Not the way I wanted to see it end up.... but...

Zim finally got pegged to serve on a jury. Fine. It wasn't a big murder trial or anything. A produce manager at King Soopers in Denver was accused of ramming one of his employees with a produce cart (assault) and disturbing the peace (yelling).

Upon seeing the man and not knowing the charges, I immediately felt sympathy for him. Later, when I was picked for the jury, I got to hear from the kid who got slammed by the cart and his co-worker who was also knocked down. Their testimony was also quite compelling. Following this was the defendant's testimony. Sounded good, but didn't quite add up.

So, I decided that the guy was guilty. This was NOT without any doubts - reasonable or not. But we were not allowed any hard physical evidence, or pictures of injuries to go on. Just people's word. Mohamed (Mo), the kid that got hit, gave a pretty good account of his injuries and going to the hospital. Mo spoke English fairly well, but was from Africa, so it definitely was not his first language. Yet the answers were direct and with conviction. I have to believe that the defense attorney would have questioned the actual injuries had she known they were not well documented. Sooo.... without direct physical evidence.... IF there were injuries, there WAS some kind of assault.

Does this mean that I believe Mr. Carney deliberately rammed the two produce workers? Heck no! But it does not matter how bad you think the workers are: Americans don't physically abuse their workers... He probably just lost his temper. So, yes, I have sympathy for the man loosing his job and then getting convicted. What really sucks is we did not get to hear what the punishment was. This was not a felony conviction, so I really hope he does not get jail time. The poor man has paid the price for his temper, for sure. He probably could use some anger management classes (with him paying for them) and a fine. This all depends upon the man's prior record, of course. Again, we did not hear that information.