Word: mistrials
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...judge declared a mistrial Friday after a deadlocked jury failed to deliver a decision in the case of a former Harvard graduate student charged with manslaughter...
...despite the B-movie cast of characters, the stakes in this case were actually pretty high. The fact that it ended in a mistrial - coming shortly after a jury acquitted or hung on all counts in the Holy Land Foundation case in Texas, which had been the government's showcase terrorism-financing prosecution - is striking. If the government can't win this kind of case, it may show that juries cannot get behind preemptive prosecutions - that, perhaps, they don't agree with prosecutor Jacqueline Arango, who said in her closing arguments, "The government need not wait until buildings come down...
Bowen says that the court's vocabulary ban hurt her credibility with the jury because she had to remain so cognizant of word choice as she testified, knowing that one mistake could result in a mistrial. "At first I just wanted a conviction," she says, "but now I want to be able to tell my testimony without language obstruction and have a jury decide...
...been expanded to include the terms "sexual assault kit" and "sexual assault nurse." On Bowen's behalf, protesters demonstrated outside the Lincoln courthouse, and a petition, which Bowen signed, circulated on the Internet to change Nebraska law. Because of the publicity surrounding the case, Judge Cheuvront declared a mistrial during jury selection, accusing Bowen of inciting public furor over her case. "Ms. Bowen and her friends hoped to intimidate this court and interfere with the selection of a fair and impartial jury," he wrote in his July 12 decision...
...victim and assailant were among the words that could not be uttered in a rape trial, after the defense argued they were "unfairly inflammatory." More neutral terms like sex were allowed. The first trial ended in a hung jury, and on July 12 the second attempt was declared a mistrial because of the case's newfound publicity, driven in part by the outraged plaintiff, Tory Bowen, who says, "What happened to me was rape...