Shoot-Out Death in a Courtroom Leaves a Juror Haunted

He was short and slight and tightly wound, his face coated with a sheen of nervous sweat, his voice loud and uncontrolled as he testified in front of a Van Nuys jury.

He was convicted Tuesday on four misdemeanor counts, including reckless driving and carrying a loaded pistol. Only 17 hours after hearing his fate in Division 116 of Van Nuys Municipal Court, he returned with a gun to hunt down the city attorney who had prosecuted him.

Moments later, he was dead. Jeremey Avner Sigmond, 35, a self-proclaimed whistle-blower, got the attention in death that he could never command in life.

It is impossible to know what was running through this troubled man’s mind as he followed Deputy City Atty. Jessica Perrin Silvers into the courtroom Wednesday morning, drew his gun and shouted, “Mrs. Silvers, you’re coming with me.”

That, however, is not the only mystery. What the 12 jurors who tried him could not understand as they deliberated Tuesday afternoon was how Sigmond’s case could have reached the courtroom in the first place, how an average man’s lens on life could have twisted so far out of focus, why someone had not helped him, or at least helped him more.

I was foreman of the jury that sealed Sigmond’s fate. The four verdict slips that ostensibly pushed this sick man over the edge bear my signature.

But from the vantage point of jury-box seat No. 9--just a few feet from the witness stand where Sigmond testified during four days of trial--it was clear to me that he had reached Division 116 only after many years of delusion.

Jeremey Avner Sigmond truly believed that during the last years of his life, he lived through “the greatest law enforcement conspiracy since Teapot Dome,” according to the opening statement of Norman Edell, his defense attorney.

He was a man who left his Woodley Avenue home every morning before 5 and headed to Ships coffee shop in Culver City dressed in a crash helmet, two bullet-proof vests--one on top of the other--and packing a loaded pistol.

He was a man with a supercollider of a mind, one that hurled facts into fantasy and concerns into conspiracy, one that transformed California Highway Patrol officers into assassins, stalking him on a near-empty freeway on a dark October morning.

Sigmond was arrested Oct. 21 after leading a cadre of law enforcement agents--in squad cars, on motorcycles and in a helicopter--on a wild chase that started on the southbound San Diego Freeway, looped over four other freeways, reached speeds nearing 120 m.p.h. and ending a half hour later in front of his home.

In a rambling, four-page letter from Sigmond to U.S. Attorney Robert Bonner that was introduced into evidence during the trial, the chiropractor said he was trying to reach “safe house,” that the officers trying to stop him were “punks,” that he was running for his life from a conspiracy that included everyone from the Mafia to Gov. George Deukmejian.

When he was arrested in front of his home, he testified during the trial, he was surrounded by 15 motor officers with drawn guns and sunglasses.

“I said, ‘I’m a doctor and a federal government witness testifying against the Mafia,’ ” Sigmond said in court five days before his death. “They shackled my feet, they ripped my helmet off. I screamed, ‘Lord Jesus be with me.’ They said, ‘Let’s see Jesus help you now, scum ball.’ ”

We jurors learned, too, that Sigmond had filed a federal racketeering suit alleging price fixing and insurance fraud, that he saw himself as a white knight for consumers and the integrity of the chiropractic profession.

The suit was dismissed for lack of foundation, and Sigmond’s appeal was thrown out, too. His chiropractic license had been taken away, and he spent years writing letters to newspapers and law enforcement agencies asking for help in his case.

“The first attempt on my life,” he testified, “was in 1974 in front of 100, where three people were killed. A vehicle tried to mow me down. . . . They started shooting at me in 1982, at my home, shooting bullets into my house. I have pictures.”

What happened through all of those years, all of those contacts with people who could have given him help--even if it wasn’t the sort of assistance he was seeking? As we deliberated Sigmond’s case in that small, stuffy jury room late Tuesday afternoon, one juror kept returning to the conspiracy.

Because Sigmond’s trial was on charges of reckless driving, evading arrest and carrying a loaded, concealed weapon, there were no witnesses about the alleged conspiracy that drove him to wear armor, evade officers and eventually bring a gun into a courtroom.

“I don’t understand how they (law enforcement) could have ignored it if he kept coming to them,” the juror said. “I feel cheated. I wish I could have known what happened. I wish I could have heard all the information.”

Said another: “I don’t know how it even got to court. He practically admitted doing everything they charged him with.”

After 45 minutes of deliberation and four swift votes, we found Sigmond guilty on all four counts. He was impassive as he heard the news. He strode swiftly from the courtroom, boxes of conspiracy evidence tucked under his arm. He never even glanced at Silvers and the jurors as we stood outside the courtroom and talked about what went wrong with his life.

We learned at that time that Sigmond had refused to plead guilty, refused to plead insanity, thought himself sane, had a history of one “violently delusional episode” each year. In 1987, it was the chase. In 1988, it was the gunfight, which would claim his life.

“What’s going to happen to him?” we asked Silvers.

“I hope we can get him some help,” she said.

Sigmond’s jury was luckier Wednesday than Silvers, Deputy Marshall Cliff Wofford, or Municipal Judge Michael Harwin. Silvers had a gun held to her head; Wofford was wounded in the courtroom gunfight that took Sigmond’s life; Harwin wrestled the gun from Sigmond’s grasp. Most of us jurors were back at work or at home when the troubled man died, our duty dispatched.

But luck is a peculiar thing. It took us out of the line of Sigmond’s fire. It cannot erase from our minds the troubled countenance of a man who should have been helped a long time ago.

At the very end of his closing argument, defense attorney Edell took a long look at the jurors seated in judgment on his client’s life. Then he exhorted us to “vote your consciences,” because, he said, “you’re going to remember this case every day for the rest of your lives.”

He was right.