Word: jurors
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1980-1989
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Kemner sessions verge on terminal boredom. Some jurors take notes as the trial drones on. But all too often eyes glaze over. Yawns are frequent. One alternate juror appears to doze from time to time. "They do well to stay awake," concedes the plaintiffs' attorney, Rex Carr. "This isn't the kind of stuff that keeps you on the edge of your seat." The numbing routine continues five days a week, six hours a day, with an hour out for lunch and brief midmorning and midafternoon breaks, plus a Christmas-New Year recess and a two-week summer vacation...
...jurors range in age from mid-20s to early 70s. Old friends by now, they celebrate each anniversary of the Kemner trial with a birthday cake. Two years ago, on Judge Goldenhersh's 40th birthday, they presented him with a silver plaque inscribed with their names and juror numbers...
...glassy-eyed jurors are paid a piddling $5 a day, plus a miserly 10 cents a mile for getting to and from court. Most continue to draw salaries from their pretrial employers. Four jurors have been excused for illness or injury since the trial began. The original juror panel of 18 is now down to 14, including two alternates. If the number falls below twelve, a mistrial is likely. Carr charges Monsanto with scheming to force one through a strategy of "delay, delay and more delay...
...Monsanto is hardly responsible for all trial delays. A month-long recess was forced in 1985, when one juror underwent an appendectomy and hysterectomy. For his part, the judge has officiated at the marriage of a juror's child and twice juggled the trial vacation to accommodate juror honeymoons. "This court cannot stand in the way of love," he states. Or of birth, for that matter. He declared a day off when one juror's mare dropped a foal...
Fear shrouded the proceedings, and jurors' names were kept secret. Even so, a juror was excused two weeks ago after revealing that a relative had received a threatening phone call. Earlier, one defendant was found in a trash bag in Brooklyn, shot and bludgeoned to death. Another was paralyzed by gunfire on a crowded Greenwich Village street...