Where is God in All This?

Reflections on a Jury Trail

By Lanny Peters

Pastor, Oakhurst Baptist Church

March 24, 2002

Last Sunday’s funeral service for Sarah Woolf will be one of those times that will remain forever in the collective memory of this congregation. With the sanctuary filled to capacity and more than 200 people participating through live video in the Fellowship Hall, long timers tell me that it was the largest event ever in our church. But that was not what made it so special. What made it special was how everyone present poured their hearts into the service as we remembered Sarah and the impact she had on our lives.

In yesterday’s Atlanta paper, reporter Mike King explained how Sarah’s story "inspired not just her family and high school friends but also many people who had not met her." They quoted her father Bill who said, "Sarah was a really great kid and the reaction of the kids around her was remarkable and worthy of telling. But on the front page (three days in a row), with everything else that was happening in the world? That’s still so strange."

And then Bill answered his own question, adding, "My guess is that we all hunger for community in this disjointed world in which we live. And the chance to show people acting like a community struck some chord."

The article let Bill’s answer stand as the best explanation, noting "Few stories we have printed over the years have drawn more praise and thanks than reporter Michelle Hiskey’s story about Sarah and the larger Decatur community that rallied behind her year-long struggle to live a normal life with a vicious form of cancer."

After the memorial service last Sunday, the Woolf family amazingly somehow managed to have the physical and emotional strength to greet each one of us who wanted to give a hug or say a word, however inadequate, of love and appreciation for Sarah and for them. It was such a powerful experience of sadness, gratitude, and community that it was about all I thought about and talked of with my family the rest of the evening.

I was already in bed that night when I suddenly remembered that I was supposed to call to see if I would have jury duty the next day. Since Monday is my day off, I got out of bed to call the number, really hoping that I would not even have to report to the courthouse. But the recorded message told me I needed to be there promptly at 8:30, so I groaned and went to bed.

When I arrived the next morning, a neighbor of Bill and Donna’s who had been present at the service recognized me and talked to me about how powerful an experience it was for her. We both were still feeling the effects of all the emotions from that service and were hoping we might be dismissed from jury duty as quickly as possible. But about 10:30, both of us had our names called to go to the fifth floor, to the courtroom of Judge Gail Flake. Over the years, I have been summoned about every two years for jury duty but have never served. I either did not have to show up, or sat all day on Monday without getting called upon. Twice when I went into the jury pool I was quickly dismissed.

When I heard what this particular case was to be about, I was absolutely sure that would happen this time. The judge told us the trial would involve a man charged with six counts of child molestation; two of them aggravated child molestation. We were asked if we had a family member who had ever been molested, and I said that I have a niece who was molested by her stepfather. When asked if I had been involved in counseling people in my congregation who had been molested, I told them that I had on several occasions. We were dismissed for lunch, and I was certain I would return to find myself released.

When they read the numbers of the twelve people and one alternate who were to serve, I was stunned my number was called. I had been in such total denial I would not be called I had made numerous appointments and had scheduled meetings all week. I was thinking how to tell the judge how difficult it would be for me to serve when a woman who was a surgeon spoke up and said, "Judge, I am sorry but I have four surgeries scheduled for tomorrow. I will not be able to serve." The judge calmly said, "Doctor, I am sorry too, but you will need to reschedule your surgeries." I looked at my appointment book and couldn’t top that.

After instructions from the judge, we heard opening statements. We were told the state would try to prove the man sitting between his two attorneys had molested a twelve-year-old girl who was the daughter of his girlfriend. Swiftly, I was plunged into the most intimate world of a family that I had never heard of but who had lived perhaps two miles from my home.

We first heard from a young woman who was a cousin that the girl tried to first tell about what was going on. She did alert the mother who confronted her daughter and boyfriend and both denied it.

We next heard the alleged victim, now almost fourteen. She told us she cared a lot for the mother’s boyfriend; in fact she had known him since she was seven years old. She and her sisters often called him Daddy. He was a long distance trucker, and it appeared he lived with them when he was not on the road. The lease for their home was in his name, and he gave them money and took them places. She described how the incidents ended for a long time after her cousin called that day and how she had hoped it was over. She had not wanted to upset the family situation. But then one morning perhaps a year later, he did something that made her think it was starting all over again. At school, she got physically sick from worrying about it.

An alert teacher noticed and the girl told her some of the story. Her teacher notified the school counselor, and before long a police detective who specializes in crimes against children was brought in. The detective heard enough to call DFACS and that very night she was placed in a children’s shelter and later in a foster home. That was the last day the girl lived with her mother and sisters.

We next heard from the girl’s sister, who seemed to have witnessed one incident. We heard from the detective who first investigated the case, then a counselor at the Georgia Center for Children, a private non-profit organization, who had interviewed her. We then heard from the mother, whose sympathies clearly were with the boyfriend. She did not believe he had not done this and all this had unfairly broken up her family, as her other two daughters had later been taken out of the home. Finally, we heard from the accused. He seemed to be a very nice man, and showed no anger toward the girl. He just proclaimed he was totally innocent, and none of the incidents had happened.

The defense re-called one witness, the counselor and then we heard closing arguments. Of course, what I have described is a bare bones account of complex testimony that had taken the better part of three days.

In closing, the defense made a case that the girl had been carefully coached and pointed out inconsistencies in her story. The defense lawyer also brought the issue of race into the picture. The victim and her family are black, the prosecution and the counselor are white. In closing, the state painted a picture of a young girl who had a horrible secret and tried to hide it for years because she was sacred no one would believe her. The defense used the analogy of water building up in a dam until the pressure caused the dam to break. She told someone, but the dam was patched up. Eventually it cracked again, and burst, the truth finally coming out.

The judge in her instructions reminded us the defendant was presumed to be innocent until proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt. She told us this did not mean beyond a shadow of a doubt. We were to consider the evidence admitted, the rules of law that apply which we were given, and our own common sense and experience.

Let me pause here to address the question some may be asking. What kind of sermon is this? Better yet, does this even qualify for a sermon?

This week I spent my evenings rescheduling my appointments and responding to phone calls and e-mails and the pile of stuff in my office I had previously planned to get done, while trying to spend just a few minutes with my family. Since I spent about 40 hours in our court system, my normal sermon preparation process of spending time with the biblical texts was totally disrupted. I finished up on Friday about 6:30 and for the first time I was allowed to talk to someone about all this. My wife lovingly listened to all I needed to say. Saturday I finally got to my office to prepare a sermon for today, and I realized all I had been given me this week was this experience. Our covenant states, "I will study the Bible, meditate, and pray so that I will more fully experience the presence of God." But our covenant wisely says in the next statement that we are to be sensitive to God’s message as it comes from other sources as well.

What I would like to invite you further into this experience with the question in mind: "Where is God in all this?" and "Is there a connection to this Palm/Passion Sunday that leads us into Holy Week."

I will have some ideas about that, but I invite you to listen for something I may have missed about the presence of God in such a situation.

We were sent to the jury room to elect a spokesperson on Thursday just before lunch. The jurors took about 30 seconds to elect: guess who. When someone suggested me, I groaned and thought, "Oh no, this is the last thing I need."

Then I realized one thing I knew something about from being pastor of this church was a process of decision making by consensus, and I agreed. Over lunch, I thought about it and when we returned I proposed we begin by reaching consensus on ground rules. That worked nicely as we began to build a sense of working together.

First, we realized we were a good cross section of Dekalb County. Six of us were black and six were white. Seven were men and five women, including the neighbor of Bill and Donna I had met that morning. We ranged in age from 20 to about 70 years old. We had a mix of single and married, and there was a wide range of educational levels and experiences. Our vocations varied: we had an investment banker for corporate accounts, two nurses, a hospital laundry room worker, a nanny, a secretary, a retired dry cleaners owner, a salesman, and the anchor for the morning news at a local station which several of the jurors watched regularly.

Together, we were being asked to deliberate about the dynamics of this family and try to determine whether a serious crime had been committed. We had to reach an agreement with one another about which of the contradictory stories we were hearing were most credible. The stakes were enormous, and we all felt the weight of our task. We quickly discovered we each would rather have been somewhere else. Over the next two days, we would spend about nine hours together listening to each other, arguing, reminding each other of what was said, and reviewing testimony.

Early on, we discussed whether race was an issue. One juror said, "As a black man, I experience racism in some form just about every day. But I do not believe race is an issue in this case." We agreed the defense attorney had no basis for this line of argument.

When we began, only the 20 year-old black man was absolutely convinced that the defendant was guilty. An older black man was the first to voice he thought the defendant might be completely innocent and that the girl may have made it up. Along the way, many of us changed our positions. I was undecided about several counts for a while until a young black woman convinced me to change position. We laughed when on another count her position was where I was on the previous count, and I was trying to convince her based on the very argument she had given me. At times, we deadlocked and went on to consider another count. We would get exasperated and feel we would never be able to sort out the truth, then suddenly, we all would be in complete agreement and the truth seemed obvious. At various times, different ones of us we would empathize with one or another of the characters in this drama.

What we all felt was the tragedy of it all. A family that had been together and who loved each other, had been torn apart and would likely never be restored. We could not fix that. Over and over, we would have to remind ourselves of what our task was, and what it was not. I would try to keep the process going and at times felt I was doing a good job.

Other times, I would get so caught up in my emotions I would break the ground rules and someone else would have to bring us back to them.

There were times when we rolled with laughter as we found ourselves talking with strangers about intimate sexual issues that some in the group had never talked about with their closest friends. Occasionally, I would good naturedly ask the group to pause in case one older woman needed to catch her breath from hearing the kind of talk she had never heard before.

Like the rest of the group, there were times I listened openly and other times I dug my heels in. Most of us in the room were in the minority opinion at one time or another. For a while, I was the only one holding a particular position against the other eleven.

We were able to agree on two counts after three hours together. The next day, we struggled mightily with the others, especially when we began looking at two counts of aggravated child molestation with more at stake. We were troubled by inconsistencies in everybody’s testimony. The state had asked us to look at credibility not memory. The defense reminded us a man’s freedom was at stake.

We pondered the defense’s reminder that if we were wrong, an innocent man would spend much of the rest of his life in prison. We remembered the state’s attorney telling us this girl deserved justice and though nothing we could do would likely make her life better, we could make it a lot worse.

It was one of the hardest things I have ever been part of. By Friday afternoon, we were exhausted. We finally reached consensus on five counts. None of us would ever know beyond the shadow of a doubt, because we had no way of ever being absolutely certain because we did not see what had happened. But we all believed the defendant was guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of four counts of child molestation and one count of aggravated child molestation. We deadlocked eleven to one on the one final count.

The judge asked us to keep trying to come to an agreement. An interesting thing she said was that no other jury could do any better than we could. We tried again, but the lone juror did not budge. She had a reasonable doubt that he was not guilty. For a while, some of us were angry. It seemed some were just worn out and ready to quit. To her credit, the lone juror refused to change her position just to get it over with, exactly as the judge had instructed us.

In the end, we decided to leave the last charge undecided. On five counts, as a group we all believed he was guilty. He truly seemed like a decent man with a terrible sickness. We came back into the courtroom to render our verdicts, and I felt a deep burden. That morning as I left my house it was the first day of spring and it was beautiful. Now I would be reading a verdict to a man who said he was innocent. In fact, he had refused to plea bargain when he might have gotten many fewer years in prison than he was likely to get now. I would be reading five counts and saying guilty as he listened. I would later learn that he could receive up to 110 years in prison, in other words the rest of his life. He may receive less, but that is out of our hands.

I return to my original questions. I ask you, members of the jury, to answer these questions. Given this experience I have shared with you, "Where is God in all this?" Secondly, "Is there a connection to this experience and this day we call Palm/Passion Sunday that leads us into Holy Week?"

First, there was something about the experience that reminded me of what church is all about in its best forms.

We as a jury were a group pf people were engaged in issues of ultimate importance, things like judgment and grace, punishment and forgiveness, justice and peace. We had to reach a point where we had faith in something we could never know for sure.

In fact, it felt enough like church I had been tempted to start our deliberations with prayer. I told the jury after we had reached our verdicts that I had considered that. Others said they had thought I might. But I told them that I wanted to start with total respect for each person and some of them might be Muslim or Jewish or of no faith and each was to be respected.

Still, I believe God was in that process. I will not go so far as to say we knew what the will of God was. But I did feel God’s presence. I also was glad I was not asked to make the decision alone. It would not have been as wise a decision, as was the decision of 12 total strangers. It reminded me of my conviction that likewise, a church will always make better decisions than any one person. There are too many pastors who do not understand that. Their need for authoritarian control causes them to miss the liberation which comes with trusting a community to be wiser than they could possibly be alone.

I looked for God’s presence in the family that was broken apart by all this and had to come into court to air their dirty laundry before strangers. As broken as they seemed, they are no more broken than the family of King David and countless other biblical families who were involved with incest and rape and murder and far worse things than this family. But God did not abandon King David’s family.

I will go through Holy Week with new eyes this week. Before I had hardly finished reading the charges, deputies appeared in the courtroom. Chris Magee, whose name is now of public record for these convictions, was led away in shackles. A jury of which I was a part believed beyond a reasonable doubt that he was guilty of five terrible crimes against a child who loved and trusted him. It was not my decision. It was our decision. Still, I had trouble looking him straight in the eyes. On this Palm Sunday, I believe Christ went with Chris Magee out of that courtroom. And I believe God forgives him. And I truly pray the state of Georgia will provide this man with some real help and attempt to rehabilitate him.

I believe Christ was also with the others in that family. Christ is with a sister who witnessed her sister being abused and reportedly reflected what is often said to victims of abuse, "You know you let him do it." Christ is with the mother who appeared to the jury to be the only one we all agreed was lying about just about everything, who seemingly sided with this man even against her own children. After the trial, we learned that she too was a victim of domestic abuse, and I can only wonder what terrible secret lies beneath her enormous anger.

And Christ is with the young girl who somehow found the strength to do what the jury came decided was the real truth. Through a process that took us nine hours, we came to believe this young girl finally told someone who believed her. And even though, it tore her family apart, she continued courageously to tell the truth. She still loves her mother. She cares for the man who abused her. She truly wishes he had not done it. But she told the truth, even said it made her life hell and she even contemplated suicide as an easier way out.

All this gets very close to me. As I said, my niece was sexually molested by a stepfather she loved and trusted. Many of you will recall that Starr lived with us for a year and was part of this community for that time. We attempted to do what we could to help her turn her life around. It altered our own family life in some ways, and it did not achieve what we hoped it would. It just so happened that Starr called and left a message for me on the night the trial ended. It was an upbeat message and I pray she is continuing to heal.

I want to tell Starr about this girl who like her told the truth at great cost. This is what 12 strangers from all walks of life came to believe when we were put into a room and asked to make sense of what we had heard in three days.

It was not what I had planned to do this week. If I had not been randomly picked to show up at DeKalb Courthouse, and if I had been dismissed from any jury duty, as I so much wanted, I would have had time to carefully study the texts for today. But what I was given by life, and by God, was this experience. Now my life is forever tied to a man who sits in jail, to a little girl whom I know still has an uphill battle to get over the abuse which has been done to her, and to her family who may or may not ever come back together. It may not even be the best thing if they do.

In the end, as we the jury said goodbye to each other never be together again, we agreed on some other things. One person said the experience had restored some of his faith in the legal system and even in our culture. All of us seemed to be of the same opinion. That does not mean I am not troubled by the state legislature cutting four million dollars for the defense of poor people who cannot afford a lawyer while they put more than that into pork projects like building a peanut museum.

In the middle of the week, yet another study came out showing how black men get longer, more severe punishments for committing the same crime in Georgia. Still, I came away seeing our legal system will work if we do what we can to make it just. As an aside, if the impeachment of Bill Clinton had been given to 12 random citizens rather than 100 politicians, it would have spared us a lot of trouble whatever the outcome.

The week ahead of us is called Holy Week. As we go through the events of this week in Jesus’ life, we will see it is one big mess full of betrayals, denials, and an innocent man who died of a cruel form of capital punishment without being charged or given a fair trial. And even out of this, God is able to bring hope and indeed new life like we never imagined possible. Let me tell you my friends. There is no way to the joy of Easter than right through the horror of the cross. Stay together. You will need each other along the way.