Yesterday, TruTV broadcast defendant Alvaro Castillo’s video diaries, exactly as the jury is seeing them. Since I found them too painful to watch, I deleted my recordings of the courtroom coverage without finishing them.

The Castillo trial reminds me once again that most jurors enter the jury box with the intention of serving as objective observers of fact. But crime is about pain and victimization. Sitting in a jury box is an emotional, not a rational, experience.

Japanese Jury Trial

Yesterday the first Japanese jury trial since World War II concluded with a guilty verdict in a murder case. Previously, trials were conducted before a panel of judges. Now panels will also include citizens chosen at random. When the trial began on July 31, jurors expressed reluctance to sit in judgment of a fellow citizen, especially in capital cases. That’s not surprising, is it?

Even in this country, if you monitor keywords on search engines you will discover that more people seek information on how to avoid jury duty than those who seek information on how to be picked for a jury. Recently, one of my websites was hit by someone searching on “how to serve on Sandra Cantu jury.” Now that’s a scary keyword search. (It occurs to me that a clever lawyer or court system could tell a lot about a jury pool by developing a content-rich website to attract jurors of all inclinations. I’m not suggesting spying on individual citizens; I’m suggesting collecting data on the jury pool at large.)

Facebook Juror

Technology is already intricately involved in the jury system. Just yesterday a juror in the Bronx made the news when she had insomnia and ended up trying to befriend a firefighter witness in an arson fire on Facebook. The judge in the case may be appalled, but I understand completely. I imagine all the jurors on the panel who have the most-minute “milk of human kindness” are experiencing insomnia or nightmares or other stress-related symptoms. Being a juror is incredibly stressful.

Castillo Video Diaries

And this brings me back to the Castillo video diaries. I can’t help but wonder if TruTV saw a drop-off in ratings yesterday during that incredibly painful display of torment. This trial is not a good example of justice at work. This case involves nothing but victims – the defendant being the principal victim.

The intellectual issue for the Castillo jury will be whether or not the defendant understood what he was doing. Frankly, after seeing a few clips of video, I think he did. I think he had and still has serious mental disorders, but I think he killed his father to free himself and his family from the man’s abuse (a rational motive) and that he then went to the school to commit suicide-by-cop (another rational motive): he apparently shot primarily at random and then begged a school guard to kill him.

I wonder if this trial will end as the Cody Posey trial did, with a guilty verdict. The only real difference between the two cases is that Posey was put on trial when he was a young teenager, while Castillo committed the crimes at 19 and is now 21. In the Posey trial, the judge chose to sentence Posey as a minor, remanding him to juvenile detention and ordering psychological counseling until age 21. (Incidentally, a “Cody Posey” arrested for DUI homicide in Texas is not that Cody Posey, who is still in custody.)

I also wonder whether a judge in NC has the authority to overturn a guilty verdict and instead sentence Castillo to a mental institution.

IMHO (and I am not a lawyer, just a former juror) a life sentence to prison for this defendant would be cruel, if not unusual, punishment.