Arguing that media coverage was creating a "lynch mob mentality" that could pressure jurors to return a guilty verdict, the defense attorney for David Westerfield today asked the judge yet again to sequester the jury. Posted on 08/16/2002 6:39:20 AM PDT by FresnoDA
August 15, 2002
Arguing that media coverage was creating a "lynch mob mentality" that could pressure jurors to return a guilty verdict, the defense attorney for David Westerfield today asked the judge yet again to sequester the jury.
While the jury completed its first week of deliberations without a verdict, Superior Court Judge William Mudd denied the request and a related motion to "pull the plug" on television and radio coverage of the courtroom proceedings, but agreed to set aside a private room for jurors to take breaks. Defense attorney Steven Feldman had argued that reports suggested jurors felt like they were under siege, unable to leave their deliberating room, go to lunch or walk home without being watched or followed.
"We have no assurance that they are not be intimidated ... by the presence of the media," Feldman told Mudd during a morning hearing. "We can think of only one fair resolution to that: Get the jury out of harm's way."
Westerfield, 50, could face the death penalty if convicted of kidnapping 7-year-old Danielle van Dam from her family's Sabre Springs home on Feb. 2 and killing her. Jurors are in their sixth day of deliberations.
Lead prosecutor Jeff Dusek disagreed with Feldman's interpretations of the jury's complaints.
"Whether or not any guilty verdict in this case would be based on a siege mentality or the meida I think is pure speculation and utterly false in this case," Dusek said.
What the jurors had complained about was being watched all the time, he said.
"That hardly equates to being under siege," he said.
Media coverage has diminished since the jurors began deliberating, the judge said.
"The synopsis programs on the two local TV networks are not in place," he said. "The talking heads are doing nothing but speculating about what the jury may or may not be thinking."
Mudd said there were no signs that jurors were being harassed by the public, especially since their names and faces haven't been publicized.
"We've all sat here and picked this jury, know their makeup and know their dedication to this cause," Mudd said. "I would prefer to think that any verdict they make in this case would be based upon the evidence."
Sequestering the jury also wouldn't protect them from any public reaction to the verdict, Mudd said.
Mudd took aim at two radio program hosts from Los Angeles who he previously described as "idiots."
"I suppose it's entertainment out of LA. I hope it stays in LA," he said. "The shows those two gentlemen put on made the court incredulous as to what they were attempting to do."
Mudd also announced:
On July 9, Shen's testimony interrupted presentation of defense witnesses. Shen, a San Diego police criminalist, testified about re-examining a group of fibers she had collected from Westerfield's 4Runner in February.
The orange acrylic fibers, found in various places inside the SUV, were the same color and fabric as a fiber tangled in a plastic necklace that Danielle was wearing when authorities found her body in a hollow off Dehesa Road, Shen testified at the time.
All the fibers looked identical under a microscope and appeared to have the same chemical makeup when tested using infrared technology, she said.
Shen said the fibers seem "most likely to have come from something that was very loosely knit," such as a sweater or blanket.
"You folks are going to deal with my PR person. You're going to leave my bailiff and my clerk alone," Mudd told reporters in the courtroom. "One statement leads to 60 questions that they're not going to answer and neither am I."
Mudd decided to turn the daily updates over to the court's public information officer after deciding that an informal system set up to have a bailiff or court clerk provide updates had failed.
"There was a simple note that they started at 9, they left at 4 left you chomping on bit to get copies," He said. "You're welcome to them, they'll be available as soon as we gett the minute order."
Reporters and members of the public will not be informed immediately about notes passed by the jury, Mudd said. The judge said he had procedure to follow, that includes notifying the attorneys involved in the case about the note and determining the appropriate response.
"This is a capital case and you go by steps," Mudd said.
The Smokey Backroom is an enter at your own risk forum. We're going to relax the rules a bit here, as far as heated debate is concerned. There is where you can roll around in the mud and the blood and the beer, so to speak. And if someone gets a piece of his ear bitten off and lets out a curse word or two, he probably won't get banned (as long as he doesn't make a habit of going overboard).
In other words, some of the rules may be loosened up abit in this forum. But not the rules against racism, or leftist propaganda, etc. That kind of stuff is still not welcome on FR. If a flamewar breaks out on FR, we may ask the flamers to take it to the backroom.
Or in some instances, we may move entire threads here. This is an alternative to deleting them. We'll be playing it by ear for awhile and see how it is received.
That is not to say that we're going to welcome vicious or nasty attacks, libel or slander, but if some of you wish to get a bit heated and all of the participants involved have thick skins and are not going to cry about it, here's the place.
posted on 8/l5/02 9:20PM Central by Jim Robinson
sw
Didn't you say you were 106 years old?
Your girlfriend must be Anna Maria Smith or someone like her ;-)
And if that were the case, it would not have begun to mummify, but rather would have putrefied more quickly. (bleeecccch!)
From my own personal experience, the hands and ears are the first to mummify -- you almost always see mummification of ears and hands. If the person is barefoot (I didn't have many cases of that in my own experience) the feet also mummify rather quickly, toes first. Ears and hands have low mass and low moisture content to begin with, plus a high high surface-to-mass and surface-to-air ratio, so they mummify readily. Particularly if conditions are rather dry and the person not very fat, you will also commonly see mummification of skin on the facial area early on , particularly of the skin covering the forehead, cheekbones and neck.
I can't remember any case I saw in former Yugoslavia where the hands and ears were not at least somewhat mummified (excepting military personnel wearing helmets -- their ears didn't mummify so fast).
There is not so much air flow over the crotch area (think about it), and it also has a higher moisture and fat content, so it doesn't mummify very quickly. Internal organs are not prone to mummification, in my own humble experience. Neither is the brain.
Also, in females, there is easy access to mucous membranes in the crotch area, which is particularly attractive to flies (the first stage of blow fly maggots primarily feeds on mucous membranes) -- and anyone who knows anything about female anatomy knows there's a long trail of mucous membranes from the genital opening up to the cervix for the maggots to feed upon. Anyway, I'm sure these guys have much more experience with partially mummified bodies than I. It's fairly common for the face and extremities to mummify if the body is left in the open. (But NOT if the body is in an enclosed space, such as the RV storage compartment, as Dusek suggested. Mummification requires lots of air flow.)
Also, have a look at my post #973 and CAPPSMADNESS' post #991 on this thread.
I used to go to a cleaners that did this all the time. IOW, I never knew how much money I owed until I picked up the cleaning -- and then I never new how much each item cost because they kept the itemized tag. I just got a numbered tag. They used to have a file box where we could leave the tags so that we had them handy when we came to pick up. I had to write my own name on the tag to distinguish it from everybody else's.
The cleaners I use now gives me a total of what will be owed when I drop off the cleaning, but the itemized tag is on the clothes when I pick them up.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.