Take a look at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Incarceration_in_the_United_St...

Millions in prison, massively disproportionate to the rest of the world.

If jurors in Seattle have become skeptical of the claims that police and prosecutors make without evidence, the blame should fall squarely on decades of innocent people being sent to jail and minor infractions sending people to prison for years due to police lying, fabricating evidence, destroying evidence and prosecutors filing charges for far more severe crimes than what really occurred.

You're fortunate that your only experience of the failure of policing in America is in the most recent awakening against the unreliability of police and prosecutors. For many families, their lives have been destroyed after watching their loved ones be brutalized in prisons because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time and were victimized by the police and prosecutors.

How do you know he didn't buy the car from the thief?

We had a similar issue with the hit and run of my grandfather: even though video evidence found the car and later saw the suspect leave the car, the detectives worried a defence attorney would argue someone else may have been driving at the time the accident (e.g his wife), and therefore "beyond reasonable doubt" might be questioned.

In the end, the detectives managed to collect enough evidence to seek a conviction, and the experience taught me a lot of "unreasonable" doubts are often considered "reasonable."

I was in a jury pool not in Seattle for a guy that already pled guilty for GTA, so it was just the sentencing part. The defense attorney asked if I thought it might be possible to sentence the minimum. I said yes. The prosecutor asked if I thought I could give the the maximum sentence of 99 years. I said for stealing a car? I was bounced from the pool. So maybe juries in Seattle have had their fair share of prosecutorial shenanigans as well???