Don Martelli reports [2] he served on a Suffolk County jury last week in which all the jurors knew the defendant was guilty but voted to acquit him because the prosecutors and police failed to provide the needed evidence:
It's a slippery slope in terms of what you THINK happened versus what you can PROVE happened. It's up to the Commonwealth to provide the proof -- via physical evidence or testimony -- that the accused is guilty of the charges. In this case, we had some cursory evidence, but nothing that tied him to that crime, on that day, at that moment, in those circumstances.
Each juror was frustrated. We knew we were letting a criminal get back on the streets. We knew that he was guilty, but couldn't prove it. We all felt awful.