Good lord, really????
"We WANTED to find him guilty but, alas, the evidence of guilt just wasn't there..."
WTH?? This is some scary ####. A jury that WANTS to find you guilty of murder based on their own emotional bull####. This is why we should have professional juries instead of these idiotic mouthbreathers.
After listening to parts of the interview, I don't think that's what she's trying to say. She seems to believe that what Mr. Zimmerman did was wrong, even that it should be illegal. But she also concluded that the law as it was explained to the jury doesn't make it illegal, so ultimately she thought she had to find him not guilty. Now, based on something she said, it seems to me that she misunderstood what's required for a manslaughter conviction, and I inferred that some of the other jurors might have similarly misunderstood that charge. But I think the sentiment she's trying to convey, at least as I'm able to understand it, is reasonable.
It sounds like she did her job and followed the jury instructions as she understood them (even if she and others misunderstood part of them). She thought that Mr. Zimmerman did something. For her own part, she thought what he did was wrong. She thought it should be illegal, she thought that it should be considered murder or something like that. However, she recognized that the law is not necessarily what she thought it should be. So, based on the law, at least as it was given to the jury, she eventually decided that not guilty was the appropriate verdict. It seems she would like the requirements of the law to be different, or would like the prosecution to have charged him with something that was supported by the evidence. But, she doesn't make the rules, she just had to apply them to what happened in this case.
That's how I would express what I take her as saying (she likely wouldn't articulate it that way herself, but that's the essence of sentiment I'm getting from what she did say). There may also be an element of - I think he's guilty but it wasn't proven beyond a reasonable doubt in there - but she didn't directly indicate that sentiment. But if that was part of here thinking, it would be reasonable as well. You can want to convict someone in the sense that you're pretty sure they're guilty, but still feel that you are supposed to find them not guilty because you aren't sure beyond a reasonable doubt.
Anyway, I can say that I felt part of the first sentiment in the case I was a juror on. The defendant was charged with a number of things, and one of them in particular I would like to have been able to find him guilty of. I wish the law was different in terms of the precise elements that needed to be demonstrated. In fact, my jury asked for clarification on a specific point regarding the elements of that charge. I don't recall for sure whether we got greater clarification or were left with just the original instruction (I think the former). But based on what we were being instructed that we had to find, I couldn't justify a guilty vote on that one charge. It might be fair to say that I wanted to find him guilty, at least on that charge, but I couldn't because of what I was told the law was. In other words, I recognized that I wasn't there to decide what the law should be, or to make a subjective decision as to whether the defendant deserved to be punished, I was there to apply the law as it existed whether or not doing so sat well in my stomach.
Bring it on!)
