Donovan Mistrial Looms After Juror Starts Ranting

The judge in the larceny and business fraud trial of former U.S. Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan said today that he is considering declaring a mistrial after a bizarre scene in which a juror was led ranting into the courtroom.

Juror Milagros Arroyo, surrounded by five guards, clutched a Bible and chanted, “The Lord is my shepherd” repeatedly. She also recited the 23rd Psalm before being led out by officers after she talked to the judge.

Justice John P. Collins said he was alerted by the jury deliberating in the 8-month-old case that one juror was demanding to see a priest. He questioned the juror, then notified defense lawyers.

Donovan and his seven codefendants sat stunned as their lawyers quickly began moving for a mistrial.

“The court indicated that it was considering these applications for a mistrial,” Collins said. “After 8 1/2 or nine months (of testimony), before declaring a mistrial the court has to satisfy itself that it’s taking the right option.”

Collins had the court stenographer read back from his interview with the juror. In that conversation, the juror repeated, “The Lord is my shepherd” scores of times and said, “If I don’t get to see a priest there will be a mistrial.”

Collins told her that she could not see a priest because she is part of a sequestered jury.

‘Send Me Home’

“I want to go home. It’s nothing to do with the trial,” the juror told Collins. “Send me home.”

When Collins offered to call for a doctor, the woman again asked for a priest. Asked why, she replied: “No particular reason. I just want to see him today.”

The judge asked the woman if she had any mental problems, and she told him: “My mental state is fine. I just don’t want to continue.”

Interspersing her comments with repetitions of “the Lord is my shepherd,” the woman also asked to go back to the jury room and told the judge that she wanted to go “to a holy church, the Catholic Church.”

Earlier in the morning, she was reported to have locked herself in a courthouse bathroom clutching a Bible.

Collins told lawyers that he would summon a doctor to speak with the juror.

Two lawyers protested that the judge’s speaking with the woman in private without notifying them first constituted improper conduct. Donovan’s lawyer, William O. Bittman, also called it “offensive” for the judge to have brought the juror into the courtroom.

Siphoning Funds

Collins then declared a recess.

Donovan, who was the first sitting Cabinet member ever indicted, is accused with five fellow executives from Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J., of stealing $7.4 million from the New York Transit Authority by siphoning funds from a phony minority subcontractor on the 63rd Street subway tunnel construction project.

The defendants are charged with grand larceny and filing fraudulent business records.

State Sen. Joseph Galiber of the Bronx, the purported owner of the minority firm, and his partner, reputed mobster William (Billy the Butcher) Masselli, are also defendants charged with taking part in the scheme.

The prosecution contends that Galiber, who is black, was a “front” and that Masselli was the real boss of their firm, Jopel Trucking & Contracting Co. of the Bronx.

Schiavone allegedly used Jopel to meet a Transit Authority requirement that 10% of the $186-million contract go to minority subcontractors. He then allegedly kept more than half the money due Jopel by getting the fake minority firm to rent equipment from Schiavone.