Objection!: How High-Priced Defense Attorneys, Celebrity Defendants, and a 24/7 Media Have Hijacked Our Criminal Justice System
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Zobel ruled that “the circumstances in which Defendant acted were characterized by confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice (in the legal sense) supporting a conviction for second-degree murder.”
Since when is brutalizing a helpless infant unable to defend himself not malice? He went on: “Frustrated by her inability to quiet the crying child, she was ‘a little rough with him’ under circumstances where another, perhaps wiser, person would have sought to restrain the physical impulse.” A little rough with him? The baby died. Zobel actually wrote those words in his decision. The Eappens must have been sick at heart, not only over losing their precious baby son in such a bru-3 6
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tal way but also because they saw justice, in the form of Judge Hiller Zobel, fail their beloved son as well.
I met and spoke with Zobel in Atlanta one afternoon. My eyes were obviously playing tricks on me, because in another setting, without the power of the bench or the temptation to abuse that power, he seemed almost grandfatherly. But looks can be deceiving. I will never forget the day Zobel, for all intents and purposes, rewrote the Constitution and not only robbed the Eappens of a jury’s verdict but assaulted Lady Justice herself.
After the judge’s stunning verdict reversal, Woodward had the gall to say she was disappointed in the decision because she was not totally exonerated. She wanted a full acquittal from Zobel. Woodward and her defense team—much like O. J. Simpson, who pledged to find Nicole and Ron’s “real killer”—swore they would convene an independent review team of scientists to reexamine key medical and forensic evidence in the case to prove the true cause of death. Surprise! They haven’t lifted a finger to do it. Not that they needed to. We know who caused Matty’s death. Louise Woodward. And Judge Hiller Zobel let her get away with murder.
J U D G E T E R R Y R U C K R I E G L E —
W H A T A F A N !
In the summer of 2004 in a courtroom in Colorado, Lady Justice was spinning like a top thanks to the ringmaster of the Kobe Bryant case—Judge Terry Ruckriegle. After allowing hours of closed-door questioning of the alleged rape victim on sexual behavior dating back a year before she met Kobe Bryant, he ruled that portions of the young woman’s prior sex life would be brought before the jury. In addition, he then mistakenly released the closed-door transcripts on the Internet.
When the young woman wanted a continuance following that disaster, Judge Ruckriegle refused.
The last “mistaken” release of information was one of many O B J E C T I O N !
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episodes that can be traced back to the very beginning of the trial. The woman’s name, as well as other case-sensitive information—always damning to the alleged victim—was repeatedly leaked. In comparison, nothing remotely disparaging to the defense was ever leaked. While the case was still in county court, Eagle County Judge Frederick Gannett took zero action (besides offering useless lip service) when Bryant’s defense lawyer, Pamela Mackey, stated the young woman’s name in open court multiple times.
That moment set the tone for the trial. Chief Judge Ruckriegle presided over the circuslike atmosphere that dominated the remainder of the proceedings, which ultimately led to the victim deciding to pack her bags and abandon the case. With no one protecting her rights, who can blame her? Whether or not Bryant was guilty of rape, Ruckriegle sent a clear message to rape victims all over the country: The court won’t protect you. You will be mistreated in court and out because of the person wearing the robe. It’s no wonder rape remains one of the single most underreported crimes on the books.
C H A P T E R T W O
W E T H E J U R Y
ON ELEVATORS AND IN RESTAURANTS, AT BUS
stops and airports, I am constantly asked, “What’s the secret to winning cases?” My response is always the same: You win or lose in jury selection. Once the jury’s struck—twelve jurors who hear the case selected from a pool of people—it’s all over. Jury selection is the single most important part of a trial. As a prosecutor, I can say without question, if you fumble your strikes by selecting a jury that’s in a hurry, that doesn’t want to be bothered, that is inherently suspicious of police or is simply cantankerous and not prone to compromise, you’ve got big problems.
The result can be a hung jury, or worse—a not-guilty verdict.
By the time a lawyer stands at the jury rail for opening statement, they must firmly believe what they’re saying is true. Before approach-ing the rail, I always investigated my cases backward and forward myself, in addition to the police investigation. I interviewed witnesses, carefully wrote out by hand their direct-exam, question by question, including notes on the appropriate juncture at which to introduce key physical evidence. I always devised a strategy and prepared the exhibits before the trial began. All of those things can be controlled or at least laid out in advance. The unknown variable in every trial is the secret minds of the jurors: their belief systems, their values, and their O B J E C T I O N !
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mind-sets. These things can’t be controlled, but they can be dealt with through proper preparation.
This country’s jury system is under attack as never before, largely because the juror mind-set has been left mostly unexplored and un-challenged. Many recent cases have resulted in downright shocking verdicts that have left veteran trial watchers and legal analysts shaking their heads in disbelief. But it was events surrounding jurors in three high-profile trials in 2004 that showed, without question, that the jury-selection process and the juror oath as it stands today are simply not working. Chappell Hartridge—the media-obsessed juror in the Martha Stewart trial—the allegedly disagreeable “Juror Number 4” in the Tyco mistrial, and the so-called stealth jurors attempting to fake their way into the jury box in the Scott Peterson case all caused varying degrees of chaos in the courtroom because of their confounding behavior and their unexplored mind-sets.
J U R O R S W H O L O A T H E
T H E O A T H
Hear out my argument and consider the following three examples of a jury system in peril:
E X H I B I T A :
I T ’ S A L L A B O U T M E !
In the Martha Stewart case, everybody pointed the finger but nobody knew exactly whom rightfully to blame for the fact that Chappell Hartridge, Juror Number 8, had gotten on the jury in the first place.
From what I can tell based on court filings, he withheld information during jury selection. The defense claimed that Hartridge lied about his arrest record on a questionnaire when he said he had never been in court other than for a minor traffic violation. Did he forget he’d been arrested for assaulting a woman he lived with? This could have been 4 0
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remedied during voir dire, which coincidentally means “to speak the truth,” but Hartridge never murmured a word. Defense lawyer Robert Morvillo said Hartridge “dishonestly suppressed information concerning a gender-related incident . . . to be able to sit in judgment of a well-known and highly successful woman in a case alleging false statements.”
Hartridge also allegedly failed to disclose on his jury questionnaire that he had been sued three times. The defense filing stated that civil judgments had been entered against him in each case. Hartridge’s alleged juror misconduct alone wasn’t enough for the trial judge to grant Stewart’s request for a new trial. The reality is that, ironically, if the defense had known that Hartridge had been charged with a crime, they probably would have insisted he stay on the jury (“Here’s a guy who’s been accused of wrongdoing before—he’ll side with Martha! We love him!”). The whole thing backfired. If anyone had wanted him off the jury, most likely it would have been the state.
In addition to lying during the jury oath, evidence suggests that Hartridge may have been guilty of juror greed as well. On the day of Martha Stewart’s guilty verdict, he was all about justice, publicly declaring he believed the decision was “a victory for the little guys.” Producers from ever
y network scrambled to get him for their nightly news programs, eager to hear whatever insights he might have to offer about the deliberations. Not surprisingly, he disappeared from his impromptu press conference on the courthouse steps and reemerged soon afterward on NBC’s myriad news outlets. He showed up at all hours of the day and night in the aftermath of the verdict on Dateline NBC, the Today show, and on MSNBC. But Hartridge’s own greed preempted his multimedia moment. Dominick Dunne reported in Vanity Fair that at least one other show on another network dropped him from their lineup when he demanded money and a limousine for his appearance. Court documents filed by Morvillo seeking a new trial also accused Hartridge of seeking money for posttrial interviews. Incidentally, the same papers also alleged that Hartridge embezzled money from a local Little League team. The local Little League? Embezzlement?
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No one knows for sure what Hartridge’s motives were, but evidence suggests he had an issue with Martha Stewart and her millionaire lifestyle. It’s not clear if his agenda involved getting Stewart convicted out of his own pecuniary interest or if he had some other, more personal reason, like exacting revenge against the rich, that was fulfilled by sitting on this jury. While there was no reversal and retrial in the Martha Stewart case because of Hartridge’s lies, the fact that his past didn’t prevent him from sitting on the jury is very troubling. Most people lie to get out of jury duty. It’s very disturbing and completely bizarre to me that today there are people who see their jury summons as a temporary ticket to C-list stardom.
E X H I B I T B :
C A N ’ T W E A L L J U S T G E T A L O N G ?
When taking the jury oath, jurors assume the duty to deliberate with each other in a wholehearted attempt to render a verdict that speaks the truth. During the same head-spinning month that Chappell Hartridge monopolized the small screen, another courtroom meltdown was occurring in the Tyco case. The trial was thrown into chaos when Juror Number 4 was reported to have given the “AOK” sign to the defense team of CEO Dennis Kozlowski and codefendant Mark Swartz while leaving the courtroom. Claims flew that Juror Number 4 was neither impartial, as required by law, nor willing to deliberate—or, for that matter, even able get along with her fellow jurors.
In an astonishing breach of journalistic ethics, the New York Post and the Wall Street Journal revealed the juror’s name. Robbed of her anonymity, seventy-nine-year-old Ruth Jordan went public with her story on 60 Minutes II and denied she made such a gesture. But the ge-nie was out of the bottle. She fell under siege by the media and told the judge she had received a threatening letter as a result of being identified. The judge in the case rightly declared a mistrial. The truth is, even if the jury had come back with a verdict in a timely fashion, there would have been a reversal on appeal because of an alleged threat to 4 2
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the juror. Whether the letter Jordan received was truly threatening is beside the point. The fact that Juror Number 4 perceived it to be so was all that mattered. A coerced jury verdict will not stand.
What disturbs me about this is that it’s unearthed yet another way for defense attorneys to get a mistrial or a reversal. In the Tyco trial, the decision to declare a mistrial was a sound one, though we’re left with some tough questions. How are defense attorneys now going to try to twist and turn the evidence of what a juror said or did in order to get a new trial? Every twitch of a nose, every wink or nod, will open up allegations of juror impartiality. How long will the appeals process be now that there’s a whole new universe—inhabited by the sneaky juror—for the defense to explore? I refer to the defense as the instigator in these situations simply because, in order for there to be an appeal, there must first be a conviction. If the state loses a case, it rarely has grounds for appeal, making this an avenue almost exclusively tailored for the defense. Taxpayers, brace yourselves for a new round of appeals based on grounds like the Juror Number 4 allegations that will make it all the way up to the U.S. Supreme Court. Here’s another news flash: You’ll be paying for the ticket, first class.
E X H I B I T C :
T H E S T E A L T H J U R O R
People who lie in order to make it onto the jury in a high-profile trial have come to be known in the legal community as “stealth jurors.”
They have an agenda—which usually involves delivering their own brand of vigilante justice or profiting from their time in the jury box. If jurors are actually guilty as charged of having these ulterior motives, they become dangerous spoilers for a true verdict.
Scott Peterson’s defense team claimed they spotted such a juror in a retired secretary and take credit for saving the jury. Juror Number 29308 was polite during questioning by the state, insisting she could definitely be fair and impartial. But then, defense attorney Mark Geragos abandoned his usually charming demeanor and went on the attack, O B J E C T I O N !
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grilling her over a senior-citizen bus trip she took to Reno, Nevada.
“Did you tell people on that trip that you passed the test to get on the jury and Scott Peterson is ‘going to get what is due to him’?” Geragos asked. The juror, a volunteer at a senior-citizen center, acknowledged the bus trip but denied talking about the Peterson case. Trial judge Al Delucchi ultimately booted her off the jury.
A short time afterward, Geragos told the judge he’d received a tip that another female juror, a thirty-three-year-old student, had boasted during an online session in a “spirituality” chatroom that she had lied on the questionnaire to get on the jury. When confronted by Geragos about these allegations, she denied them, but she, too, got the judicial boot.
These developments have incredibly far-reaching implications. The more Geragos could trump up the motives of allegedly dishonest jurors, the more likely his accusations become the basis for a venue change or an appeal. A new trial could conservatively cost the state millions, as it took months to get through the sixteen hundred jurors vetted for the trial. The bottom line is that these particular “stealth jurors” may be gone, but the damage has been done, and the system pays for it.
In general, the defense seems to believe the only acceptable juror is an uninformed juror, a juror who never reads the paper, listens to the radio, or watches television. Practically no one escapes hearing the facts reported on high-profile cases. I think people can and must have an opinion—we’re human beings, not turnips. When I prosecuted cases, I wanted jurors who could listen to the evidence and, based on what they heard in the courtroom, reach a fair and impartial decision. The truth, as I see it, is that they are not hard to find.
Most prospective jurors might have commented on what they’ve heard to friends or family. That’s not unusual. What would be unusual is for someone to live in our news-saturated society and not hear about cases. But now, as a result of the developments in these three cases, innocent comments can be held against a juror. In the past, jurors have been “rehabilitated” by attorneys’ getting them to admit in court that, 4 4
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yes, they have heard about the case but will keep an open mind and listen to both sides before rendering a verdict. Up until now, jurors have been taken at their word on their solemn oath. People like Hartridge have given us pause to think about whether that’s actually happening.
The doubts they engender undermine the integrity of the jury and the system.
In court, I was always concerned about what the jurors thought. I had the habit of watching them like a hawk throughout the trial, for any clues in their faces. Now I find I’m even more worried about who exactly the jurors are—just who is sitting in the jury box? What effect will their foibles have on a true verdict? The events in the Stewart, Tyco, and Peterson trials are just the tip of the iceberg. It’s impossible to know how far this will go. If a juror says at the end of a trial, “We knew he did it, and we weren’t gonna let him get away with it,” would that be grounds for a new trial? For throwing out a case?
“stealth juror!” Thankfully, that didn’t happen, and justice was served.
It’s largely because of the strange events in these three headline-grabbing cases that I believe we will see an increasing number of defense attorneys attacking the individuals on the jury—legitimately or not—for statements they may have made. In the Peterson trial example, ultimately the word of a tipster was taken over that of a juror. I still believe that most jurors are like most of us, people who sing in the choir or work around the corner at the local bank or deli—just ordi-O B J E C T I O N !
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nary people with no hidden agenda. Most of them don’t even want to be there but attend out of a sense of duty to our justice system. Very rarely are you going to find somebody dying to get on jury service, anxious to be away from home or work. That’s why Hartridge and others like him are so upsetting, because they give the system a bad name, leaving in their wake the impression that juror misconduct happens all the time.
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