Mistrial in Tyco case

[LostInSpace]

Judge declares Tyco mistrial . I smell a rat. I've been watching this on CNN all morning. What a fiasco!!

There is something up with Juror #4 which does not seem right at all. She's a lawyer too!

[Charles Lindsey]

You mean this woman?

quote:

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The juror, Ruth Jordan, became the subject of controversy last week when she made what appeared to be an "OK" hand gesture toward the defense.

The gesture by the 79-year-old retired teacher and attorney came after the jury had complained to the judge about a "poisonous" atmosphere that made it almost impossible to work together. Jury notes indicated most of the panel was leaning toward guilty verdicts.

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Interesting stuff.

But from the CNN article

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"Juror No. 4 was a lawyer, and the problem with having lawyers on juries is they bring into that jury room with them three years of legal training. And one of the things that legal training does to you is it basically beats the common sense out of you," he said.

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Hehe, that's funny.

[Charles Lindsey]

quote:

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uth B. Jordan, Juror No. 4 in the Tyco trial, was close to tears the day she insisted that she did not think the defendants were "bad guys."

As several jurors recalled over the weekend, Ms. Jordan said she could not in good conscience vote to convict L. Dennis Kozlowski and Mark H. Swartz, former top executives of Tyco International, of stealing from the company.

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Her arms crossed, Ms. Jordan told the 11 other exhausted jurors gathered at a rectangular table in State Supreme Court in Manhattan, "I'm not going to do it."

By that sixth day of deliberations, after a week of straw polls and discussions about charges that the defendants had stolen $170 million from Tyco, she was "the only person who voted not guilty, initially, on every count," said one juror, Adrienne McWilliams.

That prompted another juror to direct a blunt question at Ms. Jordan, a petite 79-year-old. As the juror, who spoke only on the condition of anonymity, put it, "The question was, 'Has the prosecution, in the entire six months, ever presented any piece of evidence or any piece of testimony that you believe lends any weight to their argument?' "

When Ms. Jordan answered, "No," Ms. McWilliams said, "that's when things blew up."

Interviews with more than half the members of the jury have helped reconstruct some of the pivotal moments in their much-scrutinized deliberations, which were ultimately rendered moot when Justice Michael J. Obus declared a mistrial on Friday.

The debate was thrown into chaos on the sixth day, those jury members recalled, as jurors disregarded their policy to stand and speak, and several angrily accused Ms. Jordan of not deliberating in good faith. Patrick Donovan, a juror, then scribbled the jury's note to the judge that said "the atmosphere in the jury room has turned poisonous."

Much was read into the note that Ms. Jordan immediately sent to the judge in response, accusing her fellow jurors of closing their minds to the possibility of the defendants' innocence. But conversations with some of her peers have shown that Ms. Jordan's thoughts on the case were more complex and fluid than that one note suggested.

Ms. Jordan declined to comment.

Several jurors said that she appeared ready to convict the defendants on some of the most serious charges, including those related to bonuses received by the two defendants, as well as securities fraud involving $430 million. Lawyers on both sides are struggling to understand how Ms. Jordan's views evolved, shifted and reverted over the 12 days of deliberations so they can hone their presentations for a retrial.

In the first days of deliberations, Ms. Jordan repeatedly told the jury that Tyco's board had "closed ranks and served up, in her words, the 'Polack and the Jew' on a platter for a D.A. eager to make an example of somebody - anybody - for the corporate greed of the late 90's," the juror Pete McEntegart, a writer for Sports Illustrated, wrote in this week's issue of Time magazine.

"Whenever she reached the precipice of a guilty vote on any count," Mr. McEntegart said, "she recoiled as if she had touched a hot stove."

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From this New York Times article.

quote:

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Two jurors had already begun writing books about serving on the Tyco jury, hoping to land lucrative contracts with a big publishing house once the trial ended.

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Sigh.