By Kristen Green
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER
July 14, 2002
The 11-day break in the David Westerfield trial will be a long distraction for jurors who have been coming to the courthouse for almost two months. But it's not clear who will benefit from the intermission.
Legal experts say such an interruption is relatively unusual, although it does happen during long trials, even in capital cases.
The prosecution and the defense are probably both nervous that jurors will be spending time with friends, family and co-workers who will talk about the case, said Bob Grimes, a San Diego defense lawyer for three decades.
"It's something you always worry about in a high-profile case anyway, and now these jurors have a lot of time on their hands," Grimes said.
It takes discipline not to talk about a case, Grimes said, visualizing a juror having a couple of glasses of wine over dinner and then chatting about the trial.
The saving grace, he said, might be that jurors know they've seen all the evidence firsthand, so they won't be influenced by what others have to say.
Superior Court Judge William Mudd told everyone at the start of the trial there would be a one-week break in July. Before he left for a vacation with his wife and some friends, he reiterated his daily admonition to the jurors, in even stronger terms, to "self-police" their exposure to coverage of the case.
The trial of Westerfield, a 50-year-old engineer accused of kidnapping and killing Danielle van Dam, a 7-year-old neighbor in Sabre Springs, has attracted national attention.
Court TV has aired the daily court proceedings, and the TV magazine "Dateline NBC" taped a special that ran last week. Local television and radio stations have broadcast parts of the trial live and run evening roundups of the day's events. The trial is a frequent topic on radio talk shows.
Mudd warned the jurors that the break would not end coverage of the case.
"When there's nothing live, there will be something contrived," he quipped.
While the jurors are probably looking forward to the week off, the attorneys involved probably wish they could keep the case rolling along.
"It's like anything else in life; it's a rhythm you like to maintain," said Daniel Williams, a San Diego defense lawyer and former prosecutor.
The attorneys in the case, who cannot discuss it because of a gag order, are probably using the week to prepare their final arguments, Grimes said. But he said that if they had their choice, they probably wouldn't take the extra time.
"I would rather just get it over with than worry about it for another week," he said.
When the jurors were dismissed, the defense was in the middle of presenting its case. The trial is scheduled to reconvene July 22. The last lawyer the jury heard from was Westerfield's lead attorney, Steven Feldman.
Mike Still, a former San Diego deputy district attorney, said the break could be damaging for the prosecution. Most prosecutors, he said, don't want jurors to get distracted by issues the defense raises.
"The longer the jury has to think about things, the longer reasonable doubt has to sow its seeds," said Still, who handles civil cases. "As a prosecutor, you wanted to get the case over with as quickly as you could and get it to the jury."
Robert Pugsley, a professor of criminal law at Southwestern University, said the break could leave jurors uninterested.
"It will be a chore for both sides to revive juror interest in the case," he said. "Some jurors might come back with an attitude that this isn't as important as they were told it was."
The judge clearly did not share that concern.
"The pundits are telling me that you are all a bunch of idiots and you are going to lose everything," Mudd told the jury Wednesday. "You're not going to remember anything; you're going to be left with the impression that the last person that testified is the best witness that you've ever heard."
He suggested the jurors use the week to reconnect with bosses and co-workers, and to spend time with their families. The time off, he told the jury, provides a breather before the hardest work begins.
"The end of the trial will be very intense, as you can well imagine," Mudd said.
If the jury is equally prone to lean toward "guilty until proven innocent," I think Feldman needs to take his time and present lots and lots and lots of witnesses to rebut the enormous volume of minutia introduced by the prosecution. Surely he's not going to wrap things up within a few days of trial resuming, do you think?