of the courtroom that many of the juries I served at least one person with had false impression of what goes on in a trial and what it means. I have seen many examples in those cases but I'll use one as an example.
The trial was a couple of years after the crime was supposedly committed. The police officer gave his side and the defendant painted an opposite picture. One was lying but which one. One juror said that the defendant "said he didn't do it" and that was enough for her. Others believed the police office because "they tell the truth". I noted that both the defendant and officer said they were good friends at the time and liked each other. I also noted that the officer wrote a report at the time of the incident, to me more informative because of their friendship and it was backed up with other evidence presented by the D.A. Unlike Mason and the D.A, who violate court protocol and walk up to and confront witnesses face to face and somehow pull out at the last minute such convincing evidence that the real guilty party stands up and admits their guilt, real trials are not like that at all but many jurors don't evaluate evidence but just expect results like that. If the defense attorney can't pull a rabbit out at the last minute, the defendant must be guilty. Only in one trial did something like that happen but it was the D.A. that pulled out the rabbit but, even then, the defendant did not admit anything so we had to judge the value of the rabbit, not just have an easy time of verifying the guilt.
In the case of the juror who believed that the defendant would not lie, we ended up with a hung jury, 11-1 for guilty. In the "rabbit" case, the defendant was convicted but it took a long time for us to decide.
= new reply since forum marked as read