“The
purpose of a jury is to guard against the exercise of arbitrary power--to make
available the common sense judgment of the community as a hedge against the
overzealous or mistaken prosecutor and in preference to the professional or
perhaps over conditioned or biased response of a judge.” Byron White
On
June 13, 1986, of a photographer named William J. Kelly Jr., was wrongly
arrested him for a sexually abusing and illicitly photographing his own two
children. Kelly was initially held
without bond and jailed for seven days before he was released on bail.
Kelly
said the police coerced his children into making statements that he sexually
abused them and asked if the children if they ever "fooled around"
with their father. When they said
"no", cops warned the children that they might be sent to a juvenile
detention home if they didn't change their story.
Kelly's
10-year-old daughter said that when she told the cops that her father had not
indecently touched her or photographed her, that the cops said if you don't
tell the truth, you'll go to juvenile jail . . . so I told him yes . . . . I thought if he heard what he wanted to hear
everything would be all right." In
August of 1987, a federal jury found that the cops violated the civil rights
and granted him a paltry $55,000.00