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B-hanimal's avatar

I feel like this is counter-intuitive, so I'd like to know more of your reasoning: if they were deadlocked on the more serious charge, it stands to reason that they would find him guilty or, at best, be deadlocked on the lesser charge. Doesn't it?

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DiogenesNJ's avatar

So your hypothesis is that at least some of the jurors were determined to find him guilty of something, and it should have been easier to do that on the lesser charge? That's plausible, but to me the result suggests that a majority of the jury was originally in favor of a not guilty verdict, and the holdouts either were persuaded or gave up on the second round. I've never served on a jury -- been called multiple times but always thrown off by one side or the other -- but I've been in a whole lot of overly long meetings. If the judge was hoping for guilty verdict, it may have been a mistake to send the jury back immediately for the second deliberation. It took only an hour.

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