Posted on 03/11/2008 7:58:00 AM PDT by SmithL
The sole black juror on a panel deadlocked along racial lines lied to win a seat on the jury and then set out to exact revenge on law enforcement by serving as the spoiler in the trial of an alleged drug chief serving as his own lawyer, some of her fellow jurors said Monday.
Jurors in the trial of Johnnie "Bro" Martin walked out of U.S. District Court with nothing to show for nine days of work but a mistrial.
"She made a mockery of the system," one juror said of the black woman whom members of the panel said refused to even consider what the rest of the group believed was overwhelming evidence of Martin's guilt.
Although they declined to be publicly identified, jurors outraged over the outcome of a trial in which Martin's defense rested on the notion that racist law enforcers had framed him confirmed the panel had split 11 to 1 in every vote cast during the roughly four days of deliberations.
The lone hold-out was a black woman who, when questioned during the jury selection process, assured federal prosecutors David Jennings and Tracee Plowell that she harbored no ill will over the imprisonment of her sister in a Mississippi drug case. Asked if her sister deserved her fate, the woman answered, "Absolutely."
Fellow jurors interviewed after U.S. District Judge Thomas Phillips declared a mistrial Monday said the woman lied.
"She never should have been on there in the first place," one juror said. "From the beginning, she kept saying her sister was in jail for selling drugs and the cops set her up, and she could not believe any police officer no matter what."
Jennings and Plowell sought to remove the woman from the panel Friday after learning that her daughter had been arrested on a marijuana charge by the Knoxville Police Department in 2006. She did not reveal that arrest, for which she posted bond, during the jury selection process. KPD Investigator Jeremy Maupin was a key witness against Martin.
Phillips refused, saying there was "no evidence of misconduct on the part of any juror in this case."
He noted the woman revealed her sister's drug conviction. He did not address, however, Plowell's complaint that the woman failed to reveal her daughter's arrest by KPD.
Instead, Phillips chastised the News Sentinel for reporting a racial division among the jurors.
"That's not what the note said," Phillips said of a message from the panel to the judge on Thursday in which jurors reported claims of racism were contributing to the deadlock.
The judge insisted that the note's statement that claims of racism had been raised during jury deliberations did not mean the panel was divided along racial lines.
"I would ask the Knoxville News Sentinel to be accurate in its reporting," Phillips said from the bench.
Jurors, however, said the woman accused white members of the panel of being racist, prompting the note to Phillips.
"It offended me," one juror said.
The woman at issue refused comment when approached by a reporter and walked out of the courthouse alone. Fellow jurors followed minutes later as a group.
Martin, a convicted drug dealer from Boston, had opted to serve as his own attorney on charges he moved his drug-peddling network to Knoxville and set up armed stash houses serving a smorgasbord of drugs ranging from $500,000 in cocaine every month to marijuana to Ecstasy. He also was accused of plotting to kill a key witness against him.
He insisted he was being framed by racist cops and lying "degenerates." The voice on secretly recorded phone conversations authorities said he had with various underlings was not his, he told jurors.
The lone black juror on the panel bought into Martin's defense hook, line and sinker, fellow jurors said.
"You bring up the wiretaps and she'd say it wasn't his voice," one juror said. "She said the (alleged co-conspirators) were lying, and you couldn't believe the police officers. The whole time she talked about how unfairly her sister was treated."
The panel did find Martin guilty of one of 17 charges against him, deeming him guilty of being a felon in possession of an assault rifle. It was the sole charge not directly tied to the drug conspiracy.
"Anything that had to do with the drugs, she wouldn't even consider it," a fellow juror said.
Although prosecutors have 30 days to decide whether to retry him, Jennings announced in court he and Plowell would file formal notice today of their intent to seek a new trial.
Martin, who has boasted from the day of his arrest that he would win the case and openly taunted Jennings at an earlier hearing, remains jailed. As he was led out of the courtroom by the U.S. Marshals Service, Martin looked back at Jennings, smirked and said, "Checkmate."
I was the Foreman in a trial against a drunk driving white man. We had only two minorities in the jury room, both female. Early in the deliberation, it became obvious to me that both women were out to throw the case because of their distrust of the police. Regardless of the evidence, they focused on the testimony of the police officer, who unfortunately didn’t do his paperwork properly, but was otherwise credible. The defendant on the other hand was evasive and childish at best.
Rather than allow myself to be confrontational with them, I gave them the floor for more time than most, allowed them to air their irrelevant grievances, many referring to treatment of their family members by the justice system. Once they got their complaints off their chests, I delicately steered them back to the facts of the case. They voted to convict, and showed an amazing amount of common sense once the layers of anger, resentment and distrust had been peeled away.
I received a lot of pats on the back from other jurors, some of whom in private told me they wanted to scream in the face of the women.
As sick as it makes me, some adults need to be treated like kids, and given their own platform for a moment. Otherwise they will remain defiant to the end. I have no doubt that had I allowed confrontation to happen in the jury room, there would have been a mistrial.
Judo comes to mind.
AMEN.
What are your sources for maligning the civil rights leader? And if you are correct (COINTEL perhaps?), does it take away from his achievements in highlighting the need for civil rights reforms in this great country of ours?
Yeah, can't they use the other jurors to make a case about her committing perjury or something?
I hate to think of what might happen when the trials of those pieces of excrement who raped and killed those college kids in Knoxville come up this May. Not only will the trials exacerbate racial problems but I have to wonder if someone might pull a stunt like this to help out the accused, who should be sentenced to death by torture.
This woman has done the community a terrible disservice. We are constantly hearing pleas for something to be done to curb crime and violence in the black community. This moron will help to ensure now that there will be more victims instead. I guess they think Bush and “the government” have to do something. What a joke.
I read a law blog on this movie once. The majority of the lawyers posting thought that the perp was guilty. The reasons were very interesting. Sufficient to say that NO case is airtight or perfect.
Another example of a big waste of time and $$$ in the conducting of the stupid WOD
He remains in jail, facing retrial, and believes he 'won' the chess match. Ha!
True...if she lied to get on the jury. Then the alternate can take her place and then vote.
In a local trial; a black woman hung a jury in a murder trial where evidence was overwhelming. Her statement after the trial was: You think I’m going to convict a black man for killing a white woman? True story, she received no punishment. He killed again a couple of years later.
GOOGLE: plagiarized dissertation Martin Luther King
GOOGLE: adultery Martin Luther King
GOOGLE: communism vietnam Martin Luther King
By the way, there's a pretty good summation of many of these themes here; to the extent that King was surrounded by communist radicals, the milieu within which he worked is surprisingly similar to the milieu within which Barack Hussein Obama is working today.
does it take away from his achievements in highlighting the need for civil rights reforms in this great country of ours?
"brownsfan" was originally talking about "what Dr. King had in mind", and I was only pointing out that, as a committed leftist, and known plagiarizer, adulterer, communist sympathizer, etc etc etc - which is to say that, as a professional LIAR, we can only conjecture as to what he really "had in mind".
He may have "had in mind" that we would all join hands and sing Kumbaya and the world would be a better place for you and me, or, like Michelle LaVaughn Robinson, he may have had his sights set on ripping our eyes out.
We just don't know what MLK "had in mind".
We do know, though, that this nation has suffered from 40 years of dysgenic fertility and that the day of reckoning is near - the day when all social order breaks down and the society falls apart at the seams.
Again, prepare for the worst.
Nice work.
Congressman Billybob
The black woman juror is a racist. Not the first time something like this has happened.
Odds are, ironically, that this woman unleashed this creep into an area where she or her family members are more likely to become his next victim.
wow. Thats so unconstitutional it's scary. You don't really want to overturn the jury system do you? Do you really want a liberal judge deciding random guilty verdicts based on who pays the most? If you were on trial would you want a single liberal judge deciding your fate?
How in the world did you get on this jury? going by past contact with the judicial system (jury selection) in two states, I couldn’t get selected because I appeared too intelligent and had a varied background. In both instances the selection boiled down to lowest common denominator and there wasn’t even a hint of racial bias, just a search for ignorance of the law.
His plagiarism (which includes the I Have a Dream stuff) was so pervasive that Boston University has said that his doctorate should be considered honorary only.
Does it detract from his achievements? That's for each person to decide. I will admit I was shocked to learn of his dishonesty, and his willingness to misappropriate the words of a close friend. Maybe it doesn't detract from his achievements, but it does go to the content of his character.
Do you have alink for that?
As a matter of fact, this is now playing in Portland, Oregon as a stage play, with Richard "John Boy Walton" Thomas in the Henry Fonda role.
the second trial has just started...we will see if they get another black activist on the jury again.....
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