Yabbut...
At the end, the judge came back and asked the general question about there being
anything else the potential jurors thought the court ought to know. If Hogan
had felt like the judge had run by him earlier and didn't want to interrupt or
grab attention back from the flow of the judge's questions, at that last
question he had an opportunity to fill in the blanks...and he didn't do it.
Now one might claim to excuse him on the grounds that it slipped his mind by
then, but that's awfully thin.
On the whole, I think Hogan is rationalizing as fast as he can to avoid facing
up to the fact that he lied to court, either through commission or omission.
He's probably desperate by now to make sure it's "omission".
This kind of behavior is *extremely* common cases involving schools and teachers
getting entangled in freedom of religion issues. (Not to say that anything even
remotely like that is going on here, only to say that it a common aspect of
human nature seen in other types of cases.)
--W. H. Heydt[ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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| I can't really imagine that he wanted to tell the whole truth in voir dire but
was somehow prevented from doing so by the format of the questions. That
doesn't pass the laugh-test.
He could have answered the question starting
with "Yes, I've had a couple of cases." and then he would have been questioned
about them until the Judge and lawyers were completely satisfied.
Instead,
he volunteered info about one case, and ONLY one case.
It isn't completely
clear from the transcript whether he was all done explaining, or whether the
Judge was in a rush to move on. But either way -- if Hogan had intended to
finish answering the question, all he would have had to do is hold up his
hand.
I can think of about three possible explanations for what
happened (one of which is quite implausible):
(1) He knew
his answer was incomplete, but he was intimidated by the questioning, and when
the Judge moved on he just felt relieved that he wasn't "on the spot" anymore,
and he kept silent. And at no time afterwards, did he come forward and
volunteer that information to the Judge or to the bailiff or to the other jurors
(who presumably would have told the Judge). This scenario seems very unlikely
to me. Wouldn't he feel guilty or something? He's outspoken enough to sway the
jury and then go give media interviews about it, so if he wanted to tell the
Judge about his Seagate lawsuit and bankruptcy I'm sure he would
have.
(2) He knew his answer was incomplete, and either it was
malicious and intentional, or he had convinced himself that he was doing the
right thing through some sort of self-delusion. This seems most likely to me
(although I don't have any idea if it was malicious or not).
(3) He
was genuinely unaware that his answer was not sufficient. He started talking
about the case, and his train of thought followed that, and by the time the
Judge replied he had sort of forgotten the exact scope of the original question,
and ended up giving a rather misleading answer but not realizing he had done so.
(Maybe he realized it later during the trial, or maybe he didn't... but the
point would be that in this scenario, he didn't deliberately lie to get on the
jury, but sort of "accidentally" misled the Judge and lawyers and then to his
happy surprise, made it onto the jury.)
I think scenario (3) is
sort of unlikely, but I'm not prepared to dismiss it out of hand--we've seen
this juror make some mighty odd pronouncements in the media about prior art,
about patent eligibility, about using his own personal experiences to sway the
other jurors (in direct contravention of the jury instructions), etc.
Accurately following a precise train of thought is difficult for some people;
it's mildly surprising to see it in an engineer, but not completely unheard
of.
And if that were the case, he would probably not be aware of it (e.g. Dunning-Kruger
effect). [ Reply to This | Parent | # ]
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