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Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberations

By TChris, Section Terror Trials
Posted on Sat Apr 29, 2006 at 03:35:16 PM EST
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by TChris

A juror in the trial of Hamid Hayat regrets her vote to convict. Arcelia Lopez swore in an affidavit that she was pressured to put an end to the jury's deliberations by casting the final vote to return a guilty verdict. Lopez said she "never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty."

Lopez said she went to a medical clinic Saturday with a migraine headache and believed "my health and physical well-being were being affected by the pressure from the other jurors to change my vote."

It isn't unusual for jurors to succumb to pressure -- jurors don't like to spend days in a small room eating stale pizza -- and it's almost impossible to overcome a verdict with the testimony of a juror who has second thoughts about the outcome. This report, however, suggests that the jury may have been exposed to media accounts of the trial -- the kind of extraneous influence that would provide a more fruitful ground for attacking the verdict.

Several jurors agree that Hayat's nationality was the focus of one juror's ugly comments:

She quoted him as saying, "If you put them in the same costume, then they all look alike."

"The alleged racial slurs, to me, were not anything," said juror Mark Varno, 54, an engineer from Granite Bay (Placer County). He said [juror] Cote was referring to notorious international terrorists who wore traditional garb and beards.

"I think we were all shocked when he said it," said juror Lori Macias, 46, of Fairfield. "He apologized. I'm sure he wished he never said that."

The rest of us can wish that no juror would judge a defendant because of his race or nationality.

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    Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberations | 4 comments (4 topical)
    Re: Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberat (none / 0) (#1)
    by Che's Lounge on Sun Apr 30, 2006 at 06:45:56 AM EST
    Instead of Faux news, all jury waiting roooms should run an endless loop of "12 Angry Men".

    Re: Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberat (none / 0) (#2)
    by Edger on Sun Apr 30, 2006 at 07:16:10 AM EST
    Che - Or maybe the movie version of Joseph Conrad's "Lord Jim", in which the main theme is that a moments indiscretion may entail a lifetime of regret...

    Re: Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberat (none / 0) (#3)
    by orionATL on Sun Apr 30, 2006 at 10:09:32 AM EST
    thanks t chris i'm glad to see this case being discussed at talk left. i keep missing tl's early posts so am glad to see them listed here for commenters to read. this case and others like it involving muslims is beginning to feel to me like yet another embarrassing and intolerable (and to the probable victims -devastating) abuse of the federal legal system by prosecutors and their political supervisors for the purpose of appearing to the public to be "getting tough" on terrorism (with a little deliberate intimidation throw in). the justice department has pursued cases in new england, detroit, virginia, florida, texas, oregon, (just off the top of my head), in which there is suspicion on my part that the federal prosecution has been in fact politically motivated persecution. i'd bet that this federal government legal action, from the perspective of the muslim community in america, feels itself like a form of terrorism. certainly it has to be the case that muslims in the u.s. have become extremely cautious about what they say outside a circle of family and close friends for fear a carelessly worded or angry sentiment might result in a federal investigation or charge which could destroy a family or a business. i suspect mentally unbalanced individuals are at particularly high risk of being singled out. if so, we have a situation, somewhat like the Japanese internment, in which individuals of a certain ethnicity (and religion) are pursued by the government solely because of suspicions their ethnicity and religion arouses. i could view the situation differently if the federal prosecutions had uncovered serious evidence of intent to commit an act of terror, but i don't think that has happened in these cases, even the virginia case. we seem to be equating speech-making that may threaten to set fire to your theater with the act of yelling fire in a crowded theater.

    Re: Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberat (none / 0) (#4)
    by Talkleft Visitor on Mon May 01, 2006 at 08:37:50 AM EST
    Lopez said she "never once throughout the deliberation process and the reading of the verdict believed Hamid Hayat to be guilty."
    Then she should be held accountable for her actions.

    Hayat Juror Recounts Pressure During Deliberations | 4 comments (4 topical)