At the beginning of deliberations, the panel weighing the fate of a black man from Long Island charged with manslaughter turned to its lone black juror for guidance.
"The forewoman said: `You're the only African-American here, we want to know how you feel about the racial stuff and the N-word, and we'll follow your lead,"' Richard Burke, at 66 the eldest of 12 Suffolk County residents, recalled. "He said, `Being African-American, I really hate to hear the word.' But he was against this thing being a racial thing from the beginning. After that, we went around the table, each giving our views."
Then the jury listened to prayers led by Burke, a born-again Baptist who insisted that God would assure a just verdict if the jury followed "our country's laws as handed down by Moses."
For four days last month, six men and six women locked in a jury room in Riverhead, New York, with plenty of coffee and snacks but no windows or fresh air, agonized over the fate of the man, John White, before finding him guilty of second-degree manslaughter for shooting an unarmed white teenager point-blank in the face on Aug. 9, 2006.
After more than three weeks of racially charged testimony, the jurors heard defense attorneys say in closing arguments that White, 54, had been defending his home and family against what he had regarded as a "lynch mob" after he was awakened by a group of white teenagers shouting racial epithets at his son, Aaron, then 19, and baiting Aaron to come outside and fight. The lawyers said that White grabbed a loaded, unlicensed pistol to confront the mob and wound up accidentally shooting and killing Daniel Cicciaro Jr, 17.
The guilty verdict, delivered on Dec. 22, was immediately denounced by White's lawyers as proof of racism in Suffolk County.
Two jurors have told reporters that they buckled under duress, a decision they now say they regret. They say they still have reasonable doubt that prosecutors proved the charges against White, who is free on US$100,000 bail and faces a maximum sentence of five to 15 years when he returns to court on Feb. 21.
Those four days of deliberations are of extreme interest to White's lawyers, who hope to use the testimony of the jurors in their appeal.
They have already spoken to one of the holdout jurors, Donna Marshak, 63, who said she changed her mind and her vote after another juror blurted out that White would be safer in prison because the victim's father would kill White if he were acquitted. The other, Francois Larche, said last week that he was willing to speak to the lawyers.
Their comments characterized the tense proceedings by a jury that included a black man and a white South African who grew up during apartheid. The other nine jurors either could not be contacted or declined to speak, though several told various news organizations that the deliberations had been thorough and that the holdouts had not been pressured.
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