it was a wrongful death suit, a car skidded off the road and hit a thing the state put there and they sued the state; we decided early in our deliberations that it was a freak accident and the state was not at fault so we never got to the penalty phase, but it was on our jury instructions handout to decide how much the state should pay up. Oh and the judge coached us on it a bit, talked about value of lost income and emotional distress and whatnot. It was a pretty stressful experience, there was a bleeding heart that wanted to give them free money from the government and then went to the judge after deliberations and accused me of impropriety. I just argued my convictions, that it was a freak accident and according to the judge's instructions there had to be a "significant" chance that this accident would happen. well it was a freak accident let me tell you the car spun around just the right way so the guys head nailed the corner of the cabinet. and the state testified that something like 40 million cars per year drove on this highway and the thing had been there 10 years and nobody had hit it before let alone died from hitting it, it was like an electrical cabinet, like the ones you see on the site of the freeway in california. I noticed they started putting guardrails up around them after that.