The Notebook of Alternate Juror No. 4
What it's like to sit in judgment of an alleged child molester
...First up was the slightly rumpled, graying Deputy DA Arnie Klein, a recent transplant from Los Angeles, who kept peering at us over his bifocals. He told us of the victims, "Boys will be boys." We would learn that apparently the two accusers, those young rascals, may have been involved in a series of 911 prank calls that tied the county's emergency system in knots for weeks in early 2007, but they weren't on trial for that. And they were being raised by their grandmother because the mother had some major drug issues and had lost custody of her sons a couple of times, once for sharing her marijuana with them on their eighth birthday. But the mother wasn't on trial either. The defendant, we were told, is the one on trial for a number of alleged crimes, including possession of pornography involving children, and, after a long period of time befriending the boys, repeated molestation.
Road map No. 2 was presented by the defense attorney, Glenn Brown. He told us his client, the defendant, age 23, was an Eagle Scout and assistant leader of his Boy Scout Troop who, yes, befriended many neighborhood boys — and girls — in the trailer park where they all lived, teaching them computer skills, handing out keys to his shed adjacent to the trailer he lived in so they could use his computer to play games when he wasn't around. He was especially close to the two boys, twins. He was a father substitute even, taking them camping, helping with their homework and getting them involved in scouting. Why? Because he, too, had a drug-addled mother, an absent father, and was raised by his grandmother....
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