Word: copelin
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...arrived home. Several found the coverage so noisome that they temporarily moved out. Two others took the opportunity to complain publicly that they had been pressured into agreeing to the verdict. Eager journalists flew one of them to New York City and Boston for TV shows. Recalls Juror Maryland Copelin: "I did just about every radio show there is. I didn't know there were so many of them...
...most important event of Sunday came late in the evening when Dianne Ham, 33, went to Copelin's room to talk about switching foremen. They agreed that Jackson seemed uncomfortable in the position. In a nearby room, Lawrence Coffey was awake in bed coming to his own decision about Hinckley. "I lay there thinking about his letters to Jodie and to his parents," the burly hotel banquet assistant recalls. "I felt sure he wasn't in his right mind when he shot those people...
...foreman, Jackson had often asked those favoring an insanity verdict, "Y'all know, he shot the President. How are we going to deal with that?" By Monday he had dispelled those doubts from his own mind. "Well, he is a little sick," Jackson noted of Hinckley. Copelin and Brown were still holding firm. Argued Brown strenuously: "The issue is not whether he was a little off, or whether this poem or that one didn't make sense. He shot those people, he shot them on purpose, he planned the whole thing out. He should be punished." When...
...Monday evening approached, the sequestered jury was on edge: they missed their families and simple pleasures like watching television, which Parker had forbidden. Brown's last ally, Copelin, began to waver. As she explained later: "I was tired. Nobody seemed to think there was any other way. We felt locked in by the law." After she switched to not guilty, Brown held out for another ten minutes. Finally, she threw up her arms. "To hell with it," she shouted. "If you all can't see what's happening here, I can't help...
After the verdict was read to the court, the dozen deliberators returned to the jury room for the last time. Many of the women started sobbing. "My conscience had me voting one way, but the law would not allow me to vote that way," claimed Copelin afterward. Said Drake: "If the people who are being critical were in the jury room with us, they'd come to the same decision." Coffey agrees. "We did the best job with what we had to work with," he said. "Hinckley is messed up. All we can do now is hope he gets...