A member of the Hennepin County jury that convicted Jamal Lindsey Smith in the road-rage murder of a youth baseball coach said the crux of their deliberations wasn't deciding whether Smith was the shooter. Rather, the three-day debate was over if he intended beyond a reasonable doubt to kill him.
"How can you ever know what someone was thinking in their mind when they did something? We really struggled with that. Everyone did," said the juror, who spoke with the Star Tribune under the condition of anonymity out of concerns for their safety.
The juror also said that Smith's testimony in his own defense "didn't make any sense." He contradicted himself when he said that at first he didn't know there was a shooting and thought the loud noise was thunder. Then Smith said it wasn't him but a fellow passenger who fired the shot that killed Jay Boughton, who was driving his teenage son home from a ballgame.
Smith, 34, of Chicago, was found guilty of first- and second-degree murder. The court announced Tuesday that he will be sentenced Oct. 4. A first-degree murder conviction carries an automatic life sentence.
The jury was instructed to not consider the penalty, but after the verdict was announced and the group learned that he faced life in prison, one juror burst into tears, the juror said in a recent phone interview.
Several key pieces of evidence convinced the jury that intention was at play in Boughton's shooting, but there was conflict in reaching a unanimous agreement. The juror said that it took only a couple hours of deliberating for the majority to find Smith guilty of second-degree murder and a third count of unlawful possession of a firearm, but four were on the fence for first-degree murder.
They turned to Judge Nicole Engisch after eight hours of deliberating to share that they could not arrive at a consensus. But Engisch sent them back to the deliberation room, where they remained for another eight hours.
Jurors replayed a video of Smith the day after the shooting showing him and a passenger without remorse, seemingly in a celebratory mood despite Smith having read news reports of the fatal shooting and the frantic search for the suspect vehicle.
"One juror saw that video again and flipped [their vote]," the juror said. "If it was an accidental shooting, how could he have been celebrating?"
In the final hours of deliberations, all but one were convinced Smith was guilty of first-degree murder. To flip the remaining juror, the group discussed the affirmative steps Smith took in a short window of time to execute the shooting.
"The defendant was driving 60 to 70 miles an hour down the highway, in the dark, in a rainstorm. In order to shoot at the victim, he had to control his vehicle. He had to reach across his passenger. Somehow the window was rolled down, and he shot at the victim. I mean, that takes a lot. It wasn't just a happenstance. Things he did preceded the shooting that indicated to us that he intended to do this," the juror said.
Testimony from Wisconsin motorist Dan Knight raised questions of intent. Knight called 911 to report Smith and the two passengers brandishing guns at him while he was driving home from work near Wisconsin Dells just hours before Boughton was shot.
Jurors wondered if Smith was trying to scare Boughton like he did with Knight.
"It didn't prove causality," the juror said. But it did suggest a pattern, and the jury was instructed that circumstantial evidence is equal to direct evidence.
"You don't know what you don't know, but it was my impression that pretty much everyone believed that he was the shooter."
Despite the fact that a nearly all-white jury decided the fate of Smith, who is Black, the juror said the justice system worked as intended. The juror said an impartial jury looked at all the evidence without considering many of the emotional elements of the case, like when Boughton's wife and teenage son testified.
"As much as we were aware that the victim's family was there, I personally was aware that the defendant, who was presumed innocent until proven guilty, did not seem to have anyone there supporting him," the juror said. "The only person that cried for the defendant was the paralegal for his defense attorney. … I thought that was quite sad. You know, one would hope that if you commit a crime, whether you're guilty of it or not, that you would have someone — friends or family — to support you throughout the process."
The juror said that while they will sleep OK at night with the verdict they rendered, "I don't think any of us are immune to the fact that there will be fallout in many people's lives regardless because of what we decided."
The jury's verdict won't bring Boughton back. His two children will grow up without a father. Smith also has seven children and two grandchildren.
"Their father is still being taken away from them. That wasn't lost on us," the juror said.
The juror said justice was appropriately served in this case.
"I don't know how much comfort that gives either to the victim's children or the defendant's children, but I do believe that the system operated as it was meant to," they said. "As many times as the system doesn't work as well as it should, or in the way it should without the biases that it should, in this case, I think that it went as well as it could have."
