Chants Psalm : ‘Unfit’ Juror Puts Donovan Trial in Chaos

The eight-month-long larceny and fraud trial of former Labor Secretary Raymond J. Donovan was thrown into chaos Friday after a juror’s emotional outbursts forced the judge to remove her from the jury in the midst of its deliberations. Defense lawyers immediately demanded a mistrial.

After the psalm-chanting woman juror was examined by a psychiatrist, state Supreme Court Justice John Collins ruled that she was “grossly unfit” to serve and sent her home to her family.

Asked One by One

Collins then called the other jurors into the courtroom and, one by one, asked them if the outburst had made it impossible for them to reach a fair verdict. The 11 remaining jurors said they could still deliberate impartially.

Collins, reserving judgment on the mistrial motions, dismissed the jury until today, when he will rule whether the jurors may continue pondering the fate of the first Cabinet member indicted when in office.

Donovan, 56, and his seven co-defendants are charged with stealing $7.4 million on a subway construction contract from 1979 to 1984 through an equipment rental scheme involving an allegedly bogus minority-owned subcontracting firm.

The bizarre and dramatic developments began when the jury’s foreman sent a note to Collins saying juror Milagros Arroyo, a 30-year-old finance company clerk, had “problems” and wanted to see the judge and a priest.

Donovan Stunned

Later, while Donovan and the other defendants sat stunned, Arroyo, clutching a Bible, was forced into the courtroom and dragged before the bench by five guards. “The Lord is my shepherd,” she chanted repeatedly.

The judge said he would not allow the juror to confess to a priest while the jury, sequestered since last week, was continuing its deliberations. In a discussion in chambers with the judge, recorded by the court stenographer, Arroyo said: “If I don’t get to see a priest, there will be a mistrial.

‘I Want to Go Home’

“I’m not refusing to deliberate,” the juror said. “I just want to see a priest. I want to go home. It has nothing to do with the trial.”

Defense lawyers then began a barrage of motions for a mistrial as the justice ordered a physician summoned to examine Arroyo.

Martin Lubin, a psychiatrist at Booth Memorial Hospital, testified after examining Arroyo that he found her incompetent for jury duty.

“She is grossly unfit to serve as a juror,” the physician told the court.

Lubin said Arroyo had been sitting in the jury room, repeating her prayers, holding an apple in one hand and using her other hand to flick water from a glass around the room.

“It’s very sad. Did you see that tragedy?” Donovan said of the courtroom incident.

Two Possibilities

After the judge had stricken the woman as a juror and as the defense lawyers pressed for a mistrial, Collins said there were two possibilities left. “One is to grant . . . a mistrial,” he said. “The other is to consider whether an alternate juror could be substituted.” He indicated that that would be up to the defense.

Lawyers for several of the defendants said they would not allow an alternate juror to be seated.

John Iannuzzi, the lawyer for William Masselli, one of Donovan’s co-defendants, immediately criticized the judge for not allowing defense lawyers to be present when he spoke with the distraught juror in his chambers.

‘I Want Her on My Jury’

“We should have been present,” he told the judge. “This is my jury. She is on my jury. I want her on my jury,” Iannuzzi said.

Other lawyers joined Iannuzzi in protesting that the judge’s speaking with the woman in private without notifying them first constituted improper conduct.

“The court indicated that it was considering these applications for a mistrial,” Collins said. “After eight or nine months, before declaring a mistrial, the court has to satisfy itself that it’s taking the right option.”

The tired jurors were in the second day of their deliberations when the incident occurred. The panel has been sequestered since May 14 because of news reports about the former labor secretary.

Alternates Sequestered

After the session ended, the lawyers were mobbed in the corridor outside the courtroom by dozens of reporters. Some of the defense attorneys reiterated that they would not allow the seating of an alternate juror, even though the alternates have been kept sequestered from the main jury.

“I will not agree to a substitution (of) an alternate,” said Theodore W. Geiser, one of the defense attorneys.

All the defense lawyers had rested their cases without calling any witnesses, contending there really was no case against their clients. Some of them had hoped that the jury would quickly agree with that viewpoint, but the jurors instead began digging deeply into the case, at one point asking for replays of some of the 32 conversations taped by the FBI that the prosecution had presented.

The 137-count state indictment, filed Sept. 24, 1984, concerned Donovan’s work as executive vice president and part owner of the Schiavone Construction Co. of Secaucus, N.J., before he joined the Reagan Administration in 1981.

Subway Tunnel

Donovan and other Schiavone company executives were charged with conspiring with a small Bronx earth-moving company in the late 1970s to defraud the New York City Transit Authority during construction of the East 63rd Street subway tunnel from Manhattan to Queens.

According to the prosecutors, the Schiavone executives formed a bogus minority-owned subcontracting firm and used it as a front to help qualify for the subway contract.

Donovan has steadfastly maintained that he is innocent of any wrongdoing and has charged that the prosecutor, a Democrat, brought the indictment to obtain publicity and embarrass the Reagan Administration during the 1984 presidential campaign.