PLATFORM : Reasonable Doubt: ‘You Have to Consult Your Common Sense’

RUTH GRABOWSKI

Registered nurse, former juror, Long Beach

For me to clear up my doubts about a case, I’d depend heavily on concrete, provable evidence. I’d hesitate to believe other people’s testimony. Over the years, I’ve been wrong so often when judging people and situations that I’ve come to have a lot less faith in my perceptions and to realize that my reactions are often tainted. And I’ve seen many, many things that have caused me to believe that other people’s perceptions are often tainted, too.

I sat as a juror in a case that on the third day was dismissed for insufficient evidence. The defense attorney was able to prove to the judge that his client couldn’t have done the crime.

As a juror, I would always continue to have doubt despite a great deal of evidence if some important question were left unanswered. I am a registered nurse, and in my clinical experience I have seen things I never wanted to see, such as what happens when someone is stabbed the way the victims were in the Simpson case. My problem there has always been the amount of blood. As a nurse, I know there should have been blood all over whoever committed the murders. Blood spurts, blood covers everything, blood is sticky and hard to get off of you. Whoever killed the victims would have been saturated with blood. My clinical experience demands an explanation for everything. If I were a juror in that case I would have to have an explanation of where all the blood went.

DUANE MOODY

Entertainment entrepreneur, was acquitted of murder conspiracy, Los Angeles

In 1989, a jury voted me innocent of conspiracy to commit first-degree murder of an L.A. police detective (Tom Williams) and hung 10-2 in favor of me being innocent of that murder, and the judge dismissed the charge because there was overwhelming evidence I was innocent. And I also had the Heavenly Father watching over me.

I heard the phrase “reasonable doubt,” growing up in school, but never paid attention, never anticipating being on trial for murder someday. But when they’re talking death penalty for you, you’ll pay attention to a fly going past, every wing and leg, no matter if it buzzes by you a thousand times. I spent 3 1/2 years in county jail waiting for my trial. My cell was next to the cell of Richard Ramirez, the Night Stalker, who kept trying to convert me to Satanism.

Although it’s very unusual for a defendant, I got co-counsel privilege. I studied law every day from 7 a.m. almost without a break up till 8:30 p.m., when you have to be holding your wristband outside the bars to be checked. And since then I’ve been a consultant to (other) defendants including Rick James and my third cousin, O.J. Simpson. If there’s an ounce or a hair of doubt, the law says you must find a defendant innocent. There’s no ifs, ands or buts about it. And that’s one thing a defendant has in his favor. This knocks the wind out of a lot of cases when the prosecution only has circumstantial evidence but no smoking gun or dripping knife. I predict that in years to come, they’re going to try to move reasonable doubt out of murder cases.

MARIA ELENA MORAN

Legal secretary, works in Pasadena, lives in Whittier

When you try to determine what is reasonable doubt, it all comes down to the word reasonable.

Take the example of a child found in a kitchen where all the cookies have been eaten who denies he is the one who ate them. It would be unreasonable to doubt him if you had no other evidence. But if he was the only one who had been in the kitchen and if his face and clothes were covered with cookie crumbs, it would be reasonable to doubt his truthfulness.

When you’re weighing evidence you have to have a balance between being too closed-minded and going to the extreme of being open to any kind of explanation, even if it goes against your common sense.

Suppose the child in the kitchen who is covered with crumbs and who was the only one in the kitchen when the cookies disappeared tries to convince you that aliens landed and took the cookies. If you then doubted that he had taken them, and sort of told yourself that anything is possible, to me your doubt would be unreasonable doubt. You have to consult your common sense.

EMILY SEDGWICK

First-year law student, People’s College of Law, Pasadena

What is or isn’t reasonable doubt is subjective to a certain extent. There’s not an objective test. I tend to be a very scientific person, so I would give lots of weight to evidence that could have scientific certainty, such as fingerprints or bits of skin under a rape victim’s fingernails. And I’d look not only at the quality of the evidence, but the quantity. Like if a person left his fingerprints and his wallet and was seen by witnesses and so forth, the quantity of evidence would begin to overwhelm doubt.

Reasoning should also follow the valid rules of logic, but a (logically) valid argument is not necessarily a true argument. People need to be very careful about the assumptions they make. You can’t jump to conclusions.

VINCE MANNINO

Legal assistant, lives in Alhambra, works in Los Angeles

For me, reasonable doubt would be based on more than feelings. It would have to be something that, given all the evidence presented to me, still left me where I couldn’t say for sure that something was or wasn’t so.

Some people are just doubting types who have trouble overcoming their doubts about everything. A reasonable doubt would have to be based on something concrete, like a piece of evidence or some testimony or perhaps the lack of those things when something wasn’t adequately explained.

It wouldn’t be based on the arguments of attorneys. For example, as with the bloody glove in the Simpson case, the attorneys on one side say it was found at Simpson’s home and must be his, and the attorneys on the other side say it perhaps was planted. If I were a juror I would ask myself: What did the evidence show? What was the testimony and how reliable was it? I would be the one to determine these things, not the attorneys.