Sequestration

Yes­ter­day, clos­ing argu­ments were held in the crim­i­nal trial of for­mer Penn State assis­tant foot­ball coach Jerry San­dusky. The trial, which took sig­nif­i­cantly less time than the attor­neys had orig­i­nally pro­jected that it would, ended with­out the for­mer coach tes­ti­fy­ing, a move that was cer­tainly risky, but likely nec­es­sary due to sev­eral prior state­ments by San­dusky that were bizarre, if not down­right incriminating.

In a high pro­file case like Sandusky’s the Judge and lawyers worry about the risk of taint from out­side sources — peo­ple not involved in the trial, fam­ily mem­bers of the jurors, and media reports among them. In an effort to min­i­mize the chance that one of those sources would inter­fere with the delib­er­a­tions, judges may order that a jury be sequestered and, indeed, Judge John M. Cle­land ordered just that in the San­dusky case.

The word, the use of which arose in the 14th Cen­tury, derives from the Latin seques­trare, mean­ing ‘to place in safe keep­ing’ and is related to sequi which means ‘to fol­low’ (and is the root of our Eng­lish word ‘sequel.’) The judge is lit­er­ally plac­ing the jury in a safe place where they can delib­er­ate in peace and not be influ­enced by out­side sources or infor­ma­tion. The clas­sic exam­ple of the need for seques­tra­tion comes from the leg­endary legal movie “12 Angry Men” in which one of the jurors, played by Henry Fonda, goes to the neigh­bor­hood where the crime was com­mit­ted, buys a knife iden­ti­cal to the mur­der weapon and then brings it into jury deliberations.

Gen­er­ally, a sequestered jury is given rea­son­able accom­mo­da­tions at a local hotel and their meals are pro­vided. They are allowed some con­tact with fam­ily but instructed not to dis­cuss the case. Jury delib­er­a­tions don’t tend to go on for more than a few days or a week and so the seques­tra­tion is self-limiting. One of the longest jury seques­tra­tions in his­tory occurred in the crim­i­nal trial of O.J. Simpson.

Though some states have manda­tory seques­tra­tion pro­vi­sions in cer­tain kinds of cases, most leave the deci­sion on whether or not to sequester the jury up to the judge in each indi­vid­ual case.

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Say­ing goodbye

I had decided last week to use this week’s Case Study col­umn to cover the topic of jury seques­tra­tion but have inten­tion­ally short­ened that col­umn in order to leave some space to say goodbye.

Last Fri­day the crim­i­nal jus­tice com­mu­nity in Delaware County was rocked by the death of Delaware County Sheriff’s Detec­tive Dan Otto. It wasn’t just the sur­prise and shock of how he died that brought tears to so many, but the way he led his life and the way he com­pleted his duties.

I had the plea­sure of work­ing with Detec­tive Otto on sev­eral cases in the three and a half years that I worked as an Assis­tant Pros­e­cut­ing Attor­ney. He quickly demon­strated that he was not only a highly qual­i­fied and deter­mined inves­ti­ga­tor but also that he cared per­son­ally about the vic­tims in his cases and about the way in which law enforce­ment work was car­ried out. As an assis­tant pros­e­cu­tor, I came to know that in his cases no stone would go unturned, no piece of evi­dence unex­am­ined, no wit­ness unin­ter­viewed. His work with the Delaware County Coali­tion of Vic­tim Ser­vices was extensive.

As this news­pa­per is hit­ting your doorsteps, much of the law enforce­ment com­mu­nity will be gath­er­ing at Genoa Bap­tist Church to say good­bye. Indeed, law enforce­ment offi­cers will be com­ing from around Ohio and around the coun­try. Offi­cers from the Cal­i­for­nia High­way Patrol, who responded to the acci­dent that claimed his life, are fly­ing in to attend the service.

Media reports stated that he was thrown from the vehi­cle he was rid­ing in because he was not wear­ing his seat belt. I have absolutely no doubt that he died the way he lived — pro­tect­ing those around him — and that he had only taken his seat belt off to try to get to the front of the vehi­cle and bring it under con­trol to save the lives of fam­ily mem­bers and other motorists.

I will miss his hard work find­ing the truth in inves­ti­ga­tions. I will miss his efforts on behalf of those who have been the vic­tims of crime. On a very per­sonal and self­ish level, though, I will miss his play­ful sense of humor and the chance con­ver­sa­tions that we had. My walk to and from work takes me past the Sheriff’s admin­is­tra­tive offices and I fre­quently ran into Dan in the park­ing lot behind the build­ing. We’re roughly the same age and his son, whom he loved dearly, is about the same age as my daugh­ter. I will sorely miss our con­ver­sa­tions about work, life, fam­ily, and our solu­tions to all the world’s problems.

Dan’s obit­u­ary con­cluded with lyrics from Vince Gill, and I can think of no bet­ter farewell mes­sage; “Go rest high on that Moun­tain Son, your work on Earth is done, Go to heaven shout­ing Before the Father and the Son.”

Posted by Dave Hejmanowski on Jun 21 2012. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Comments can be made below.