09-05-2014, 04:58 PM
Jurors' Remorse
by Abby Zimet
![[Image: ceci_arrest_good_xoamfptwvocb5spa4izj.jpg]](http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/ceci_arrest_good_xoamfptwvocb5spa4izj.jpg)
A bizarre new twist in the legal and moral clusterf#ck that is the Cecily McMillan trial: Most of the jurors who inexplicably found her guilty of assaulting the cop who sexually assaulted her - none of whom knew the conviction carried a prison sentence - have written the judge seeking leniency for the Occupy activist, arguing "it serves no purpose to Cecily or to society to incarcerate her." Nine of the 12 jurors signed the letter asking for McMillan to get probation or community service, which is what they evidently expected rather than the surreal seven years she now faces, and at least one declared the notion of her doing time "ludicrous." Their shock raises the larger issue of what one critic calls "a judiciary logic stacked against the defendant," along with their apparent blindness to the appalling but evidently by now accepted violence of the NYPD, "rendering McMillan's elbow the most powerful weapon on display in Zuccotti that night." Sentencing is May 19.
![[Image: ceci_tease_screenshot-from-2014-04-05-133258.png]](http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/ceci_tease_screenshot-from-2014-04-05-133258.png)
![[Image: cecilymcm.jpg]](http://www.commondreams.org/sites/commondreams.org/files/imce-images/cecilymcm.jpg)
by Abby Zimet
A bizarre new twist in the legal and moral clusterf#ck that is the Cecily McMillan trial: Most of the jurors who inexplicably found her guilty of assaulting the cop who sexually assaulted her - none of whom knew the conviction carried a prison sentence - have written the judge seeking leniency for the Occupy activist, arguing "it serves no purpose to Cecily or to society to incarcerate her." Nine of the 12 jurors signed the letter asking for McMillan to get probation or community service, which is what they evidently expected rather than the surreal seven years she now faces, and at least one declared the notion of her doing time "ludicrous." Their shock raises the larger issue of what one critic calls "a judiciary logic stacked against the defendant," along with their apparent blindness to the appalling but evidently by now accepted violence of the NYPD, "rendering McMillan's elbow the most powerful weapon on display in Zuccotti that night." Sentencing is May 19.
"You never change things by fighting the existing reality. To change something, build a new model that makes the existing model obsolete.â€
Buckminster Fuller
Buckminster Fuller