Tension Rises as McMartin Case Jurors Near End of Their Task

As the final countdown begins in the record-breaking McMartin Pre-School molestation trial, both participants and observers are getting edgy, mentally ticking off the counts on which the jury has reached verdicts and the dwindling number left to go.

“I’m relieved that we’re this close but still apprehensive,” Los Angeles Superior Court Judge William Pounders said Tuesday. “Until the last act is over, it’s not over. And I want it to be over as soon as possible.”

The trial, once measured in years, then months and weeks, is now days away from completion, with all sides agreeing that the jury will finish this month if it maintains its current pace.

As they await the outcome, parents of children in the case say they fluctuate between optimism and nervousness.

“The closer it gets, the more nervous I get,” said one, who asked not to be identified. “And whether we win or lose, I know I’m going to cry anyway” that it’s finally over.

Ray Buckey, 31, and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, 63, are charged with 64 counts of molestation and a shared count of conspiracy involving 11 children who attended their family-run nursery school in Manhattan Beach between 1978 and 1983.

Reporters were on hand and applauded when the eight-man, four-woman panel returned from a two-week holiday vacation last week, counting as each juror entered the courtroom. After six weeks of deliberations, the jury had turned in 26 verdicts before leaving on their break, but had asked the judge not to unseal them, contending that piecemeal announcements would affect their deliberations and put pressure on them from outsiders.

Pounders agreed, even though the loss of one juror before the verdicts are announced and affirmed in court, could result in a mistrial and a waste of more than $15 million in county funds.

Last week, the jury reached decisions on eight more counts, passing the halfway mark in their work. As of Tuesday, they had decided 34 of 66 verdicts.

Surprisingly Pounders’ courtroom--newly relocated from the 15th floor to the ninth floor of the downtown Criminal Courts Building--is usually empty of McMartin participants, but for the jurors trooping in and out under the watchful eye of bailiff Jim Gilpin.

Anticipating the day that the verdicts are read, a television network and a local station have hired people to sit in the courtroom and wait for developments. The network has also installed a special telephone hot line from the nearby pressroom to its main office.

Meanwhile Pounders proceeds with other trials in his courtroom.

Despite the absence of the crowds that characterized the early days of the trial nearly three years ago, hundreds of lives are literally on hold until the deliberations end--those of the judge, the attorneys, the families, the defendants and media people assigned to the case.

“Everybody’s being in closer touch,” said Deputy Dist. Atty. Lael Rubin when asked about inquiries from parents of children who testified. “One family called and said they were planning a trip at the end of January but didn’t want to be away when the verdicts were announced. They were wondering if I had a crystal ball.”

The prosecutor said that while she has been “confident all along that we’d continue to have 12 jurors who would ultimately render their judgment,” she became concerned during the Christmas break that one might be lost.

“It was a big relief to me to know that all 12 came back and have been busy at work,” she said. She added that unlike the other lawyers--co-prosecutor Roger Gunson, who now heads the district attorney’s special investigations division, and the two defense attorneys, who can focus their energies on other cases--she is not getting another assignment until the verdicts are in.

Attorney Dean Gits, who represents Peggy McMartin Buckey, declined to comment, explaining that he did not want to say anything that might indirectly put pressure on the jury to speed its tedious job.

The defendants themselves, free on bail, are waiting out the deliberations at an undisclosed location.

The jury has been carefully considering the counts child by child, debunking predictions by some that the jurors would reach quick verdicts in their eagerness to get back to normal lives.

TRIAL TENSIONS: Bailiff Jim Gilpin, above, locks door of jury room as jurors in the lengthy McMartin Pre-School child molestation trial continue the task of reaching verdicts in the lengthy and costly trial. The jury now has decided on 34 of the 64 counts in the case.