Jury Duty

It’s been a couple of weeks since I’ve added anything to this conversation. Blame it on jury duty. It’s a good subject for a Blog, but the law says that you can’t write or talk about the case until it is completely over and done.

The story is this: A 50 something lady and her sister went to JC Penny’s to shop. She was casually dressed in jeans and a sweatshirt and carried a 7 or 8-inch square basket purse, open on top with 2 half-circle 6’ bamboo handles. Holding the 2 handles together held the purse closed.

The ladies went separate ways, with our “lady of Interest” (LOI) going to the costume jewelry counter. As the jewelry counter is a high loss area, the store “loss prevention team” began to watch and record her actions with video cameras.

Our subject browsed the ear-rings, holding several up to her ears in front of a mirror, selected a 6” necklace and went to a checkout counter to check the price and was told she’d need to stand in line to do so. She elected not to wait.

She moved off to other areas of the store, keeping the necklace with her as she shopped.

At some point the necklace found its way into the handbag. Loss Prevention accosted the LOI just outside the doors of the store, searched the purse and found the necklace.

Our LOI claimed to have no knowledge of how or when the necklace got into her purse. She offered to make good on the purchase price, but the store refused and called the police.

These are simple facts, but the case was not as obvious as you might think.

The state must prove 4 things in order to convict the LOI of petty theft:

She took the item without permission

She intended to keep the item

She removed the item from the store

She INTENDED to take the item

All of the allegations must be proved “beyond A Reasonable Doubt”. Items 1, 2 and 3 were easy, the tape and testimony proved all 3 fairly conclusively.

Number 4 (Intent) was not so obvious. Prosecution needed to show that the LOI INTENDED to put the necklace in her purse and keep it forever without paying.

The LOI claimed that she tried to get a price check on the item and was turned away due to the line waiting service. She further states that there were no “scanners” available to read the price. Therefore, she put the necklace in her hand (also carrying the purse), continued to shop, rejoined her sister, bought an iron and left the store. She forgot the necklace completely in as much as it was being held in the same hand as her purse, and the purse handle was the same shape as the necklace. She was sure that at some point the necklace inadvertently had fallen out of her hand into the purse. The necklace shape and size fit exactly into one of the 3 sections of her purse, and remained unseen (by her) through the checkout process. This story is more plausible than it sounds. In examining the purse, we confirmed that such an event COULD happen. The purse handles did indeed match the shape of the necklace and the necklace could have slipped easily into the purse.

That’s Reasonable Doubt.

Our LOI was a very normal person. She has a long-term marriage, was employed by a school, but out on disability. She was injured in an accident at the school, and is under the care of a doctor and is using pain medication. She and her sister testified that the medication caused her to be a little woozy and forgetful. There was no doctor’s testimony or a description of the affects of her prescription.

She has never been convicted or accused of anything like this before.

So far (for me at least) it was not an open and shut case. The $29 price of the necklace did not seem to me to be sufficient to cause the LOI to risk the embracement of a trial and possible jail, especially given her history, employment and testimony of her sister.

Others, however, believed that the thrill of the hunt might have played a part. Still others believed that poor service at the checkout counter had “encouraged” the LOI to seek a little revenge.

We were at an impasse.

We decided that the determining factor should be a review of her actions as recorded on the security tape. If there was an indication of dishonesty, we should be able to see it. If not, reasonable doubt would guide us to a “Not Guilt” verdict.

We played the tape- a 40 minute, mind numbing, surrealistic, impersonal snippet of real life in a Penny’s store. People came and went without reason or explanation, were zoomed in upon by the unseen observer for no clear reason. The camera paned and zoomed around the jewelry counter and its adjacent areas relentlessly.

Finally, the LOI entered the picture, purse in her right hand, hanging at her side. You could see the necklace in her hand between the handles of the purse, positioned directly over the purse opening. She moved into an area with several chest high hanging clothing displays. She touched, nor moved nor stopped to look at any of them as she wandered through the display. Her hand carrying the purse and necklace remained at her side, completely hidden from view.

We slowed the video to frame by frame mode and waited for the LOI to exit the clothing display. Her purse hand came into view. Her fingers were moving. Her first finger and her index finger were extended, pointing directly down at the purse.

She had just dropped the necklace into the purse! She was so “casual”, and there was such a “who me?” look on her face that I lost all doubt as to her “Intension”. We could not come up with any reason to move her fingers in the way we had seen OTHER than to drop the necklace.

It was an “Ahhaa!” moment for the entire jury. It took about 5 minutes to wrap up the verdict and notify the judge.

Why did she do it? Who knows? A bad day, medication, revenge for poor service, adventure, whatever the reason, she will be paying a fine and doing a couple of weeks of community service as payment. Oh yes, and paying about $10,000 in legal fees.

Worse still is she may not have told her husband yet.

She should have picked a nicer necklace.