McMartin Jury Hands in Verdicts : Trial: The panel has decided nearly half the 65 child molestation counts in sealed verdicts. But jurors are unlikely to complete their task before breaking for the holidays.

On the eve of a holiday vacation, the jury in the McMartin Pre-School molestation trial began delivering a flurry of sealed verdicts Thursday morning.

With the 24 decisions handed to the judge Thursday and two verdicts reached earlier, the panel has now decided nearly half the 65 counts against Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey.

If the jury continues to deliberate at such a furious pace, all verdicts in the six-year-long case could be announced today, although that is unlikely.

The panel is scheduled to begin its two-week vacation at noon and, unless they reach agreement on the remaining 39 counts this morning, or indicate that they are deadlocked, the verdicts already submitted will not be unsealed until next year. None become final until they are affirmed by each juror in open court.

Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said late Thursday that “it doesn’t look like we’re going to have all the verdicts in tomorrow. . . . I was misled (by the sudden barrage of verdicts) into thinking they had cracked the case. . . . I thought they’d be so antsy to go home that they would finish by now.”

Pounders, responding to jurors’ concerns, had promised not to release the verdicts piecemeal. Panel members told him privately that they believed his earlier plan to announce any decisions reached on or before Dec. 15 will subject them to pressure from family, friends, neighbors and co-workers during the holiday break.

The judge said Thursday that he will keep that promise, even at the risk of a mistrial if any one of the 12 jurors does not return Jan. 2. No alternates remain, due to illness, job difficulties and other problems.

After a 2 1/2-year-long trial--which filled 60,000 pages of transcripts with testimony from 124 witnesses--the case went to the jury Nov. 2. But until Thursday, six weeks of deliberations had resulted in only two verdicts, which remain sealed. The panel told the judge earlier that they were unable to agree on one count.

Late Wednesday, the jury asked for 65 verdict envelopes and, before noon Thursday, had sent out four packages of six verdicts each, bringing the total to 26.

The eight-man, four-woman panel--10 of whom are parents--have been deliberating almost daily whether the 31-year-old Buckey and his 63-year-old mother sexually abused 11 children who attended their family-run Manhattan Beach nursery school in the late 1970s and early ‘80s.

Jurors have not been sequestered, but have been kept together in the courthouse and at lunch by the bailiff. Their deliberations take place around an eight-sided table in an 18-by-20-foot jury room.

The panel has asked to examine scores of exhibits and for clarification of certain legal terms, such as “reasonable doubt.”

Judging from the exhibits requested, the jury appears to have discussed six children so far.

Ray Buckey faces 52 counts of molestation involving all 11 children; his mother is charged with 12 counts of molestation involving four children. The two share a single count of conspiracy. If convicted on all counts, both would face life in state prison.

The case, which has cost county taxpayers more than $15 million, began in the fall of 1983 when the mother of a 2 1/2-year-old boy told Manhattan Beach police she believed her son had been sodomized by “Mr. Ray.”

Subsequent investigation led to the closing of McMartin and eight other South Bay nursery schools and charges against seven McMartin teachers, including elderly founder Virginia McMartin.

After an 18-month preliminary hearing, all seven were ordered to stand trial on 135 counts of molestation and conspiracy. A week after that decision by a Municipal Court judge, however, Dist. Atty. Ira Reiner dropped charges against five of the defendants.

The prosecution has contended throughout the trial that the children were raped, sodomized, forced to participate in oral copulation, play “naked games,” witness satanic rituals and animal mutilation and were photographed for pornographic purposes.

The defense has maintained that the Buckeys are the innocent victims of a witch hunt, and that parents and children were brainwashed by therapists into thinking molestation had occurred.

In its simplest form, the case now boils down to a question of whether the jury believes the testimony of the alleged victims, their parents and physicians who examined them, or that of the defendants and other former teachers at the school.