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?
O B J E C T I O N !
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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
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