Well, maybe not:
"Juror in Long Island Killing Says He Was Pressured Into a Guilty Verdict" by COREY KILGANNON and NATE SCHWEBER
A mistrial seemed imminent. But Judge Barbara Kahn, who had given the jury the case on Wednesday, kept them deliberating late Friday night. Then, when they could not reach a unanimous verdict, she called them in on Saturday, asking them to give their home phone numbers to court officials and indicating that they would have to come in again Sunday if they did not reach a decision, and then on Monday, Christmas Eve.
In fact, most of the jury — 10 members — had already concluded by then that the man, John H. White, 54, was guilty of second-degree manslaughter in the shooting of Daniel Cicciaro Jr., 17.
Daniel was shot point-blank in the face on August 9, 2006, after he and several friends arrived at Mr. White’s house and began using racial epithets in challenging Mr. White’s son, Aaron, then 19, to fight.
But there were two holdouts on the jury. And to one of them, François Larché, 46, of West Islip, Mr. White’s account of the night’s events — that the shooting was an accident and that he was protecting his family and home against a “lynch mob” of angry teenagers — resonated.
In an interview at his home, Mr. Larché said he still thought there was reasonable doubt about Mr. White’s guilt. On Saturday night, when the jury was polled, he refused to vote guilty, he said. He said that he and a female juror, whom he declined to name, had endured pressure and mistreatment from the other jurors because they remained “diametrically opposed” to them.
But by the end of the night on Saturday, he said, the pressure and the rigorous deliberating schedule finally caused them to buckle. At 8:30, he said, he spoke with the other holdout.
Mr. Larché recalled:
“I said: ‘That’s it, I’m done. I don’t know what you want to do, but that’s it for me.' Everyone stayed real quiet when that happened. They were probably whispering to themselves, ‘Hallelujah.’”
Within a few minutes, the jury of six white women, five white men and one black man walked into the courtroom and told Mr. White that he had been found guilty.
Mr. Larché, who is white and immigrated from South Africa in 1982 partly because of his hatred of apartheid, said that he was badgered by the other jury members for holding out:
“They were making attacks on me, [and with that dynamic], you’re not going to be able to work.”
On Friday, the jury sent Judge Kahn a note stating that certain jurors were not properly following her instructions and needed to be reminded of legal aspects of the charges. Mr. Larché said that other jurors “told me I was misinterpreting the law.”
Mr. Larché firmly believed there was reasonable doubt that Mr. White was guilty:
“The doubt is definitely there. You have the right to use deadly force if you believe your person or property is threatened. Does he have justification for that? I think he does. [If other jurors had paid closer attention to the charges], they might have made a different decision.”
Richard Burke, Juror No. 12, in an interview at his home yesterday, called the deliberations “very emotional” but he said that there was no pressuring of the jurors:
“Nobody pressured nobody. Everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, and it was a process. Some people just see things a little different, and when the verdict happened, it happened. It was just an act of God, and that was that.”
Mr. Larché, for his part, denounced the performance of his fellow jurors, adding that he finally gave in to the pressure:
“I don’t think there was any process followed where all the jurors objectively looked at the evidence and testimony and put all the pieces together. I wish that the people of the State of New York gave this man another trial in another county. I don’t think Suffolk County will ever be fair to Mr. White.”
