Jury Ends First Day of Deliberations in Ryder Case

Reuters.com ^ | 11/05/2002 | Jill Serjeant

[GeneD]

BEVERLY HILLS (Reuters) - The jury charged with deciding whether actress Winona Ryder was guilty of shoplifting in Beverly Hills ended its first day of deliberations on Tuesday without reaching a verdict.

The six-man, six-woman jury -- several of whom work in the entertainment industry, including an ex-studio head -- spent the day deliberating after an extraordinary six-day trial which featured Ryder's videotaped trip to the posh Saks Fifth Avenue store last December but never heard from the actress, herself.

Ryder, 31, arrived early at the Beverly Hills court on Tuesday dressed in dark pants and looking pale and tense. The "Age of Innocence" star pleaded not guilty to charges of grand theft, burglary and vandalism.

She could face up to three years in prison if convicted of stealing some $5,500 of designer goods.

Cameras were banned from the courtroom during the six-day trial but Beverly Hills Superior Court Judge Elden Fox on Tuesday decided to allow television coverage in anticipation of the reading of a verdict, if one was reached, because of the intense media interest the case has generated.

Court officials said more than 80 journalists crowded into the courtroom to hear closing arguments on Monday, forcing them to allocate seats by allocating tickets.

Ryder has spent the trial sitting silently, occasionally shaking her head, throughout embarrassing testimony that she was seen kneeling on the dressing room floor cutting security tags off handbags worth hundreds of dollars.

She spent her 31st birthday last week watching store surveillance tapes of her arrest on a dark street outside Saks after she left the store allegedly without paying for 20 items ranging from $100 hairbows to $750 silk tops.

Ryder's lawyer Mark Geragos portrayed the waifish actress as the victim of a frame-up by Saks security staff. He accused Saks staff of fabricating evidence against her and changing their testimony in a desperate attempt to win a conviction and protect the store from a possible civil liability suit.

"There is a collapse of objective evidence in this case such that you cannot say without a reasonable doubt that Winona is guilty," Geragos told the jury.

Prosecutor Ann Rundle dismissed the conspiracy theory as a tale "that could only have been written in Hollywood."

Rundle said the defense had produced no evidence to support its claims that Ryder had "left her account" open at the store earlier in her fateful trip.

Rundle also said there was no law stating that "crime is OK if our director tells you to do it" -- a barbed reference to alleged statements by Ryder that her director had instructed her to research a movie part as a kleptomaniac. The director has never been identified.

[JoeFromCA]

I'm all for law and order, and punishing the guilty.

I don't know if this defendant is guilty or not, but it seems to me that there should have been some solution to this situation rather than spending over a million dollars of county money on a trial. Violent felons are regularly pleaded out, freed from prison early, and otherwise not charged to the full extent of the law because of a lack of resources.

So I don't have a solution to this situation, but it appears that the LA D.A. may have let political ambitions override common sense.