In a popular election, writes Free Press columnist Brian Dickerson, no one would care whether a hold-out juror acted out of genuine conviction (the incumbent's policies are misguided) or psychotic delusion (the incumbent is a space alien dispatched here to destroy the Earth); all that would matter was that she was outvoted.
But in the jury room, a single naysayer can fight an army to a draw. In the case of Bobby Ferguson, she effectively neutralized a roomful of peers who wanted to burn the defendant at the stake.
In a rational world, any such reprieve would be only temporary; armed with the knowledge that 10 of 11 jurors were prepared to convict him, Ferguson would have a powerful incentive to strike a plea deal with prosecutors, knowing that in the long run, the writing was on the wall.
