I was the foreman on a jury last year. It was a lot of fun. The guy was caught with weed in the cup holder between him and his gf. The car was stopped by the police for improper tags, and then they searched it and found the bud. His claim was that it was not his, and he did not even know that it was there, except it was in plain sight and when the cops asked him what he planned on doing with the weed his response was "we are going to smoke it." His defense was that he did not know it was there, and he was being sarcastic with the cops when they found it.
I was ok with that, the prosecutors did NOT do a good job proving he knew it was there, of course then they brought in his previous record, of which he has a whole laundry list, including 4 prior arrests for posession of a controlled substance.
Then they explained the Iowa law, and the way it read, it did not matter if he knew it was there or not, he was in such close proximity of it, that he was guilty anyway.
It took us 30 minutes to pick a foreman, and finally I was just like, jeez, I will do it if no one else will. And then it took another hour or so just to go through all the evidence and re-read the law. It was funny, some of the Jury wanted to stretch it out so they got a free lunch, I was just like your time is worth more than $10, lets just vote and go home!
We convicted him, and I think he spent like 2 days in Jail. His lawyer called me a few days later and told me it was in fact his weed, and he knew he was going to jail, and was just playing the game. I told his lawyer we did not want to convict him, but there was some pretty damning evidence of things he told police, so it was impossible to not think he knew about it.
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