Decision 18 Years Ago Haunts Juror

Her favorite movie was “Twelve Angry Men,” the 1957 classic that remains perhaps the quintessential portrayal of the pressures and frustrations that erupt behind the closed doors of a jury room.

And then, in 1982, life truly imitated art for Karen Sue McKusick--who became a lonely holdout, the only member of a 12-person jury who believed Dwayne McKinney was innocent.

Eighteen years later, it turns out she may have been right.

Faced with new evidence that McKinney was the victim of mistaken identity, Orange County prosecutors asked a judge Friday to release him from prison. The information supported McKinney’s contention he was at home during the 1980 killing of an Orange County fast-food restaurant manager.

On Friday, McKusick said she was “delighted” that McKinney finally had his “day of glory.” But she said his release cannot grant McKinney his life back--and that will weigh down her shoulders forever.

“I have a family,” said McKusick, 53, of Placentia. “I have children. This man does not, and he does not because of something that we did, that our system did.”

The 12-member jury that day--which did not have a black member, though McKinney is black-- deliberated for eight hours before informing the trial judge that they were divided. Eight members thought McKinney was guilty, and four thought he was innocent--or at least thought that defense attorneys had injected “reasonable doubt” into the case.

The jury was ordered back into deliberations. Three of the other jurors voting for a not guilty verdict were quickly “badgered” into changing their minds, McKusick said.

“I was the last one. Finally, [the other jurors said] ‘You’ve got to lay on the table what you think you’ve got.”

One by one, she laid out her doubts about the prosecution’s case. Primarily, she was concerned that witnesses told police the killer was taller than 6 feet, though McKinney is 5 feet 9.

“They [jurors] convinced me that it wasn’t reasonable doubt, that the difference was a couple of inches, and that’s not much of a difference,” she said. “Is it reasonable to think that when someone is holding a gun and they are scared to death, that they could be off? That’s reasonable, they said. I had several things that I felt were reasonable doubt enough, and they kind of chipped away at it.”

The pressure was intense. Jurors wanted to go home. They were tired. They missed their families.

“If you haven’t been there, you have no idea,” she said. “People wanted to be done with it.”

In the end, McKusick believes that the court should trust jurors with more information. For example, an alibi witness during the trial had testified that McKinney was at home during the murder--and couldn’t get around because he was on crutches, nursing a gunshot wound he had suffered weeks before the crime.

When detectives interviewed McKusick two years ago as part of the new investigation into the killing, she was shown a photo of the wound. It was not the same photo jurors were shown, she said, and the new one “looked like half his calf was missing.” The photo that jurors looked at was either taken from a distance or much later, after the injury had healed substantially, she said.

If they had seen the more vivid photograph, jurors might have realized that McKinney could not have participated in the violent crime, she said.

“There was a lot of prejudice in there,” she said. “They play a game with you. They think you are a stupid juror, that you don’t have enough moxie to ferret things out. And that’s wrong.”

The experience changed her.

“I don’t think I’m the same person because of what happened. It’s how you look at yourself. I don’t have the same value of myself because I feel like the guy in war who was a coward. It’s been hard to live with the fact that maybe I could have just stuck with my gut. That didn’t happen.”