HOW CAN I FACE MY FAMILY?
As I suggested at the outset, a typical juror faces the prospect of returning home and having to explain to his or her spouse why they have acquitted someone charged with a criminal offense. What follows was Warren Burnett’s explanation to the jury in Delia Gonzales’ trial:
“Your lives have now touched that process and they are never going to be the same. You are ‘they’.
Now, let’s just say that it’s two weeks or a month from now and you have returned to your everyday lives, secure with your family, and some neighbor says, ‘I heard you were up down in federal court, what kind of a case was it? Do you want to talk about it?’ ‘Yes. I will talk to you about it. They had a woman on trial, wife of a lawyer, worked in his office in Del Rio.’ ‘What did she do?’ ‘They claimed that she induced aliens to come into the United States.’
How in anybody’s name can you induce an alien?
‘Well, it was worse than that. They claimed that she was inducing wives to want to be with husbands, fathers with children.’
‘Good Lord?’”
