Arguments made for jury misconduct at trial

Fifteen years ago Pam Smart's murder trial, which began on March 4, 1991, rocked a small New Hampshire community and sent the nation reeling. As details of the plot to kill her husband, his execution style shooting and Smart's affair with the 16-year-old trigger-man unfolded; media from around the globe converged upon the small Exeter courtroom with a gold-rush like abandon. Although it was the events surrounding the murder which inspired a B-list movie, the trial itself was more than worthy of its own cinematic feature.

The drama and controversy that would come to epitomize the Smart trial, and specifically the jury, began before the opening statements were even read. Prior to the trial, defense attorneys requested the case be moved to another location and that the jury be sequestered due to the intense media coverage.

Rockingham County Superior Court Judge Douglas Gray denied both motions. The defense argued, and continued to do so throughout and following the trial, that too many people in the area knew the story and already had pre-conceived notions of Smart's guilt.

Lending credibility to these claims were the dismissals of many prospective jurors from the first day of the selection process, Feb. 19, 1991, for their previous knowledge of the case, and in one instance, according to a Feb. 21, 1991 New Hampshire Union Leader article, the removal of seven prospective jurors for discussing the upcoming trial and its publicity.

Further examples of discussion during the selection process were found on documents acquired from the Rockingham County Superior Court, in which excerpts from perspective juror's interviews and affidavits were listed. One of the statements included read, "Lisa Weber stated that in the jury pool room prior to trial, there were general discussions taking place concerning the Pamela Smart trial and a general consensus developed that Pam Smart was guilty."

This same section continued "Furthermore, Maureen Blake stated that there were newspapers present in the jury pool room and a discussion of the Pamela Smart case was taking place."

Despite the uneasiness of these comments, and their direct link to the violation of Judge Gray's orders not to speak about the case, the most alarming excerpt found in the document was, "Juror, Donald Vigue, said he heard one elderly woman who he believed sat on the deliberating jury say Pame (sic) Smart was guilty."

In addition to these statements, after the trial ended, an anonymous letter dated March 26, 1991, which was obtained by the Equinox, was sent to the Attorney General's office claiming that one of the jurors, who had appeared on a morning talk show praising the jury's actions and decision, had been in the jury pool with the author discussing the "wickedness" of Smart. "There was this woman talking about the Smart case…and she's going on about what a good job the jurors did…This is the same woman who was sitting in that room at the Rockingham County Courthouse blabbering about what she had read about the wickedness of Pamela Smart."

The letter also highlighted the writer's surprise and concern at the lack of prospective jurors who admitted their knowledge of the case and inability to be unbiased when questioned by Judge Gray after discussing Smart's guilt and the news coverage openly. "I sincerely thought that most, if not all, of the people in that room would be honest enough with themselves to admit that they had been swayed by the media attention. To my surprise, there were not very many people who were released (or wanted to be) at that point."

Although there was surprise by some in the legal community during the trial at Judge Gray's decision not to sequester the jury from the beginning, and lawyers not affiliated with the case told papers such as the Hampton Union and Portsmouth Herald that it would be grounds for a defense appeal, those involved in the state's side of the case offered explanations for Gray's decision.

Trial prosecutor Paul Maggiotto recalled that, at the time, the financial burden of sequestering the jury was a concern, "Cost, lots of money to put up 14 to 16 people."

In addition Jeff Strelzin, a law clerk in the Superior Court at the time of the trial and now the Senior Assistant Attorney General of New Hampshire, said that "there's a school of thought that if a jury is sequestered it will affect the outcome."

According to an article posted on Forensic Psychiatry and Medicine's website, this "school of thought" often refers to the isolation jurors experience when they are removed from their normal environments for long periods of time.

"The longer people are isolated from their loved ones and their usual surroundings, the more they surround themselves mentally with familiar experiences, especially in response to complex evidence that seems threatening by virtue of its unfamiliarity. Thus, when jurors daydream…they hear the evidence (even more then they ordinarily would) through the filter of their own memories, fantasies, and dreams."

Maggiotto, who is now a practicing defense attorney, also believes that the threat of sequestering would have deterred potential jurors, "I'm not sure people would have volunteered for the jury if they knew they would be cut off from their families," he said.

Strelzin also added, when asked what the grounds for sequestering a jury would be, that juries are traditionally sequestered when the Judge believes there is a direct threat to the jury.

While there remains much debate over the threat the media's intense coverage posed to the jury, Smart's was the first trial covered by Court TV and the first to be broadcast live from start to finish, there is little doubt that the decision not to sequester led directly to the controversy surrounding some of the jury members.

The first of the jurors to be accused of misconduct was a Winnacunnet High School graduate named Brian Adams.