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In 1979, a boy in my home room was found dead in a schoolyard, with six rocks the size
of quarters stuffed down his throat. I didn't kill Johnny Pius. But my brother and two
friends and I were near the school that night, and when the police didn't find any better
suspects --- although there were several --- they pulled my brother off his
bike a week after the murder and took him to the office of the homicide squad.
There, with a lot of encouragement, he confessed, only to deny everything as soon as my
mother and I arrived.
There was no physical evidence against us. Really, there were no witnesses with solid
testimony. But it didn't matter. On Long Island, in those years, you couldn't put the
police on trial --- juries were so devoted to their homicide detectives that they produced
convictions in more than 90% of the county's murder trials. Suffolk County homicide
detectives probably had the highest conviction rate in the nation during those years.
In l98l, Jesse Kornbluth wrote a two-part magazine piece about the case that showed the
inadequacy of the police investigation --- and the very good possibility that innocent
people were convicted. Later, there were investigations of that police department. As for
me, I'm still in jail, still fighting to prove my innocence.
Many people have told me that had it not been for the negative local publicity, the result
of my trial would have been different. To this day, the lawyers still say that the outcome
was decided when we lost the motion to move the trial to another county. Others have said
that if my name was Kennedy, none of this would have happened.
The bottom line --- intentionally or not, my jury was corrupted.
While the police department was very much on trial in my case, the tobacco industry is on
trial in Grisham's book. A jury is selected in Mississippi to hear the case of a widow
whose husband died of lung cancer. On this jury are all manner of average citizens, except
that one juror, Nicholas, a law school dropout, has managed to penetrate county records,
get a fictitious name added to the jury roll, and then have that non-person be selected to
hear the case. The tobacco industry goes to great lengths to influence the jury, even
outright bribing a few jurors. There's no dramatic cross-examination; no heartwrenching
testimony.
For once, lawyers play a small role in Grisham's tale. Instead, the focus is on Rankin
Fitch and his nemesis, Marlee, who also happens to be Nicholas' girlfriend. Marlee and
Nicholas have hatched a plot to get even with the tobacco industry. Fitch is the guy
behind the scenes, a master manipulator with unlimited funds from Big Tobacco, and he will
do anything to win. He is not one of the lawyers, but this is his eighth tobacco trial and
he has never lost.
And then comes the plot twist, which I won't spoil for you.
THE RUNAWAY JURY is timely if only because it fits neatly into the current debate on
litigation reform and the limitation of huge punitive awards in product liability cases.
Reading it, I had trouble figuring out whether the larger point is that smoking is
dangerous, the jury system is contemptible, or that big business will go to any length to
crush any opposition to profits. Surely, verdicts have been bought before, and the
investigation of jurors in civil trials is not unheard of, although it may border on the
unethical. None of this is new.
What Grisham's book best illustrates is jury tampering, and the conduct of a jury which
cannot follow instructions. This leaves one wondering just how corrupt the jury system is,
and what impact this has on the manner in which we dispense justice in this country.
In both civil and criminal trials, jurors are instructed not to discuss the case. They are
reminded to keep an open mind. They are ordered not to deliberate until all the evidence
has been presented.
Do they really do this, and if not, why are they unable to follow simple instructions?
Who in America believes that the jury in the O.J. Simpson trial --- already the most
publicized courtroom event in recent memory --- did not discuss the case prior to the
start of deliberations?
And when O.J. tried on those gloves, don't you think the jury discussed it?
Who wouldn't be influenced by that kind of testimony as it unfolds?
In this sense, juries corrupt themselves.
But there are a number of ways that juries are corrupted. Jury tampering in the form of
purchased votes ---- as Grisham illustrates here --- is only one. A less prominent theme
in THE RUNAWAY JURY but one which nonetheless plays a major role in any big trial is the
influence of the media; a community saturated by one-sided publicity about a trial is
unlikely to yield a fair and impartial Jury. Additionally, the conduct of the attorneys
can be a factor in influencing a jury's verdict.
But there is a balancing force --- as unsettling in its own way as the power of the
mighty.
Most trial lawyers will tell you that juries are completely unpredictable, that selecting
a jury is a roll of the dice, that you can't predict what they'll decide. And so, for
completely irrational reasons, it is increasingly possible that a jury could run away with
a verdict. Perhaps this is why most civil cases are settled out of court, and most
defendants plead guilty. They, like the characters in Grisham's book, fear the Runaway
Jury.
--- Michael Quartararo
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