Verdict on Jury Idea: a Conflict of Interest

I’ve had two brushes with jury duty in the last 10 years, both ending with the prosecutor rejecting me. In the more recent case, the deputy D.A. asked me during jury selection if, in keeping me on board, he would risk reading about himself after the trial in case he goofed up.

He asked good-naturedly, but that didn’t stop him from giving me the heave-ho. It dawned on me later that he raised a valid point. Given my day job, how could anyone be sure that whatever I did as a juror wouldn’t have been calculated to make a post-trial column more juicy? Would I be overly contrarian? Would I try to stir things up in the jury room?

Because I wouldn’t promise not to write about the experience, the perception might have existed that while doing my civic duty I also was working an angle.

This brings me to the curious aftermath of the highly publicized gang-rape trial of three 19-year-olds accused of assaulting a 16-year-old acquaintance two years ago while she was allegedly unconscious. An Orange County jury, after hearing several weeks of testimony, couldn’t reach a unanimous verdict on any of the 24 felony counts but leaned toward acquittal on most of them.

After arguing numerous times in print that the district attorney had overcharged in the case -- especially since the likely sentence would have involved lengthy prison terms -- I had no quarrel with the outcome. I’m troubled, however, to read that one of the jurors will be paid to consult with the defense team in the retrial that Dist. Atty. Tony Rackauckas says will happen. Several other jurors indicated they’d be willing consultants but not for pay.

The problem isn’t with these particular jurors -- they had no reason to think beforehand that the defense would solicit them after the trial. There’s no reason to think that they did their duty with anything other than the purest motives.

The problem is that they’ve unwittingly provided momentum to an idea that should be stopped in its tracks. If prospective jurors know that paid consulting offers may come their way, how would we know whether that affected their judgment during deliberations?

In such high-stakes trials, it’s obvious why defense lawyers would want to tap sympathetic jurors. It’s just that the potential for causing future mischief strikes me as much too great to make it worth the trouble.

I realize I’m mouthing the exact same argument as Rackauckas, but when he’s right, he’s right. He’s already enlisted local bipartisan support to introduce a bill in the Legislature that would prohibit post-trial for-pay options for jurors.

I’d like to think that isn’t necessary and that everyone will realize that jurors-for-hire is an idea not worth hatching.

That said, I can’t resist another poke to Rackauckas’ ribs. Wouldn’t a perceptive and fair-minded D.A. draw a fairly obvious conclusion from the fact that a number of jurors are willing to volunteer to work for the defense, especially in a rape case in which you wouldn’t expect much sympathy for the defendants? Wouldn’t that conclusion be that the case is fatally flawed and that jurors feel so strongly about it that they’re willing to help the defense for free?

Isn’t that a no-brainer?

There may be too much pressure on Rackauckas preventing him from altering his course toward a retrial. Even so, I’d like to see the defense lawyers alter theirs. Putting a juror on the payroll, mindful of the dangerous precedent it sets for the next high-profile case, isn’t being true to the jury system.

The defense might argue that Rackauckas made them do it. But just because he used bad judgment doesn’t mean they have to.

Jurors hear a case, they do their duty, they go home.

Is that too quaint a notion to just leave alone?

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Wednesdays, Fridays and Sundays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.