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A matter of life and death
Holdouts frustrate other jurors
by LATEEF MUNGIN, STEVE VISSER
http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/metro/gwinnett/1105/13gwxdeath.html
Ten hands rose for the death sentence. Two did not.
The jurors stared at one another in stunned silence.
The discussion turned to trying to change the minds of the two "no" votes.
But after a short debate, no one in the jury room would budge. They argued for less
than an hour, just a fraction of the time it took them to methodically decide the day
before that Wesley Harris was guilty of a brutal double murder.
The jurors were even more stunned when they realized that Georgia law dictated that
their split decision guaranteed a life sentence without the possibility of parole for
Harris.
They had no doubt that Harris killed Whitney Land and her 2-year-old daughter,
Jordan. The victims were abducted, shot, and placed in obscene angles in the trunk of
a car that was then set afire. Just one look at the crime scene photos, the soot on
the skin, the five bullet holes, brought tears to the eyes of some jurors. The
horrible pictures of the lifeless bodies of the 22-year-old woman and her baby
daughter pushed most of the jury to vote for a death sentence.
Days after the Tuesday verdict, some of the jurors said they were still angry about
the outcome and were still wrestling with unanswered questions:
If Wesley Harris, a baby killer, did not deserve the death penalty, who does? Why
couldn't they get a death sentence in this case?
That Gwinnett jury is not alone in asking questions about the death penalty. District
attorneys across the nation are finding themselves in the same quandary as it is
becoming harder and harder to get convicted killers sentenced to death.
According to local statistics and the national Death Penalty Information Center,
based in Washington, there has been a steady decline in death sentences in Georgia
and around the country. In 2003, according to the center, Georgia sentenced only one
person to lethal injection. Nationally, 144 people were sentenced to death in 2003.
That number has dropped consistently since 1998, when 300 people were sentenced to
death across America.
Mike Mears, director of the Atlanta-based Multi-County Public Defender Office,
credits highly publicized cases of innocent people languishing for years on death row
before being released for making people more skeptical of the justice system. He said
121 people have been released from death row in the last three decades after being
proven innocent, many because of DNA testing.
"There are too many mistakes being made," he said. "We've had over 100 exonerations."
But those facts are no consolation to many of the jurors in the Harris case who feel
that the sentence was wrong.
"From the moment I saw the pictures of that baby, there was no saving him," said
juror Denise Schnieders, a grade school teacher. "I knew what had to happen to a
monster who would do that. I have two little girls.
"We're angry that the system didn't work and frustrated that we didn't see the
outcome we thought we should have seen," she said.
"Justice wasn't done."
The case against Harris seemed like a slam-dunk guilty verdict and a can't-miss death
penalty to some.
Gwinnett District Attorney Danny Porter, a veteran who has overseen close to 20
death- penalty cases, said the Harris case was the strongest case for the death
penalty he had ever tried.
Harris, a 27-year-old Jonesboro fast-food worker, carjacked his victims from a
Clayton County park on Nov. 8, 1999. He drove them to Gwinnett County and shot them
at point-blank range.
During the two-week trial, prosecutors showed jurors a videotape in which Harris
admitted burning Whitney Land's car. Prosecutors also presented cellphone records
that showed Harris used Land's phone to call a friend after she was dead.
That friend testified that he helped Harris burn the car and helped him ditch the
murder weapon. The jury also was shown an autopsy that said Harris placed his pistol
right against the face of the child, shooting her execution-style as she sat in her
car seat.
The jury found Harris guilty on all counts after 10 hours of deliberations. But
jurors said they could have made a decision on guilt in 10 minutes.
"I could've did it in five minutes," said Michelle Bailey of Sugar Hill. "It was
obvious he was guilty, but we took two days to go over the evidence just to make
sure."
But the vote for punishment came after only an hour of deliberation and it was much
more controversial. Most of the jurors interviewed for this article said they were
surprised that there was not a unanimous vote for death. The two jurors who didn't
vote for death declined to be interviewed.
The group in the jury room had become a close-knit bunch over the 13 days of trial
and most now still consider the holdouts friends. Jurors said they tried in many ways
to convince the two jurors to change their minds, but there was no yelling.
"It wasn't persuasion with a baseball bat," said John Coch-ran, jury foreman. "It was
persuasion with a chopstick."
Jurors asked the holdouts how they would feel if their family member were the victim
of the crime. Michael W. Trippe said he reminded the holdouts of the crime scene
photos, especially the one that showed the child's wounds.
But the two jurors would not change their minds.
The other jurors said they do not really know why the two holdouts did not vote for
death, that they gave no reason other than they just couldn't do it.
Some said they believe it may have been religious convictions.
One juror suggested race influenced the decision of the holdouts, but other jurors
disagreed. The jury did split along racial lines: 10 white jurors voted for death and
a black juror and an Asian juror voted against it.
But in the end, jurors said, they may never know why they deadlocked. And that fact
adds to their frustration.
"I really feel like our verdict was stolen from us," said Bailey, a 30-year-old
bartender. "We feel robbed by two people for reasons that were not really voiced."
Porter, the district attorney, said he was very disappointed by the decision. But he
conceded it is very difficult to get a death penalty sentence. In his 25-year career
as DA, Porter said he has gotten death sentences in five of the 10 death-penalty
cases he has taken to juries.
This experience has pushed some of the jurors to ask for a change in Georgia law so
that criminals can be sentenced to death by a supermajority of the 12-person jury.
"I could easily become an advocate for changing the law from unanimous to majority,"
Trippe said. "I wouldn't know how to spearhead something like that, but I would
certainly be willing to support that."
Mears said what the frustrated jurors don't understand is that the system did work.
The law requires a unaminous verdict for the finding of guilt. It should require no
less to put someone to death, he said.
To Mears, the Wesley Harris case is an argument for doing away with the death
penalty.
"The death penalty should not be used at all because it is not being proportionately
handed out for similar crimes," said Mears, who defends indigent death-penalty
clients around the state. "You have people on death row who panic during a 7-11
robbery and shoot a clerk and they get the death penalty, and then Wesley Harris gets
life without parole. That's not fair."
While Porter has voiced some strong public opinions about the jury's decision, he
also said the Harris verdict was not an indictment of Georgia's legal system.
"When you remove yourself from the emotion of this case it just shows that the death
penalty is hard to get," Porter said. "And that is how it should be. The death
penalty is the ultimate punishment and it should be hard to get."
• A version of this article may appear in the Metro section.
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I intend to last long enough to put out of business all *****-suckers
and other beneficiaries of the institutionalized slavery and genocide.
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"The army that will defeat terrorism doesn't wear uniforms, or drive
Humvees, or calls in air-strikes. It doesn't have a high command, or
high security, or a high budget. The army that can defeat terrorism
does battle quietly, clearing minefields and vaccinating children. It
undermines military dictatorships and military lobbyists. It subverts
sweatshops and special interests.Where people feel powerless, it
helps them organize for change, and where people are powerful, it
reminds them of their responsibility." ~~~~ Author Unknown ~~~~
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