The Juror as Celebrity

By Bennett H. Beach

Does postverdict press scrutiny prevent abuses or create them?

Last April before the trial began, the federal prosecutor warned that the jurors in the case would "become celebrities of a sort." And after they decided that John Hinckley was not guilty by reason of insanity,* the twelve Washington men and women were indeed pinioned in the spotlight of press attention. Reporters and TV crews were waiting when they arrived home. Several found the coverage so noisome that they temporarily moved out. Two others took the opportunity to complain publicly that they had been pressured into agreeing to the verdict. Eager journalists flew one of them to New York City and Boston for TV shows. Recalls Juror Maryland Copelin: "I did just about every radio show there is. I didn't know there were so many of them."

The experience of the Hinckley jurors may have been welcome to some and unwelcome to others. But it was not unique. Citizens chosen to serve in major trials these days may be well advised to pack some Pan-Cake makeup along with their toothbrushes, for much of the global village is likely to be looking in. A Massachusetts lawyer tells the story of some women who were upset when an extended court session forced them to miss hairdresser appointments they had scheduled because of the TV coverage. Jurors judging Convict Author Jack Henry Abbott received hate calls after announcing their verdict. In Atlanta, those sitting on the case of Accused Killer Wayne Williams promised one another not to talk to the press. Explains one: "We didn't want harassment when it was all over."

But vowing to keep mum may not stop the harassment. Local papers will often assign a team of four or five reporters to badger jurors in the first days after a trial. Says the New York Post's combative Steve Dunleavy: "I love to get inside a juror's head." Anthea Frankl sat on the White Plains, N.Y., murder trial growing out of the Stouffer's Inn fire that killed 26 business executives. She saw so many newspeople that she began to rate them, from the New York Times ("totally ethical") to a local Westchester County, N.Y., paper that printed a significant error although she had warned them of it.

Jurors sometimes have their own reasons for talking. Money is one. When journalists declined to pay a fee to one Hinckley juror, her husband complained, "Why should she spend her time so you can make money on her? What's in it for her?" Another motivation for telling their stories is to fight back. When the judge in the Stouffer's Inn case threw out the jury's conviction, the next day's newspapers were filled with disgruntled reactions from jurors defending their verdict.

Beoties Emory, 39, fought back in a different way. Emory was the lone holdout on a twelve-person jury that wanted to impose the death penalty for a heinous murder in Decatur, Ga. Angry at being stymied by Emory, Superior Court Judge Clarence Peeler identified him in court and told a reporter that he had almost recommended charging Emory with perjury for saying, before he was impaneled, that he had no qualms about voting for capital punishment. After the story appeared, says Emory, his family received threatening calls, and someone threw acid into his locker at work. The ex-juror, claiming humiliation and mental distress, is suing the judge for slander and violation of his constitutional rights.

Are tougher rules needed to limit all the criticism and gossipy interest that high-profile cases engender? Most experts agree that when Hinckley jurors were asked to testify before a congressional committee after the verdict, there was an ominous hint of Big Brother looking over their shoulders. But it is hard to find accord on what is appropriate. There is little danger that postverdict statements about deliberations can change the outcome--except in rare cases like a revelation of jury tampering. Keeping the process as open as possible is important to many. Says Atlanta Prosecutor Lewis Slaton: "The lesson of American democracy has been that you have to keep the right of public scrutiny burning in order to prevent abuse." Millard Farmer, a defense lawyer in Atlanta, points out that present-day national interest in major cases is merely an extension of what has always existed in small towns, with no serious consequences. Says he: "Anyone who serves on a jury knows that eventually he will have to go back to the community, look his neighbors in the eye and defend what he did in the jury room."

Other observers are less sanguine. Cathy Bennett, a Houston consultant on jury selection, is concerned that publicity increases the pressures on jurors to convict: "I wish they didn't feel they had to face their neighbors; rather, that they had to face themselves after rendering a verdict." Argues Yale Law Professor Geoffrey Hazard: "Any time you start second-guessing the justice system, you undercut to some extent its unique function. It invites a case to be tried once in the courtroom and once in public." Harvard Law Professor Charles Nesson urges more leadership by the trial judge. "I don't think that judges should order jurors not to talk," he says, "but it would be completely proper to encourage them not to."

As for jurors who have been through the experience, they too are split. Custodian Glynis Lassiter was one of the Hinckley jurors who moved out of his house to escape the press, but he says he regrets nothing about the trial and would willingly serve again. His fellow panel member Copelin sees it differently: "I'm a poor woman, but if anyone offered me a million dollars to do it again, I wouldn't do it. It saps the life out of you."

*Last week Hinckley and his lawyers declared that they did not intend, in this week's scheduled commitment hearing, to seek his release from St. Elizabeths Hospital in Washington. Doctors there have told the judge that Hinckley is still insane and a danger to himself and others. He is entitled to a new hearing in six months.

With reporting by David S. Jackson, B.J. Phillips

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