Drapes Rise on an Eccentric Broderick Jury Pool

Jack Earley, the defense attorney representing Elisabeth Anne (Betty) Broderick in her murder retrial, asked the shy, soft-spoken woman, one of 10 dozen prospective jurors, if she had ever been scared.

The answer, like many of those given Tuesday in the second day of jury selection, provoked laughter and looks of surprise.

Hearing portions of the give-and-take, a casual eavesdropper might have had a hard time believing that this was a murder trial--one of the most talked-about, written-about and studied in San Diego history--rather than an episode of “L.A. Law.”

“My husband used to go to Alaska a lot, and one night,” the woman told Earley, “the drapes started moving. So I shot them. Even broke the window.”

The woman told Earley that she kept a .357 magnum beside her bed--the one she used against the drapes--but only for self-protection.

“Have you ever used a gun,” Earley asked, “other than the time that you were attacked by the drapes?”

Kerry Wells, the deputy district attorney prosecuting the case against Broderick, asked one 21-year-old woman how her fiance had reacted when she told him she was breaking off their engagement.

“He tried to choke me,” said the woman, who earlier had told the court that, as a born-again Christian, she found using a firearm intolerable under any circumstances.

“So what did you do,” Wells asked, “when he tried to choke you?”

“I beat him up,” the woman said with a shrug.

Startled, Wells asked if the woman had ever sought a restraining order against the man.

The woman paused thoughtfully and said: “If I couldn’t have beaten him up again, yeah, I probably would have gotten one of those. But he left me alone.”

One juror said he had once been convicted of burglary but that, despite his criminal record, he managed to retain a high-security job at the 32nd Street Naval Station.

Another said that, while doing university work in Zaire and Cambodia, she had often carried a gun--but only for protection against animals.

Speaking of animals, one woman said she much preferred the company of animals to people.

“But I could still be an impartial juror,” she said.

She may get her chance. She remains one of a dozen people still seated. Both attorneys are allowed 20 challenges--the right to excuse a juror--and, after Tuesday, Wells had invoked three, Earley one. In addition, the judge has the right to remove jurors.

At first glance, the pool of prospective jurors being questioned during the retrial is a far more gregarious, earthy, outspoken--even eccentric--bunch than the 12 whose deliberations ended in a hung jury last fall. On Tuesday, they never lacked for a sense of humor.

In the first trial, 10 voted to convict Broderick of murder; two held out for the lesser charge of manslaughter.

Broderick, 43, has been charged with two counts of murder in the Nov. 5, 1989, shooting deaths of former husband Daniel T. Broderick III, 44, and his new wife, Linda Kolkena Broderick, 28.

Daniel Broderick, a prominent medical malpractice attorney, was a past president of the San Diego County Bar Assn. He and Broderick were active in La Jolla social circles before their bitter divorce and custody dispute.

Broderick has admitted shooting the couple as they lay sleeping in the bedroom of their Marston Hills home.

Many of Tuesday’s questions focused on infidelity, wealth, manslaughter versus murder, jurors’ views of obscenity, the needs and expectations of one partner in a marriage versus those of the spouse, and what happens in the aftermath of divorce.

Jurors were asked a variety of deeply personal questions, and many trotted out stories of their own failed romances and bitter breakups.

One woman said her first husband had died of a heart attack, and that his death had left her angry. “I can think of no time or place or circumstance when it would be appropriate to kill somebody,” she said later.

She was excused in the only challenge used by Earley.

Throughout the afternoon session, some jurors had trouble staying awake.

At one point, Wells asked a young woman, “Why did everyone laugh when your name was called?”

“Because I was asleep,” she said.

But the same woman later said she was excited to be in court and that one of her favorite television shows was the courtroom drama “Perry Mason.”

Another time, Wells had a question interrupted by the clatter of a juror nodding off and almost falling out of her chair.

“I thought you were a goner,” Wells said, shaking her head.

The woman only smiled. The same group returns to the courtroom today. The trial is expected to start as early as next week.