Yachats Oregon Writer Rick Schultze

Last week I wrote about being called to Jury duty. Well this will be about the trial which was a domestic case with the defendant being accused of causing physical harm to a child who was part of his household in front of other children. The terms reckless endangerment, knowingly causing harm, and other such pleasant phrases peppered the courtroom as both the defense and prosecution got down to the task at hand; to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that the defendant had hurt the child. The prosecution went first with his presentation of what he planed to do including mentioning the number of witnesses he planed to call to the witness stand including the child in question and several other children who allegedly witnessed the incident and had given statements to the authorities. He made mention of the peace officers he was going to call and that since there were children that were going to testify he couldn’t say for sure their testimony would match the statements they’d given. He also noted that the mother of the injured child seemed to lean towards reconciling with the defendant.

At this point the case against the defendant seemed pretty cut and dry. In a nutshell; the defendant had retrieved a video game toy the child was trying to take to school against his mothers wishes. During the retrieving process the defendant had allegedly twisted and pulled the child’s hand throwing him to the ground. The hand had become very painful and swollen and that swelling was noticed at a junior league football practice by the coach who is a peace officer and reported leading to the child being taken to the emergency room for X-rays and treatment.

The first kink in the case came when a witness; a neighbor child who is friend of the injured child discounted the prior testimony of the peace officers to the shock of many of the jurors. As it turned out the rest of the children who testified changed their stories as well and it became obvious that they had been told to do so. It was sad to see these kids under such scrutiny in front of strangers stumbling through answers. As it turned out the mother who later testified in a vague way had left the defendant for another man and that didn’t work out so with the defendant out of the picture she and her kids would be basically homeless.

After the verdict; guilty on one count, we the jury all agreed that the victims in this sad scenario were the two children who lived with the defendant at the time of the incident. Already they had been placed in the unenviable position of having to choose between a lie and a home. It’s a situation that could possibly be playing out in other courtrooms today and as the judge said after the trial when asked what will happen to the children, “that’s a million dollar question, they probably will be returned to their mother”.

When the jurors said goodbye to one another the one thing all twelve of us agreed on was that we should all be aware of the fragility of children when their lives are in the hands of reckless and irresponsible adults, the forced lies in this case after all had come out of the mouths of some of those children.

To reach Rick Schultze email:yarick@pioneer.net