Jury Stalled From Day One in Broderick Case : Courts: As soon as deliberations began, the six men and six women chosen to decide the fate of the alleged double-murderer realized unanimity was futile, some jurors say.

From the moment six men and six women began jury deliberations in the murder trial of La Jolla socialite Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick, it became abundantly clear, one said Wednesday, that problems--not unanimity--would ensue.

And it also was apparent, he said, that many jurors seemed to believe the person on trial was not the defendant but Daniel T. Broderick III, one of two victims in the double-murder trial that has captivated San Diego since it began 3 1/2 weeks ago.

Another juror said heated discussions ensued “with three to four people believing that buying a gun constitutes a murder conviction.”

The same juror said the verdict was unnecessarily rushed because “several people were in a hurry to get home for Thanksgiving and not have their plans disrupted. That part was a crying shame.”

Still another juror, David Southwick of Chula Vista, said Wednesday that the 12 citizens appointed to render a verdict are being unfairly blamed by a hostile public, “because we did our best.”

Southwick was one of 10 who held out for a murder conviction, believing Broderick’s own testimony was by far the most damning.

But Michael A. (Mickey) Byrd, an industrial projects manager from Rancho Bernardo, said the defense tactic of seeming to put Dan Broderick on trial worked effectively.

He said some jurors--enough to make a difference--were swayed by stories of Broderick and her children living in rat-infested apartments while Dan wore tailored suits and drove a sports car. The point was enhanced, Byrd said, by stories of Dan leaving his wife for a younger woman after she had helped him through both medical and law school.

Nevertheless, Byrd was one of the 10 who favored a murder conviction. He said the jury never really discussed first- or second-degree murder, or voluntary or involuntary manslaughter, having deadlocked on the point of murder versus manslaughter.

“We just couldn’t agree whether it was murder or manslaughter,” he said, explaining the ballot that found the majority favoring a murder conviction. “We wanted to crawl before we could walk, but found out we couldn’t crawl or walk.”

As a result, the trial of the 43-year-old ex-wife of Dan Broderick, a leading medical malpractice attorney and past president of the San Diego County Bar Assn., ended Tuesday in a hung jury and without a verdict. Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan declared a mistrial and set Tuesday as the date for a new hearing.

Byrd, 39, said the jury “hung up” on Broderick’s malice or “lack of malice” as she approached the home of her ex-husband and his second wife, 28-year-old Linda Kolkena Broderick, on the morning of Nov. 5, 1989. A finding of malice is required for a murder conviction.

One of the two jurors opting for manslaughter said Broderick’s crime was exactly that “because it was done in the heat of passion. She was provoked by correspondence she had recently received from Dan. It was the straw that broke the camel’s back.”

“It was strictly voluntary manslaughter,” said the juror, who asked to remain anonymous. “The California penal code (from which the juror began reading) says, ‘There is no malice aforethought if the killing occurred upon a sudden quarrel or in the heat of passion. In order to prove such a crime, a human being has to be killed, the killing has to be unlawful and the killing was done with the intent to kill.’

“I don’t believe she had that,” the juror said. The killing “was out of character for her.”

But juror Southwick, in a Wednesday interview with KGTV (Channel 10), said Broderick is clearly guilty of murder.

“I feel let down, disappointed, frustrated, just about any adjective you can come up with,” he told a reporter.

Southwick said that in his view, Broderick’s own testimony pegged her a murderer.

“She goes up the stairs” of Dan Broderick’s house, he said. “She knows where the door is, but the door is closed. She goes to another door but doesn’t give him the chance to wake up--the chance to react. She goes to the bed and all of a sudden claims she doesn’t know what happened, she just ‘heard a bang.’

“So for that split-second in time, she had a lapse of memory. But right after that, she had the presence of mind to go over and pull the phone out of the wall so that he can’t call for help. I thought it was premeditated in the first degree.”

But defense lawyer Jack Earley said Wednesday that he had heard “from what all the jurors tell me” that the “choice was between second-degree or manslaughter. I have heard nothing different.”

If so, he said, he wants the jury to reconvene and formally announce that it considered and rejected first-degree murder--because, for reasons of double jeopardy, that would eliminate it as a charge at any second trial.

Broderick admits she fired, from a .38-caliber pistol, the shots that killed the couple as they lay in bed in their Marston Hills home.

Earley argued that Broderick intended only to confront her ex-husband, and if she thought of killing anyone, it was herself.

Juror Byrd said that “a key problem” was the jury’s not knowing what Broderick really thought or felt in the hours and minutes leading up to the murders.

They had only her word to go by.

“There were no witnesses to say what kind of mood she was in,” he said. “It was a tough point to try and figure out--did she go over there to murder them, or to confront them and then commit suicide? We had to use circumstantial evidence a lot to try to figure out her mood, and that was difficult.

“At this point in time, I’d say 10 of us were right and two of us were very wrong.”

The juror who admitted being among the two for manslaughter said some jurors harbored “specious” reasons for favoring a murder conviction.

“It was three or four people believing that buying a gun constituted a murder conviction,” the juror said. “Otherwise, I feel we would have had a manslaughter conviction.”

Byrd said he favored a murder conviction, believing the evidence pointed overwhelmingly in that direction.

“She said in newspaper reports that she was mad enough to kill Dan,” he said. “She made statements about killing to (child custody mediator) Ruth Roth. She had said she wouldn’t be a single parent--she would kill him first. It’s not the kind of thing you say when you’re annoyed. It’s not, ‘I’m mad enough to kill him.’ It went way beyond that. It was a series of very serious statements.

“Then, if we can believe the witnesses, she goes out and tells a few people, ‘I finally did it--I finally killed the son of a bitch.’ But the only one who will ever know what really went on that morning is Betty Broderick. She’s the only one alive--who’s still alive--who can attest to what really happened, and how she felt, from the time she woke up to the time she entered their home and killed them.”

Byrd said deliberations “focused basically on the killings themselves, but a lot of small items kept getting introduced that seemed to have nothing to do with the murders. I felt a lot of times like Daniel Broderick was the one on trial. I thought we were supposed to be trying Mrs. Broderick. That was clearly a defense tactic, and clearly it had its effect.

“I think that’s partly why we hung up on that fine line between malice and lack of malice. It was just enough for the defense to score a victory, of sorts, or at least not to lose.”

Byrd said he is haunted by the feeling that, for whatever sins might have been committed against her, Broderick entered the home of two people and killed them, and “that I, as a juror, failed to bring justice.”