13. MANDI MAY JURY - October, November 2019 If you stand at the entrance to courtroom 5D and look out the window, you will see an expanse of overgrown pavement and rubble. This was once Orlando developer Syd Levy's vision of "The Mall Of America" Seminole County style. It was called Flea World. A few decades later, Orlando and Orange County had grown into an economically vibrant area. People in Seminole County had a similar vision for their own future. So the popular and successful Flea World was demolished to make room for a new mixed-use development called "The Reagan Center," a beautiful and progressive campus of polished steel and glass. However many years later, after however many promises, grand plans, and signed contracts, The Reagan Center is still a pile of rubble. And Seminole County is still a heroin-addled backwoods shithole. It is a perfect metaphor for the people who built and work in the criminal courthouse across the street: Trying to be "The Reagan Center" but stuck as derelicts selling fantasies. Mandi's jury was just a rough bunch of people right off. Much to my disappointment, it was not like Scott's. It was just a completely different group of people. Maybe it was a different time of year, or a different part of the voter registration cycle, so they got the jurors from a different place. Was it because of a different election cycle, Pelosi instead of Trump? The whole juror pool to select from, everyone who walked into the courtroom, were like some miserable blue collar people in their own little angry unhappy worlds, who were sick or crying or didn't want to be there. One of the potential jurors was a sort of top-heavy woman like a sack of potatoes, Amanda something, who kept putting her dirty feet up on the benches in the back of the courtroom and acting offended. She told me she knew Mulrenin. I told her they probably weren't going to pick her to be on the jury, but she still had to stay through the process. If she said she knew Mulrenin and immediately got to walk out, probably everybody would say they knew Mulrenin like a run on the bank. I told the judge one of the jurors knew Mulrenin, and they brought her up and put her in the box with the other jurors. Amanda sat right in the jury box, and made a loud and self-important declaration that she had inside information from knowing people involved in the case when it happened and, based on what she knew, she could not possibly find Mandi innocent. Like OMG no way could I find her innocent based on what I know! That was a nice thing for all the other jurors to hear. Then that prospective juror Amanda, from Mulrenin's close social circle of aging single white trash females, rushed disrespectfully out of the courtroom like it was sick and immoral to even give Mandi a trial and not execute her right there. She flashed me the two-fingered victory sign as she passed by, to signal her victory over the dumb fucks who wasted her time and suggested there should be a fair trial and she should consider Mandi's innocence. Judge Recksiedler called to her and stopped her right as she was slamming through the doors. When Mulrenin died, Amanda the juror received text messages from other people who knew Mulrenin. They told her what happened. They weren’t there. What they told her happened, came straight from Detective Sprague. So you have jailhouse witnesses in the witness box, who read Sprague’s narrative in the newspaper thanks to Jose Baez. You have normal witnesses in the witness box like Neisha Cintron and Denise Smith, who changed their testimony based on what Sprague told them. And now you even have jurors in the jury box, who got Sprague’s narrative secondhand, and imagine they know what happened and know Mandi is guilty and have a passionate interest in justice. All this on top of grotesque Alison Smolarek with her fake little-girl voice, who no boy at UCF ever noticed. And she will do whatever she has to, to get even with an evil stripper in this unjust world that God created, and win the favor of her male coworkers at the ASPD. There is crime in Seminole County for sure, all these predictable lowlifes taking the life of a young person Mandi May, for no other reason than being stupid and jealous and self-important. And Phil Archer stands behind the worst tendencies, the aggressive evil nature of man, to take the life of a young person. IV-66