Judge With 2 Juries on His Hands Finds Way to Cut Logistical Knot

Justice invariably prevails in most courtrooms in Orange County. In nine years of court reporting, I can’t recall a single case where I was convinced that a defendant got a bum rap from either a judge or a jury.

For a while last week, however, I thought I had finally found one.

In Superior Court in Newport Beach, Roman Gabriel Menchaca, 19, is on trial, with two others, accused of the most heartless killing imaginable: a drive-by gang shooting where at least 20 rifle shots were sprayed into a gathering. A 4-year-old boy was killed, along with an 18-year-old. Six others were wounded; one lost a leg.

It’s sickening stuff to hear. But one thing was clear: No way were these three defendants going to get a fair trial.

Because of a lawyer’s conflict, Menchaca was not ready for trial the same time as his co-defendants, Robert P. Figueroa, 20, and Louis P. Valadez, 28. The conflict was ironed out just as the jury for the Figueroa and Valadez trial was selected. Instead of ordering a separate trial for Menchaca, Superior Court Judge Tully H. Seymour followed the lead from other counties and decided to try the case with two juries: One for Menchaca, one for the other two defendants. That would save taxpayers considerable expense of another trial, and spare the witnesses having to testify twice. Prosecutors loved the idea. The defense was skeptical.

When opening statements and the first testimony reached the jury on July 10, the proceedings approached the bizarre.

Seymour had spectators on one side of the audience. On the other, he seated the Menchaca jury and its alternates, three to four abreast, row after row behind each other.

For fairness, the judge announced, he would alternate the two juries into the jury box week by week during the trial.

But it didn’t take a genius to see that whichever defendant’s jury was sitting in the outfield was going to get the short end.

The problems were glaring. The door was always noisy when spectators came in or out, a major distraction to the jurors in the back rows. Those jurors couldn’t see the prosecutor’s charts. Much of the time, they couldn’t hear the witnesses or the lawyers. And the times they could hear, they appeared to strain.

Several of the outfield jurors plainly showed their irritation at the conditions. Seymour tried to make some amends. He positioned a deputy marshal at the door to cut down on spectator noise. He had Deputy Dist. Atty. Thomas Avdeef move his charts to a better vantage point. But it just wasn’t working.

There was a greater concern too. Some cases rest primarily on physical evidence, which jurors can take into the jury room during deliberations. But this gang trial relies primarily on eyewitness identification of the killers. The credibility of their testimony was a key factor to both prosecutors and defense. But how can a juror pick up on inflections, or expressions, or tone, when just seeing the witnesses is an accomplishment in itself?

Someone had to set this judge straight about what was going on.

But it turned out the judge didn’t need a reporter’s help. Art Snow, the judge’s bailiff, saw the problem. So did Susan Colton, his clerk for that week. And the judge saw it himself.

The next morning, after conferring with Colton and Snow, Judge Seymour announced to the lawyers before court: “We’re moving.”

Seymour had lobbied with his next-door neighbor, Judge Ragnar R. Engebretson, to trade courtrooms for the remainder of the trial.

The difference was incredible. Because the new courtroom is so much larger, the second jury is no longer by the door, or far away from the witness stand.

The jurors sit next to the railing in just two rows. No one’s vision is blocked. Charts and witnesses can be seen clearly. Jurors are no longer in the outfield.

The new courtroom has a sound system much improved over the first one. In fact, the two juries at this trial can hear much better than in most of the courtrooms at the main courthouse in Santa Ana.

It may be someone’s subject for debate that two juries sitting in on the same trial cannot produce a fair trial for anyone. But if two juries are a thing of the future in such cases, it’s not likely anyone could make it work logistically better than Seymour has done it here.