how to treat each other with respect.

So let me go a little deeper into the case - you all wanna know what it's about.. don't ya? Now what the girl and the guy say are two totally different scenarios but the defendant never took the stand so I guess we'll never know what really happen! The case began somewhere in the early hours of a September morning. The so-called *victim* says that she was sitting in her car and the defendant all of a sudden rode up on his bicycle throwing rocks and ramming his bicycle into her car three times. She says that she was on the phone with her girl friend and was 'confused, shocked, and afraid.' She admits that they had a fight before this happened but never went into what happened. We ended up finding him not guilty on the charge of Vandalism because there wasn't enough concrete evidence and she seemed to be very unreliable on the chain of events - she might have been a bit untruthful in her testimony. Her story of what she told the cop and what she told us did not match... hmmmm!!!!

The second, third and fourth charge was violating a temporary protective order. Something I learned about the law with protective orders is that the person you are attempting to keep away from you cannot call, come within 100 feet of you, email, write you a letter, or TEXT! The defendant text messaged the accuser three times which then translates to three separate charges. Another interesting factoid about temporary restraining orders is that the person who is filing the order can contact the person they are trying to stay away from by phone or any other means possible, however as soon as the person who is being restrained contacts the restrainer it's considered breaking the law. Basically the law doesn't work both ways.

Did that make sense? I felt extremely guilty about voting guilty on all three counts especially since the girl who put forth these charges seemed like the antagonist but it was important to set some sort of precedent and the understanding that if you violate a protective order than you must be found guilty - no matter how minor the attempts are... am I making sense?