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Home > Blogs > West Chester News and Issues > Archives > 2008 > June > 18 > Entry
The strange wheels of justice
Sorry for the lack of posts for the last couple of days. I’ve been in court.
Not as a participant, thank goodness, but as an observer.
A funny place, the courtroom. You never know what you’re going to see.
I was covering the first trial West Chester Twp. resident Terrance Candidate faces this month. You can read the story I wrote for the paper here.
What I didn’t mention in the story, however, was the collective surprise several people expressed at the verdict: Candidate was found guilty on four of five counts, thought for all the world it looked like he was headed for five guilties.
The prosecutor laid out a case I thought was pretty convincing: based on the timeline laid out by witnesses and police, there were only a few minutes between the time Ronald Spurlock’s car was stolen from the Rave parking lot and witnesses saw the car, driven by Candidate, crash in Mason, about five miles away.
The one catch was that Spurlock’s description of his attacker varied from other witnesses’ descriptions of Candidate at spots in Mason. The defense attorney latched on to that in his closing argument.
Was it improbable that another person stole the car, found Candidate on the side of the road and gave/sold/whatever the car to him in a matter of one or two minutes after the robbery? Logic says so, but there was no rock-solid evidence to prove it one way or another. The grey area - the “what if” - was enough to create reasonable doubt for the jury.
I wasn’t privy to the juror’s thoughts, nor was I at the Rave in December when the robbery took place. I don’t know what happened so I put my faith, like most other law-abiding citizens, in the judicial system’s ability to find the truth. But as a spectator, I have to say I was impressed by the way a shred of doubt in the hands of a skilled attorney can be the difference between guilt and non-guilt on a charge.
Truth be told, though, one “not guilty” may not mean much for the 23-year-old defendant. He faces decades in prison for a slew of other charges to be tried next week, including kidnapping, grand theft and felonious assault. I’ll have more on that one, as a dutiful journalist and interested observer of justice at work. Stay tuned.
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