Objection! (6 page)

The state argued for the lesser included counts of voluntary and involuntary manslaughter in addition to murder in order to give the jury all possible alternative verdicts founded in the facts presented at trial.

The Massachusetts Supreme Court agreed with prosecutors on this issue, stating, “As far as we are aware, no jurisdiction that has considered the issue has allowed a defendant to veto a lesser included offense instruction properly requested by the prosecution.” The defense blocked their request, and the judge, contrary to the law, backed them up. It was all or nothing.

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The jury surprised many court watchers, but not me. After watching Woodward’s performance on the stand, I was more convinced than ever that she was guilty as sin. Her demeanor, combined with the incredible physical injuries this baby boy suffered after his parents left for work, was enough to convince me. The jury agreed. Louise Woodward was convicted of second-degree murder on October 30. The jury had deliberated for nearly thirty hours over the course of three days.

The next morning at the sentencing, Woodward was sentenced to life with the possibility of parole in fifteen years.

But that wasn’t the end of it. Days later, the defense filed a three-part motion to set aside the verdict and dismiss the case, or to set aside the verdict and get a new trial, and, finally, to reduce the charge to manslaughter. In a shocking turn of events, Judge Zobel took it upon himself to reverse the jury’s verdict and reduce their finding to manslaughter. He also allowed Woodward to leave jail immediately, sentencing her to “time served.” Under the law, the judge is allowed to correct erroneous jury verdicts. In my view, this verdict was not erroneous. Then the state supreme court, in a split decision, let Zobel off the hook by affirming his jury reversal. At least a few of the appellate judges had the guts to complain.

The former au pair is now free and clear, living back home in Great Britain. Her family managed to raise quite a bit of money for her “defense” (reports said Woodward’s coffers once reached half a million dollars), although later her parents were accused of squandering portions of it. Woodward defaulted in the wrongful-death civil suit filed by the Eappens. Her attorneys said, “She is not in a financial position to defend the action in America. It is not an admission of guilt. She maintains her innocence.” In the suit, the Eappens sought to prevent Woodward from profiting from the case. Woodward says she wants to be a mother. God help any little baby in her care.

Last year, Woodward got a two-year contract and started working as a lawyer in England. A partner in the firm told reporters that the former nanny, who served just 279 days for the death of baby Matty, wants to O B J E C T I O N !

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specialize in commercial law. Thank God she’s given up the child-care business.

Aside from Woodward, Zobel is also a disturbing figure in this scenario. In reversing the jury’s verdict, Zobel started off with a quote from John Adams. Adams must be spinning in his grave. Zobel wrote: The law, John Adams told a Massachusetts jury while defending British citizens on trial for murder, is inflexible, inexorable, and deaf: inexorable to the cries of the defendant; “deaf as an adder to the clamours of the populace.” . . . A judge, in short, is a public servant who must follow his conscience, whether or not he counters the manifest wishes of those he serves. . . .

First Zobel bent over backward to encourage the defense’s strategy and, in the end, reduced a hard-won murder conviction, giving Woodward a free pass to get out of jail. He devoted nearly half of his order to justifying his decision to downgrade the conviction. Ignoring the evidence so carefully presented by the state and relied upon by the jury, Zobel wrote that “although as a father and grandfather I particularly recognize and acknowledge the indescribable pain Matthew Eappen’s death has caused his parents and grandparents, as a judge I am duty-bound to ignore it. I must look only at the evidence and the defendant.”

Zobel ruled that “the circumstances in which Defendant acted were characterized by confusion, inexperience, frustration, immaturity and some anger, but not malice (in the legal sense) supporting a conviction for second-degree murder.”

Since when is brutalizing a helpless infant unable to defend himself not malice? He went on: “Frustrated by her inability to quiet the crying child, she was ‘a little rough with him’ under circumstances where another, perhaps wiser, person would have sought to restrain the physical impulse.”
A little rough with him?
The baby died. Zobel actually wrote those words in his decision. The Eappens must have been sick at heart, not only over losing their precious baby son in such a bru-3 6

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tal way but also because they saw justice, in the form of Judge Hiller Zobel, fail their beloved son as well.

I met and spoke with Zobel in Atlanta one afternoon. My eyes were obviously playing tricks on me, because in another setting, without the power of the bench or the temptation to abuse that power, he seemed almost grandfatherly. But looks can be deceiving. I will never forget the day Zobel, for all intents and purposes, rewrote the Constitution and not only robbed the Eappens of a jury’s verdict but assaulted Lady Justice herself.

After the judge’s stunning verdict reversal, Woodward had the gall to say she was disappointed in the decision because she was not totally exonerated. She wanted a full acquittal from Zobel. Woodward and her defense team—much like O. J. Simpson, who pledged to find Nicole and Ron’s “real killer”—swore they would convene an independent review team of scientists to reexamine key medical and forensic evidence in the case to prove the true cause of death. Surprise! They haven’t lifted a finger to do it. Not that they needed to. We know who caused Matty’s death. Louise Woodward. And Judge Hiller Zobel let her get away with murder.

J U D G E T E R R Y R U C K R I E G L E —

W H A T A F A N !

In the summer of 2004 in a courtroom in Colorado, Lady Justice was spinning like a top thanks to the ringmaster of the Kobe Bryant case—Judge Terry Ruckriegle. After allowing hours of closed-door questioning of the alleged rape victim on sexual behavior dating back a year before she met Kobe Bryant, he ruled that portions of the young woman’s prior sex life would be brought before the jury. In addition, he then mistakenly released the closed-door transcripts on the Internet.

When the young woman wanted a continuance following that disaster, Judge Ruckriegle refused.

The last “mistaken” release of information was one of many O B J E C T I O N !

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episodes that can be traced back to the very beginning of the trial. The woman’s name, as well as other case-sensitive information—always damning to the alleged victim—was repeatedly leaked. In comparison, nothing remotely disparaging to the defense was ever leaked. While the case was still in county court, Eagle County Judge Frederick Gannett took zero action (besides offering useless lip service) when Bryant’s defense lawyer, Pamela Mackey, stated the young woman’s name in open court multiple times.

That moment set the tone for the trial. Chief Judge Ruckriegle presided over the circuslike atmosphere that dominated the remainder of the proceedings, which ultimately led to the victim deciding to pack her bags and abandon the case. With no one protecting her rights, who can blame her? Whether or not Bryant was guilty of rape, Ruckriegle sent a clear message to rape victims all over the country: The court won’t protect you. You will be mistreated in court and out because of the person wearing the robe. It’s no wonder rape remains one of the single most underreported crimes on the books.

C H A P T E R T W O

W E T H E J U R Y

ON ELEVATORS AND IN RESTAURANTS, AT BUS

stops and airports, I am constantly asked, “What’s the secret to winning cases?” My response is always the same: You win or lose in jury selection. Once the jury’s struck—twelve jurors who hear the case selected from a pool of people—it’s all over. Jury selection is the single most important part of a trial. As a prosecutor, I can say without question, if you fumble your strikes by selecting a jury that’s in a hurry, that doesn’t want to be bothered, that is inherently suspicious of police or is simply cantankerous and not prone to compromise, you’ve got big problems.

The result can be a hung jury, or worse—a not-guilty verdict.

By the time a lawyer stands at the jury rail for opening statement, they must firmly believe what they’re saying is true. Before approach-ing the rail, I always investigated my cases backward and forward myself, in addition to the police investigation. I interviewed witnesses, carefully wrote out by hand their direct-exam, question by question, including notes on the appropriate juncture at which to introduce key physical evidence. I always devised a strategy and prepared the exhibits before the trial began. All of those things can be controlled or at least laid out in advance. The unknown variable in every trial is the secret minds of the jurors: their belief systems, their values, and their O B J E C T I O N !

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mind-sets. These things can’t be controlled, but they can be dealt with through proper preparation.

This country’s jury system is under attack as never before, largely because the juror mind-set has been left mostly unexplored and un-challenged. Many recent cases have resulted in downright shocking verdicts that have left veteran trial watchers and legal analysts shaking their heads in disbelief. But it was events surrounding jurors in three high-profile trials in 2004 that showed, without question, that the jury-selection process and the juror oath as it stands today are simply not working. Chappell Hartridge—the media-obsessed juror in the Martha Stewart trial—the allegedly disagreeable “Juror Number 4” in the Tyco mistrial, and the so-called stealth jurors attempting to fake their way into the jury box in the Scott Peterson case all caused varying degrees of chaos in the courtroom because of their confounding behavior and their unexplored mind-sets.

J U R O R S W H O L O A T H E

T H E O A T H

Hear out my argument
and consider the following three examples of a jury system in peril:

E X H I B I T A :

I T ’ S A L L A B O U T M E !

In the Martha Stewart case, everybody pointed the finger but nobody knew exactly whom rightfully to blame for the fact that Chappell Hartridge, Juror Number 8, had gotten on the jury in the first place.

From what I can tell based on court filings, he withheld information during jury selection. The defense claimed that Hartridge lied about his arrest record on a questionnaire when he said he had never been in court other than for a minor traffic violation. Did he forget he’d been arrested for assaulting a woman he lived with? This could have been 4 0

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remedied during voir dire, which coincidentally means “to speak the truth,” but Hartridge never murmured a word. Defense lawyer Robert Morvillo said Hartridge “dishonestly suppressed information concerning a gender-related incident . . . to be able to sit in judgment of a well-known and highly successful woman in a case alleging false statements.”

Hartridge also allegedly failed to disclose on his jury questionnaire that he had been sued three times. The defense filing stated that civil judgments had been entered against him in each case. Hartridge’s alleged juror misconduct alone wasn’t enough for the trial judge to grant Stewart’s request for a new trial. The reality is that, ironically, if the defense had known that Hartridge had been charged with a crime, they probably would have insisted he stay on the jury (“Here’s a guy who’s been accused of wrongdoing before—he’ll side with Martha! We love him!”). The whole thing backfired. If anyone had wanted him off the jury, most likely it would have been the state.

In addition to lying during the jury oath, evidence suggests that Hartridge may have been guilty of juror greed as well. On the day of Martha Stewart’s guilty verdict, he was all about justice, publicly declaring he believed the decision was “a victory for the little guys.” Producers from every network scrambled to get him for their nightly news programs, eager to hear whatever insights he might have to offer about the deliberations. Not surprisingly, he disappeared from his impromptu press conference on the courthouse steps and reemerged soon afterward on NBC’s myriad news outlets. He showed up at all hours of the day and night in the aftermath of the verdict on
Dateline NBC,
the
Today
show, and on MSNBC. But Hartridge’s own greed preempted his multimedia moment. Dominick Dunne reported in
Vanity Fair
that at least one other show on another network dropped him from their lineup when he demanded money and a limousine for his appearance. Court documents filed by 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.