A DeKalb County juror spoke out after he and fellow jurors convicted a woman Wednesday of obstructing police after she was expelled from the Decatur library.
Harris Simmons said the court system never should have been involved in the issue.
"I was puzzled and I couldn't sleep last night," he said Thursday evening in an exclusive interview with the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "And it wasn't about the verdict."
Simmons said the verdict and sentence for Donnetta Foster were fair.
"When I was through, I asked, ‘Why is this case in court?'" he said. "This was something the prosecuting and defense attorneys should've gotten together to handle before it ever came to court."
Foster was in the library on Oct. 11, to download information from one of the public computers for a job interview the next day, she said in court.
Her then-14-month-old son, Savon, began making noise, and library staff eventually shut down her computer and asked her to leave.
A library supervisor instructed staff to call police, after saying Foster was unruly, and officers escorted her out.
Outside the library, the then-19-year-old Foster encountered a Decatur police sergeant who she asked repeatedly to hear her side of the story as he repeatedly asked her to leave the property.
Foster admitted from the stand Wednesday that she became agitated, which prompted her nearly 50-minute, profanity-laden tirade against the sergeant.
“As an adult in the library or the officer outside, this shouldn’t have gotten to that point,” Simmons said. “The supervisor could’ve talked to her for more than the two minutes she said she did. And the officer could’ve said, ‘tell me a little bit about what’s going on.
“But he didn’t, and she didn’t. Both said ‘move on.’”
Simmons said such behavior on the part of the adults is frightening, considering the potential trouble teens and youth can find themselves in when they don’t feel they're being heard.
“I think we all need to sit back and watch how we handle these young people,” he said “I don’t think it would’ve escalated if they had taken time to address the issue.”
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