The
Issue: What rights do jurors have?
Our View: Not as many as suspects.
Rocky Mountain News
Tues., March 11, 1997
Feedback: letters@denver-rmn.com
Finding consistency in the American justice system is never easy, but a couple of stories that appeared in the Rocky Mountain News over the weekend made it harder than ever. Let's see if we can make sense of the two and find some common link.
Exhibit A are John and Patricia Ramsey.
They haven't been ruled out as suspects in the Christmas-night slaying
of their daughter, but they don't have to talk to the police, the press
or
anybody else.
It's not because they have more money than
the average street hood that Detective Andy Sipowicz throws up against
the wall weekly on NYPD Blue; it's because they have rights under the
Fourth and Fifth Amendments that protect them from unlawful search and
seizure and from self-incrimination. If the police forget that, the Ramseys
-- unlike the fictional New York street
hoods -- have retained several expensive lawyers to remind them. As David
Kaplan, former president of the Colorado Criminal Defense Bar, told reporter
Charlie Brennan last week, "A citizen
of this country is not required to talk any time a police officer or prosecutor
wants to ask them a question. It is kind of a fundamental precept."
OK, we can accept that. The state has to
develop enough evidence on its own for the probable cause needed to obtain
an arrest warrant from a judge. To get a conviction, the state has to prove
its case beyond a reasonable doubt. Obviously it's taking the Boulder police
much longer than we thought it would, but they don't want to screw up the
evidence gathering or the
arrest and end up losing the case.
Exhibit B is Laura Kriho, the stubborn juror
from Gilpin County. She's not suspected of any crime, but she's been found
guilty of contempt of court and fined $1,200. She could have been jailed
as well, but a merciful judge spared her. No, you don't have to be a convicted
or confessed criminal to be
punished. Kriho's was a civil, not a criminal offense, although the punishment
may seem the same to us nonlawyers. At least she has the right of appeal,
just like a real criminal, and is exercising it.
Since Kriho is not a suspect in any crime,
how did she get herself in such a fix? By showing up for jury duty, as
commanded, sitting in the back of the courtroom for a long time while many
other potential jurors were asked questions -- and then failing to volunteer
all the information the prosecutor and judge thought she should have, even
though she herself wasn't asked directly all the same questions earlier
panelists were. Specifically, she failed to mention a drug conviction
against her from a dozen years back, one in which she was granted deferred
judgment. Worse, she had the temerity to suggest to her fellow jurors that
perhaps the drug laws weren't all in the
national interest. She'd have been better off passing out Jehovah's Witnesses
tracts.
Oh, it happens that she ended up as the only juror to hold out for acquittal in a drug case, but we have been assured by the court that was not the reason she was singled out for punishment.
That was just a coincidence.
So what should potential jurors do in order to avoid the Kriho trap? (Other than refusing to be a lone holdout, no matter what your conscience directs.)
You have two choices. Confess to all your crimes, misdemeanors, domestic difficulties and petty prejudices, just in case --even those that are as yet unpublicized and unrequested. Or consider yourself a prisoner of war and give nothing more than the name, rank and Social Security number demanded by the Geneva Convention. If a lawyer or a judge asks you for any other facts, or even opinions, refuse to answer. Surely they won't punish you for that, will they? Don't you, as a non-suspect and a good citizen answering the call to jury duty, have at least the same rights as the Ramseys?
Don't count on it.
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