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[Rumple Foreskin]

rhino-the destroyer would RATHER be the evictor

Thus spake Rumple, "Verily, verily I say unto you, rhinoguy, 'Tis better to be the evictor than the evicted and the destroyer rather than the destroyed."

RF

 

[Quasimodem]

A Year Later, Judge Won't Let Jury Go Home
Mon September 29, 2003 10:26 AM ET

OAKLAND, Calif. (Reuters) - The judge just won't let them off the hook -- not the defendants, but the jury that says it is hopelessly deadlocked.

A criminal trial of three dismissed Oakland police officers accused of falsely arresting and beating suspects has become a marathon unusual even by the often plodding standards of American criminal justice.

The trial began more than a year ago, and on Thursday the jury deliberated for a 55th day without reaching a verdict. They return on Monday after a day off on Friday.

The judge in the case has twice refused to believe the jury of seven men and five women when it told him it was hopelessly deadlocked.

"It's very rare. I can't say it is unprecedented, but it is rare for a jury to be sitting this long," said criminal justice historian Charles Weisselberg at the University of California's Boalt Hall School of Law in Berkeley.

Even the trial portion of the case, before the jury began deliberating, was unusually long. Weisselberg said, for example, that of 12,817 trials held in federal courts in the year ended September 2002, only 97 lasted more than 20 days and just one exceeded the 165 trial days this case has logged so far.

The jurors have twice told Superior Court Judge Leo Dorado they are deadlocked. Such a signal often allows jurors, who in Oakland earn $15 a day, to end their service and get back to their normal lives.

But the judge twice responded by instructing them to keep deliberating, noting that differing tallies in successive balloting indicate "movement" instead of deadlock.

"They are being held hostage," defense attorney William Rapoport said. "They said several times we're done and we can't do this anymore."

Rapoport represents Jude Siapno, 35, who along with ex-officers Clarence Mabanag, 37, and Matthew Hornung, 31, was a self-dubbed "Rider" in the Oakland police department patrolling neighborhoods plagued by drug dealing.

The prosecutor, District Attorney Tom Orloff, said in an interview that it does make sense to continue the case.

"It's important to note that the jury, from all the information we have, did not take a vote until 2-1/2 weeks ago," he said. "Until they each state their positions and engage in give and take on their positions, they are really not at the heart of deliberations."

Karen Jo Koonan of the National Jury Project West, a jury consulting firm, said the danger of a long trial is that jurors might be tempted to decide on a desire to be done rather than on the basis of law.

Many observers expect the ultimate verdicts to reverberate widely throughout Oakland, a city suffering from drug gang violence. But the community's trust in police is dismally low after a documented pattern of police riding roughshod over residents in the city's tougher neighborhoods.

The suspected incidents of police brutality, planting of evidence, false arrests, and falsifying reports were also the subject of civil proceedings that resulted in a City of Oakland settlement of $10.9 million to 119 victims.

"In a case of this magnitude, the jurors should be able to continue to deliberate as long as the jury has not been contaminated by outside influences," said attorney John Burris, who represented the 119 victims in the civil suit.

I have a better Headline in mind.
Defendant Still 'Not Guilty,' Jury Hung!