All cases are difficult but cases where a death is involved will have a profound impact on all involved: jurors, witnesses, officers, attorneys and judges.
Everyone involved in a case will feel empathy, compassion and even develop a rapport with the parties in an emotionally charged case. There have been countless times that jurors have waved, nodded, winked and given thumbs up upon leaving a courtroom. In this case the juror stopped to give Randy and his family a hug and wish him good luck in the future.
The prosecution’s attempt to make this into some misconduct was flawed from the beginning. There was nothing unusual about having compassion and caring about another human being. The prosecution’s attempt also seems to have been ill advised as it will likely dampen the desire of future jurors to vote their conscience if they could be called back to court later.
In federal courts the sanctity of the jury deliberations is secret and there is no ability for either party to pry into the process.
