McMartin Jurors Feel Ire of Public Over Their Verdicts

Barbara Celestine heard it at a nail parlor. Dante Ochoa got it while buying a newspaper at a local liquor store. And John Breese’s wife bore the brunt at work.

On the day after the verdict in the historic McMartin Pre-School molestation trial, at least four jurors heard a common refrain from friends, relatives and complete strangers: “How could you say they weren’t guilty?”

A Fox television call-in poll that found viewers, by nearly a 7-1 margin, believing that “justice was not served” with the acquittal Thursday of Ray Buckey and his mother, Peggy McMartin Buckey, contributed to some jurors’ sense of being under siege.

After 2 1/2 years of isolation and nine weeks of secret deliberations, the McMartin jurors were thrust into the public eye. Two appeared on “Nightline” and two others on “A.M. Los Angeles.” All 12 were blitzed by reporters’ telephone calls.

But the most pressing questions came from closer to home--presenting a sometimes frustrating counterpoint to the elation and pride jurors had felt Thursday, when they put an end to the longest criminal trial in history.

“Now that we found them not guilty, everyone wants to change the system,” said Celestine, who works for the U.S. Air Force in El Segundo. “If we had found them guilty, no one would have wanted to change anything. I have a problem with that. We did the best we could do.”

When juror Breese arrived home Thursday, his wife of two months asked, simply: “What happened?”

The Downey man, 51, said he adhered so stringently to instructions not to discuss the case that his wife had no idea what the verdict would be.

She was watching television with co-workers at a Kaiser-Permanente hospital when the clerk read the verdicts.

“Everyone at the hospital was shocked, including my wife,” Breese said. “People were asking, ‘What happened? What happened?’ ”

“There was nothing she could say,” Breese said. “There was a lot of pressure placed on her, inadvertently, by her co-workers. She wanted to know how they had gotten off, just like everyone else. . . . I was supposed to give her a call during the day, but I was so busy.”

Breese said that his wife accepted the verdict once he described the evidence. Other jurors said they were able to persuade doubters, too, but it took some explaining.

Celestine was in a nail parlor, sprucing up for an appearance Friday on “A.M. Los Angeles,” when another customer demanded: “How could you say they weren’t guilty?”

“It was a stranger who said this,” Celestine said. “At first she was sort of angry.”

After she described the evidence for half an hour--and explained how jurors believed that children’s testimony was tainted by suggestions from parents and therapists--the woman seemed appeased, Celestine said.

“I couldn’t even sleep last night,” she said. “I was so tense. You see a lot of reaction from people and all you can say is, ‘I did the best job I could do, and I feel my decision was the right decision.’ ”

Ochoa tested public opinion with a Friday morning visit to a neighborhood liquor store. He picked up a newspaper and, without identifying himself, asked the clerk, “What did you think of the McMartin verdict?” The man snapped: “That’s full of. . . . I think they were guilty.”

“I asked him why he didn’t agree with the jury and he was hard-pressed to say why,” Ochoa said. “Most people have no basis for that belief, except their emotions.”

His wife’s co-workers weren’t happy either, Ochoa said.

“Her office group said they had prayed for the jury,” Ochoa said. “When they heard what happened, they said they were sorry they did.”

Ochoa and Celestine said they were both dreading the questions that are sure to greet them when they return to work Monday.

“I just want to be away from this and not have to talk about it for awhile,” Celestine said. “It was like a nightmare. . . . But I’m getting over it.”