As the article below explains, a juror, who recently sat on a high-profile trial, is turning his jury duty experience into a money making opportunity. For $2.99 readers can read about Patrick Kirkland's experience as a juror in the trial of two NY police officers who were acquitted of raping an intoxicated woman. Here is the description provided by Amazon.com:
On a cold December night in 2008, two NYPD officers were dispatched to help an intoxicated young woman in Manhattan's East Village. What happened next would result in the startling accusation that the police officers had raped the woman. After a weeks-long, and at many times harrowing, trial in spring of 2011, the jury of seven men and five women handed down controversial rape acquittals which inspired outrage and protests.
In the Gothamist Feature, "Confessions of a 'Rape Cop' Juror," juror Patrick Kirkland gives an inside look at how he and his fellow arbiters of the law tackled the lack of physical evidence, the testimonies of the accused and accusers, and their duty as they reached the unpopular verdict.
Some may view this as a way for jurors to make-up for lost income while serving on jury duty; however, others will be bothered by the idea of individuals profiting from jury service, which most consider a civic responsibility. Also, Kirland's publication may come under even greater criticism than previous efforts by jurors to sell their story because many people disagreed with the jury's verdict.
New Jersey Star Ledger: NY rape cop juror's memoir stirs outrage
It's being sold on the blog Gothamist, available for $2.99 on the Kindle. The title?
"Confessions of a 'Rape Cop' Juror." As if the acquittal of these two New York City police officers didn't already stir up enough outrage.
The two cops' account of the night they spent at the East Village apartment of a drunken woman they'd escorted home was pretty flimsy. But it was reportedly the lack of DNA evidence and the heavy intoxication of the accuser that crippled the prosecution.
Now, this juror, copywriter Patrick Kirkland, is suggesting something consensual might have gone on between the semi-conscious woman and one of the officers.
"What if the two became close? What if they hit it off, somewhere between the taxicab and the dead roach? A moment that turned into conversation, that turned into flirting? What if it all led to something that Moreno thought was consensual?" he muses.
The idea that sex between a cop and a sleeping or blacked-out woman could have been consensual is even more icky than making a buck off her rape allegation.
For an excellent law review article on jurors acting as quasi journalists see, Mary Strauss, Juror Journalism, 12 Yale L. & Pol'y Rev. 389, 408 (1994).
