Posted on 05/24/2013 7:15:13 PM PDT by BenLurkin
In an interview Friday, jury foreman William Zervakos provided a glimpse into the private deliberations, describing four women and eight men who struggled with the question: How heinous of a killing deserves a similar fate?
"The system we think is flawed in that sense because this was not a case of a Jeffrey Dahmer or Charles Manson," Zervakos told The Associated Press.
"It was a brutal no-win situation. ... I think that's kind of unfair," the 69-year-old added. "We're not lawyers. We can't interpret the law. We're mere mortals. And I will tell you I've never felt more mere as a mortal than I felt for the last five months."
(Excerpt) Read more at eastvalleytribune.com ...
Then make a decision and give her life without parole. After all, every two years we can watch her getting her hair cut for Locks of Love.
I guess the foreman was against giving her the death penalty, otherwise why would he be going on like this?
They had to decide on the death penalty. How could that possibly be “unfair”?
I wonder what the result would have been if it had been a 27 year-old gangbanger that “capped” someone.
No one agonized over a life versus death decision for Travis Alexander.
A very stupid liberal mind. You take each case as they come. While I agree that Dahmer and Manson should have been executed, even before trial, their fate was subjected to the laws where they were tried (no death penalty?).
Dahmer got his. Manson, still mad as ever, is rotting in jail. At least Clinton didn’t give him a pardon. Now, as for Obama, he still might.
Cold blooded killers deserve to die. Why keep them around to be threats to jailers, prison medical staff, psychiatrists, visitors, and the public at large if they escape?
If the evidence is overwhelming that they committed a heinous, cold-blooded crime, ice them. Make them a footnote instead of a front page continuing story, a book, and then a movie.
Our children, family and friends, as well as the complete stranger, deserve to be protected from these animals.
Do we have a civilized, life respecting society for decent people, or do we serve as a hunting ground for feral animals and psychopaths?
We, as a society, have a right and a duty, to protect ourselves and others from killers, be they drug-addled street thugs, gangs, or upper economic class wackos.
It sounds like the “jury” was a bunch of drama queens having some kind of freaky and weird religious experience. Ohmmmm. Ohmmmm. Ohmmmmm.
....you should have told that to the prosecutor BEFORE being selected moron
The foundations our judicial system was founding on has been corrupted in the past five decades by dramatic egotistical showboating legal so called professionals. Justice as a result left the buildings. Political Agenda took it's place. The ideal of "Victim Perp" now rules sad too say.
He couldn't. Manson was convicted of a state crime, which the President can't pardon.
In most states the governor can, though.
BTW trials like this one should have only taken a week at the most. The legal profession needs to find some ethics again and clean up it’s own profession.
She knifed the dude a gazillion times, slit his throat and shot him ... giving her the death penalty would have been my first thought.
Adam Smith - “Mercy to the guilty is cruelty to the innocent.”
Typical liberal mindset..knew this guy was a lib the moment he started flapping his gums
Exactly. And trials have been turned into a tool used by perps to inflict more harm on survivors of their crimes or victims families of the deceased. A case like that is going on now in Knoxville, Tennessee over a Double Rape/Torture/Murder case. The parents of their two murdered kids are having to relive trial after trial then retrials because of a corrupt judge. Trials that should last no more than a week or two are turned into months long dramas.
How tough can it be to choose life when she REQUESTED it??
If she weighed 350 lumpy lbs. and had a pimply face and severe overbite, she would’ve gotten death. Especially if they saw her in the buff. But a budding porn star gets a second chance to beat the DP.
In all fairness, juries should only decide guilt or innocence, based on the facts of the case. Asking them to decide between life or death makes no sense, as it is a determination of law. This is why we have judges.
I had a feeling from the beginning that her statements about preferring NOT to spend her life in prison, and wanting death, since her whole clan were know for their “longevity”, and therefore she had maybe 60 years of prison to “look forward to”, was bogus, and just designed to make a jury do the opposite. THEN, pre-verdict she comes out with “I changed my mind, I want to live my life in prison, doing good things for others”. Though the jury presumably heard NONE of that , her entire testimony sort of encapsulated it: that’s the way to confuse and confound a jury, and that’s why to her chagrin, she wound up with a mistrial.
You could see the profoundly disappointed look on her face when the verdict was read.
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