I'm reminded of a couple of jurors in the past. One, and older white guy...looked to be a farmer type. Tall and lanky, grey hair, hard worn skin. When asked a standard voir dire question of if they understood "innocent until proved guilty" he raised his hand, stood up, looked around to make sure he had the room's attention, then said "When I were comin' up, I learnt that whar there's smoke, thar's far, if he got arrested, he musta done somethin'." He smiled and looked around for approval of his nugget of great intelligence he dropped on all of us. Had he been challenged on it, I feel certain he'd have come back with "it's just common sense". He was too stupid to notice the folks shaking their heads embarrassed for him, though I'm certain there were a couple that thought he was a wealth of "common sense".
Another one was a grand juror. Presented a standard "death investigation" of a child that died in the care of a local "school" that takes in problem children, or those in the custody of DHR. High risk to begin with. I can't recall...it was either a suicide, or some type of natural death of a 16 year old. Clearly not a crime whatever it was. Some old black lady voted to true bill it anyway, though we had no defendant to indict. Her rationale was "A chile die, somebody gotta pay!" I asked her "who?". She said, "I don't know, but somebody, chilluns don't just up and die".
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