Juror Airs Frustration at Broderick Deadlock : Courts: It was the sixth high-profile San Diego trial in five years to end in stalemate. Experts say indecision may be signaling the cultural evolution of a city.

With a deadlocked jury and without a verdict, the double-murder trial of La Jolla socialite Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick leaves an emptiness hard to describe, a juror in the case said.

“I’m disappointed it ended the way it did,” with two jurors seeking a manslaughter conviction and 10 urging a murder finding in the killings of Broderick’s ex-husband and his second wife, juror Michael A. (Mickey) Byrd, 39, of Rancho Bernardo said after a mistrial was declared in the case Tuesday.

“You end up with this sense of uselessness,” Byrd, an industrial project manager, said. “It’s totally frustrating to spend that much time and accomplish nothing. I’m glad it’s over but it’s not an elation-type thing at all. It’s kind of a miserable feeling.”

That feeling, however, is a familiar one in recent years in San Diego. The deadlock in the Broderick case means that it--like five other of the city’s most high-profile criminal cases over the past five years--has resulted in a jury deadlocked on some or all of the counts.

That indecision may be signaling the cultural evolution of a city, said experts in law, psychology, sociology, public policy and San Diego lore on Wednesday.

No longer built primarily around the relative homogeneity of the Navy, San Diego’s growth has attracted people from different cultures who, when picked for jury duty, bring different values to an emotionally intense drama playing out in court, the experts said.

Over time, a succession of split verdicts marks the loss of a single overriding value and the emergence of a collection of the community’s varied values, the experts said.

“We’re seeing juries that reflect the diversity of a San Diego that is very different from the San Diego that the leadership in the community thinks exists--in every way you can think of,” said former Mayor Roger Hedgecock, who had one of two 1985 trials on campaign financing irregularities end with a deadlocked jury.

“This community now has a diversity in political thinking, moral thinking, language and culture that rivals or exceeds every city on the face of the Earth,” said Hedgecock, who was convicted in a second trial, filed a series of appeals and finally ended his case with a negotiated settlement last week.

” . . . When a situation of law is presented in the strict ritual of a courtroom, I’m sure there are jurors who simply do not relate to the assumptions behind that ritual or to the manner of communicating the facts that they’re supposed to weigh,” said Hedgecock, now a San Diego radio talk show host.

In Hedgecock’s case, a public figure fell from grace. Broderick’s case involved basic human impulses--including rage, jealousy and abandonment.

She was charged with two counts of first-degree murder in the Nov. 5, 1989, killings of her ex-husband, Daniel T. Broderick III, and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick.

The trial began Oct. 22. The jury got the case last Thursday and, on Tuesday, announced its deadlock, prompting San Diego Superior Court Judge Thomas J. Whelan to declare a mistrial. No decision has been made on a retrial.

Like the Broderick and Hedgecock cases, the other high-profile San Diego cases that reached stalemate focused on emotionally charged issues that jurors were required to measure through their own values and experiences, the experts said.

With Sagon Penn it was racial tension. With Craig Peyer it was police wrongdoing. With Nancy Hoover Hunter it was scandalous wealth. With Richard T. Silberman it was drugs.

Peyer, a California Highway Patrol officer, was accused of killing a 20-year-old woman. His first trial ended after the jury split 7 to 5 for conviction. He was convicted of murder at the second trial.

Sagon Penn, who is black, was twice acquitted of shooting two white San Diego police officers and a civilian ride-along. His juries deadlocked, heavily favoring acquittal on lesser charges.

Hunter, a principal in the failed La Jolla investment firm J. David & Co., which bilked investors throughout Southern California was convicted last year of four personal tax charges linked to the firm’s collapse. She was acquitted of one other count, but the jury deadlocked on the 192 fraud and conspiracy charges at the heart of the case.

Silberman, a former governor’s aide, was charged with laundering money portrayed as Colombian cocaine profits. He was convicted last summer of one currency violation--but the jury deadlocked, heavily in favor of conviction, on the central money-laundering counts. Later, he pleaded guilty to another felony count and averted a second trial.

The system produces a hung jury in roughly one case in six, according to a landmark study 25 years ago at the University of Chicago, said Rita Simon, a professor of sociology at American University in Washington, D.C., who worked on the study.

Most juries become deadlocked when two--usually more--jurors resist pressure from the others, said John B. McConahay, a professor of public policy at Duke University who serves as a jury consultant.

Typically, one strong person brings along one or two others, McConahay said.

A hung jury is not necessarily bad thing, said Robert J. MacCoun, a jury expert and behavioral scientist at the RAND Corp. in Santa Monica. “ . . . If they feel they can’t agree, they shouldn’t agree. That’s the system.”

Byrd said the system can be frustrating. He said he is troubled that he “failed to bring justice.”