Picking an image for this post was particularly difficult considering the subject matter. I finally settled on Heimdall. He was the Guardian of the Rainbow Bridge to Asgard and was said to be able to see everything that happened on Earth. You'd need something like that to resolve the case I'm posting ablut today.
Serving on a jury is never easy and I really don’t envy the daunting task given to Jurors in this country. It's hard to sit on any try but the situation becomes particularly problematic when they are asked to sit on a child-sex case. Take for example, a case that just went through the Orange County Courts.
Jeffrey Ray Nielsen, son of a local Judge and well-connected in the local Republican Party was just tried for having sex with a minor. While I have to confess to a certain schadenfreude at this turn of events, (I secretly love it when bigshot Republicans get caught with their pants down)I have to say the whole thing makes me feel (and I wish there was a better word for it) icky. The details of this case makes me fell bad for everyone concerned.
The accuser (who was 14 at the time) is hearing-impaired and learning disabled who’s had a rough go of it from the start. He’s the kind of kid that cries out for sympathy. We know he spent time with the accused and can describe the bedroom in detail (right down to the oversized Teddy Bear and stuffed elephant on his bed). But there are a lot of inconsistencies in the accuser’s story and over the intervening three years his story has changed. (Now he doesn’t know which version is the truth.) To make matters worse the poor kid has been caught in some obvious and stupid lies on the stand.
There is clearly some inappropriate conduct on Nielsen‘s part: he met the accuser in a Chat Room where gay men solicit sex and the accused admits to picking up the boy (without his mother’s permission) and taking him to his home. Nielsen says that he only wanted to be a friend and mentor to the kid. In Nielsen’s favor, there is no physical evidence of a sexual encounter. Nielsen never acknowledges sex in any of the extensive e-Mail records: the only real “evidence” is the boy’s word--and that’s why I feel conflicted about this case.
I want to believe the kid--really I do--but I can’t get past the inconsistencies in his story, the lack of hard evidence and the fact that he couldn’t describe some very evident scaring on Nielsen’s body. The thought that a child molester might be set free to prey on other young men sickens me but I couldn’t get past my doubts to put Nielsen away on the evidence presented.
In the end the jury deadlocked and couldn’t reach a verdict: various votes ranged from 10-2 to 7-5 (although the Judge refused to say which way the votes went. The District Attorney’s Office has already announced that he intends to re-try the case on all six counts--although I can’t see the next trial turning out much different this time. I’m glad I’m not a lawyer having to work on this case and I’m especially glad I’m not on the jury: I don’t envy these people in the least.
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