A Legal Railroading, but Justice Was Around the Bend

A decision this week by 12 jurors may fade quickly from the annals of local courtroom history, but it represents one of those quiet victories of our judicial system. As such, it should be applauded for what it was: 12 citizens who, instead of doing the popular thing, did the right thing.

The district attorney served up to them a 20-year-old illegal immigrant named Jose Garcia, who basically didn’t contest charges that he raped then 79-year-old Mary Ward in May of 1992. She died a month later, and the district attorney pressed a murder case against Garcia, contending that the rape so dispirited Ward that it contributed to her death.

The sexual assault was a crime that would shock anyone’s sensibilities. The connection between the rape and Mary Ward’s death is one that any of us, instinctively, might accept.

The jury was composed of 12 white, basically middle-age citizens, presumably sick of crime and, I’ll hazard a guess, probably not too keen on illegal immigrants.

This week, that jury returned a not-guilty verdict on the murder count, while convicting Garcia of several counts of rape and assault.

I met with John Brown, a 62-year-old career teacher and jury member, to find out why. It was his first time ever on a jury. He works at Rancho Alamitos High School, within walking distance of the crime scene. He’s lived in Orange County since the 1960s.

“Everyone was offended, a lot, by the crime,” he said. “But I think you get over that initial feeling, and then you just start listening to the evidence.”

The first week of the trial, Brown said, “I thought I might be having nightmares over the whole thing. I would wake up every now and then thinking about it.”

I asked whether his initial impulse wasn’t to link the rape with her death: “Yeah, I think so. When the prosecution started its case, I thought, ‘Wow, how are they ever going to defend this? It sounds like an open-and-shut case.’ Then (deputy public defender Leonard) Gumlia started punching holes in it.”

The defense showed that Mary Ward had previously undetected cancer. Gumlia also revealed that doctors performed another test that had the unintended effect of contributing to kidney failure. A cancer specialist testified that Ward died within the expected range for the cancer she had, given its late detection.

Once they began deliberating, jurors mounted a timeline display of Mary Ward’s last few months of life, with appropriate medical entries and significant events. It helped focus the case, Brown said. At the start, all 12 jurors gave their overview of the key evidence. The initial indication was that jurors were leaning toward acquittal on the murder charge, although a few were undecided.

Deliberations essentially lasted for three full days. Jurors reviewed the evidence unemotionally, except for a lone juror, Brown said.

“One of the jurors came into the deliberations with a closed mind. She’d already decided he was guilty, and nothing was going to change that. We tried our best for a couple days to use tact. We asked on what she based her decisions, and it pretty much seemed to be her gut feeling. She couldn’t explain to us on what basis she formed her decision, but her mind was made up.”

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On what proved to be the final day of deliberations, Brown said, “The gloves came off. Everybody was coming down on her. We told her we had to follow the law, follow our oath (as jurors) and to base things on the evidence and law and not just opinions.”

The woman then took from her purse an envelope that appeared to contain a pre-written message. She summoned the bailiff and announced, “I’m outta here,” Brown said. The woman was excused by the judge, although Brown doesn’t know exactly why, and replaced by an alternate, who sided with the 11 others on the not-guilty murder verdict.

I asked Brown about impressions from his brush with the system: “First of all, you hear the public defenders being bad-mouthed frequently. This guy (Gumlia) did a great job. It’s pretty hard to find a defendant you’d have less sympathy for, and he did a first-class job for him.”

Yet, Brown said, Gumlia never acted as though he sympathized with his client for the assault. Brown also is left without a single recollection of Garcia ever raising his head during the lengthy trial or of Gumlia ever talking to him.

Garcia will be sentenced in May and faces up to 40 years on the other convictions.

I suggested to Brown that the jury could have convicted Garcia of murder without a peep of protest. “It feels good that justice was served,” Brown answered. “Possibly we would have been heroes if we had convicted him, but you’ve got to have something you can live with afterward, and we just couldn’t find it within ourselves to see any real evidence that he affected her (date of death).”

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Was the jury prepared to convict Garcia of murder, I asked? “Sure, I think everybody would have,” Brown said. “Give us some evidence, and we’ll convict him. But it comes down to, ‘I’m going to have to live with this decision, and without evidence you just can’t do it, even though you might want to.”

Some might argue that there was nothing wrong with the district attorney bringing the murder charge and letting a jury decide.

I would disagree, citing a notion so archaic as citizen confidence in the judicial system and a prosecutor presenting a flimsy case against an unpopular defendant.

But don’t take my word for it. Here’s Brown’s assessment: “When all was said and done, one of the jurors made the comment, ‘What a waste of taxpayers’ money.’ ”

I asked if that bugged him and, if so, whether it was on money-wasting grounds: “It bugs me,” he said, “because I don’t think they had a case to begin with. I think they really tried to railroad this guy. He had what sounds like would have been the perfect chance to railroad somebody--the rape, the citizenry issue, people are down on crime and they want something done about it, and Orange County is famous for being pretty conservative. . . . It’s more than the money. It bothers me that they’re trying to convict somebody of something where there isn’t any real evidence.”

A footnote on the jury: At the outset of deliberations, one juror--apparently aware of juror “bonding” that often occurs--asked for everyone’s phone number, saying she wanted them all to get together for dinner when the trial was over.

That juror turned out to be the lone holdout who would later exasperate the other 11 until she asked to be removed from the case.

Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesday, Friday and Sunday. Readers may reach Parsons by writing to him at The Times Orange County Edition, 1375 Sunflower Ave., Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626, or calling (714) 966-7821.