Haidl jury selection hits so close to home that I touch it

JOSEPH N. BELL

Last March, my wife received a jury summons. She had served several

times before and had no problems with her duty to serve again. But

the timing, which always seems disastrous to everyone except

unemployed elderly citizens like me, was especially conflicting for

her.

So she asked for a later date, got one, asked for another in the

fall, got it, and -- finally -- ran out of flexibility. Or excuses

the court would find valid. So on Thursday, Jan. 13, at an

outrageously early hour, she reported to the jury room of Orange

County Superior Court in Santa Ana.

She took her laptop along and had just settled into an alcove with

a power outlet to tackle her day’s work while she waited when she

heard her name called. She was told to report to a courtroom by

number, where she was given a document at the door telling her she

had just become part of the process of selecting a jury to render

justice in the high-profile retrial of Greg Haidl, Kyle Nachreiner

and Keith Spann, who are accused of sexual assaulting an allegedly

unconscious 16-year-old girl.

What follows are mostly Sherry’s recollections and impressions of

that day.

We had talked briefly about the possibility that she might get

involved with the Haidl case, but the reality didn’t hit her until

she found herself sharing a courtroom with about 100 other potential

jurors, along with the three defendants, their attorneys, the

prosecutors and Judge Francisco Briseno. Quite suddenly, the young

men accused of this crime were no longer names in a newspaper story.

They were flesh-and-blood people she could study, and she moved

closer to the front of the courtroom in order to do that.

What she saw were three clean-cut, well-dressed young men who

talked casually among themselves and occasionally looked back over

the filling courtroom. If they had any strong sense that their lives

might be seriously upended in this room, there was no outward sign.

Sherry found the proceedings that followed to be caring and laced

with humor. The judge thanked the people who interrupted daily lives

and work to respond to this call to public service. He noted that the

trial might last two months and asked potential jurors who could

manage this without severe dislocation in their lives and felt they

could objectively evaluate the evidence to step outside and fill out

a lengthy questionnaire that had been agreed on between the attorneys

and the court. Those who remained -- about two-thirds of the original

group -- were given a much shorter form in which they were asked to

explain why they felt they needed to disqualify themselves. The judge

would look at these forms and render immediate decisions on who might

be excused.

When Briseno opened the session to questions from the potential

jurors, most of those who responded wanted to know if vacation plans

-- many of them prepaid -- that would have to be aborted in a long

trial qualified as an acceptable excuse. His answers were patient and

often humorous. To one woman who said such a trial would interfere

with her marriage plans, the judge said he was qualified to perform

the service and would be happy to do so if necessary. None of the

questions dealt with the most fundamental reason for

disqualification: a built-in bias that would make it impossible for

the potential juror to consider the evidence objectively in rendering

a decision.

My wife has a combination of personal qualities that would

probably make her an ideal juror in such a case. She was raised in a

journalistic family and majored in journalism in college. She served

as an intern while she was still in school, then as a reporter,

editor and columnist over many years at the Los Angeles Times. She

was the editor of a national magazine for several years, and her

current work as a freelance writer is built around these same skills.

She had to learn early on to discard her biases when she was

reporting on controversial subjects. She still does that very well.

But in the courtroom last week, Sherry had to consider the

possibility that, despite her training and history, she would be

unable to be impartial in this case.

Although two months of jury service would make it impossible for

her to deliver on a multitude of vital work commitments, that wasn’t

her primary concern. Objectivity was.

Briseno, in his talk to the prospective jurors, stressed this

point. He said our whole judicial system rests on the responsibility

of jurors to make an honest self-appraisal of their own objectivity.

The jury system, he said, is “very fragile” because of this

dependence.

Sherry didn’t want to add to this fragility. As she formulated

these thoughts to put down on her questionnaire, she studied the

three defendants once again and acknowledged to herself that because

she had followed news accounts of the first trial closely, she knew

too much about this case to be objective.

And the media coverage -- particularly of the videotape the

defendants made of the alleged rape that was shown to the jurors --

touched a deep personal reaction in Sherry. Because she was sexually

molested by a neighbor as a child, she couldn’t help identifying

strongly with the victim. That’s what she wrote on her questionnaire.

And she was excused. So were all the others in her group, whom the

judge thanked for their candid responses.

When Sherry got home, she told me: “I went into that courtroom

thinking I’m the kind of person who can truly be impartial, the

perfect juror.

“Now I know how very difficult that can be.”

On Jan. 31, a jury panel will be chosen for the Haidl trial. If

that isn’t possible, a change of venue will probably be ordered. In

either instance, the jurors must honestly assess whether they can be

truly objective.

As the judge pointed out, both a fair trial and the system itself

depend on it.

* JOSEPH N. BELL is a resident of Santa Ana Heights. His column

appears Thursdays.