Judge Will Consider Accepting Partial Verdicts in Samuels Trial : Courts: Jury ends 15 days without decision on fate of woman charged with planning murders of husband and hit man.

With the jury ending 15 days of deliberations without result Tuesday, a Van Nuys Superior Court judge said he would consider accepting partial verdicts in the trial of Mary Ellen Samuels for allegedly orchestrating the murders of her estranged husband and a hit man.

The jury of six men and six women have given no report of their progress. Since late last week, everyone involved in the case has been wondering what is going on behind the closed jury room doors.

There have been signs of discord among the jurors. On Monday, the jury replaced its foreman, a retired engineer, with a store manager who originally had been one of the six alternates. In the corridors of the Van Nuys courthouse, lawyers are wondering if the Samuels jury could be just the latest in a series of hung juries.

On Tuesday, Van Nuys Superior Court Judge Michael R. Hoff said in court that he will consider taking partial verdicts today if the jury has reached any.

Samuels, 45, is accused of hiring hit man James Bernstein--one of her daughter’s two fiances--to kill her estranged husband, a camera operator’s assistant who worked on the films “Heaven Can Wait” and “Lethal Weapon.”

Robert Samuels, 40, who’d known Mary Ellen since childhood, was shot to death on Dec. 8, 1988, in his home on Bahama Street in Northridge, apparently as he headed toward his tanning bed.

Eight months later, suspected hit man Bernstein, a 27-year-old drug dealer, was strangled and dumped in remote Lockwood Canyon in Ventura County. His two admitted killers, Paul Gaul and Darrell Ray Edwards, testified for the prosecution under plea bargains, pointing their fingers at Mary Ellen Samuels as the woman who hired them to commit the killings.

Samuels also testified, denying everything.

Since deliberations began June 9, the jury’s questions have centered around the attempted murder, solicitation and conspiracy charges. Not a single question has been asked about the two murder counts, or the special circumstance allegations that could send Samuels to the death chamber.

The jurors must decide who is lying and who is telling the truth among the trial’s steady stream of barflies, would-be hit men and other characters. Weighing their credibility is further complicated by the fact that some prosecution witnesses are alleged accomplices who testified under grants of immunity. The second pair of hit men were spared the death penalty in exchange for their testimony.

And the legal requirements to prove a charge of solicitation of murder aren’t easy for non-lawyers to digest, attorneys said. For solicitation to be proved, the jurors must be convinced Samuels really intended for her husband--and the hit man--to die. There has to be corroborating testimony from at least two credible witnesses, or testimony from a single witness that is backed up by other evidence.

For a while, deliberations hummed along. There wasn’t a peep from the jury room. Week 1 went by, then Week 2. By Week 3, signs of strain could be seen.

On Thursday, one juror asked the court clerk what the other jurors should do if they were “having a problem” with the foreman. The clerk advised the juror to write a note to the judge. He didn’t, but by Monday night a new foreman was in place.

Curiosity got the best of Judge Hoff on Friday, when he summoned lawyers to his courtroom, telling them, “I was contemplating asking the jury where they are.”

Saying he’d hate to see jury members snagged on the lesser counts if they have already decided the murder charges, Hoff asked prosecutor Jan Maurizi and defense attorney Phil Nameth if they would be interested in a status report from the jury, or in accepting partial verdicts, if any have been reached. The verdicts could be read in court, and the jury sent back to deliberate further. Or, the verdicts could be sealed until the jury reached verdicts on the remaining counts or a mistrial was declared.

But both lawyers said they were afraid to ask anything of the jurors because the questions might imply they should have reached a verdict.

Maurizi had no comment Tuesday. But, in the past she has theorized that the story line of the case is so implausible, so stranger-than-fiction, that jurors might be having difficulty deciding whether to believe any of it.

Neither would Nameth comment on the deliberations, even though conventional courthouse wisdom dictates that the longer a jury deliberates, the better the news will be for the defense.

“Anyone who has done this for a living would have to tell you they have no idea what the jury is doing,” Nameth said.

Questions the jurors posed Tuesday indicate they are pondering the conspiracy charges, which may mean they are reaching the end of their deliberations.

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Earlier questions had focused on the solicitation charges, and an attempted murder charge based on an incident in which Samuels struck her husband over the head with a pink object. Witnesses differed over whether that object was a lead pipe, a broomstick or a rubber dog toy.

The jurors also asked to have the testimony of two key prosecution witnesses--David Navarro and Heidi Dougall--read back to them. That testimony centered around Samuels’ search for a hit man to kill her estranged husband.

“I think this is a fair, conscientious, dutiful jury giving this case the time and deliberation it needs because of the seriousness and complexity of this case,” Nameth said.

But the deliberations have taken a toll.

As jurors filed out of the courtroom Friday and headed toward the elevators, one woman sighed, looked out the seventh-floor window and said “I want to jump.”

“Don’t jump,” said another juror. “I’ll throw you.”

He was smiling. Sort of.