Former jurors relay courtroom experiences at discussion
Behind the doors of the jury deliberation room, panels have many things to consider. They struggle with the law, the facts and with differing personalities amongst the 12 assembled to determine guilt or innocence in a criminal case.
At a Crime Victims’ Center-sponsored discussion on the jury system, the Rev. Bernard W. Carl and Danyle Verzinskie talked about their experiences as jurors on two separate child abuse cases.
Both agreed that the task was difficult, and Verzinskie said the case she sat on, which involved the death of a 2-year-old boy, left her emotionally drained in the weeks after returning a guilty verdict.
Verzinskie said she and other jurors on that panel kept in touch, and compared the after-effects, which included bad dreams and sleepless nights.
“You get an image in your head, and once it’s there, it’s hard to let it go,” she said, noting that she wished the court had offered some instruction to jurors, in the form of a possible debriefing that explained what could happen emotionally in the aftermath.
Verzinskie sat as a juror in the trial of Michael and Christina Britt, a former Masontown couple whose 2-year-old son, Cody, died while in their care. The couple had been sleeping, when, on July 4, 1999, the toddler got out of their home and climbed into a car. With temperatures in the 90s that day, the child was overcome by the heat and died.
The couple was convicted of involuntary manslaughter. Michael Britt was sentenced last August to six to 23 months in prison. He was released in December, and allowed to serve the remainder of his sentence on probation. Christina Britt was sentenced to three years probation.
Carl sat on the jury that in November convicted Bryan L. White of abusing his 9-week-old son more than two years ago. White, through a mandatory sentencing provision, was given a five to 10 year term for aggravated assault.
He shook his son, Daniel, and testified on his own behalf that he did so only because he was panicked when he found the child unconscious.
In the White case, Carl said the jury leaned more upon the medical testimony than the credibility and truthfulness of lay witnesses. Prosecutors presented a doctor, who according to Carl, had 25 years of experience diagnosing child abuse cases.
The defense medical expert, said Carl had much less experience, and refuted the child abuse claim.
Carl said his jury found the charge of the law the most difficult part of deliberations, and asked to have it re-explained to help them in the task of determining the legal meanings of reckless and intentional conduct.
“That was the most difficult thing we had to do,” he said.
In the deliberation room, Carl said that a fellow juror revealed that she had personal life experience with a shaken baby. That woman, said Carl, was difficult to deal with because the White case also involved allegations of Shaken Baby Syndrome.
He noted that it was likely that neither the prosecution nor the defense knew of the woman’s experience because she was not forthcoming with the information.
Verzinskie said her jury asked four times to hear the law again, and said the jurors relied on one another to remember all parts of the testimony. In their case, credibility was of the essence, she said.
“The parents even contradicted each other,” she said.
Even though Michael Britt looked at the jurors during testimony – a practice that District Attorney Nancy D. Vernon and defense attorney Mark F. Morrison said can make a person easier to believe – Verzinskie said she personally had difficulty believing him.
“I work at the welfare office. People lie to me all day long,” she said. Verzinskie also said she relied on her gut instincts, but acknowledged they could be wrong. Ultimately, she said, it was the jury as a whole that talked out the case and came to a verdict each of them believed was correct.
Verzinskie also said breaks, including sidebars and unrelated hearings that the judge handling the case had to attend to, made remembering that much harder.
Both said their juries spent about six hours deliberating the case, and in the White matter, Carl said the best thing they did was go home for the night and come back to start fresh the next morning.
“We would have been hung if we’d stayed the night,” he said, noting that the next day, they returned in a guilty verdict after about an hour of deliberations.
Judge John F. Wagner, who didn’t preside over either of the cases, said that he favors sending jurors home when he feels that time to relax can provide them a fresh perspective.
“At times, people just interpret evidence differently,” said Wagner noting that he tries to get a feel for how frustrated a jury is before declaring them hopelessly deadlocked and calling a mistrial.
Morrison, who defended White, said that he is opposed to sending juries home for the night.
He said that he feels human nature takes over and jurors are tempted to share details of the case with family and friends, and even if unintentionally, can pick up their opinions about the case. Morrison also said that, despite instructions from the judge not to discuss the case or view any news accounts, jurors can be tempted to look at the newspaper.
“The jury room should remain sterile,” he said.