Jury Misconduct Often Is Just Human Nature

The phrase “jury misconduct” evokes an image of bribing or threatening a juror.

But most of the time it comes down to something much more commonplace, such as a juror’s uncontrollable compulsion to talk about the case, or getting the nutty notion of conducting a free-lance investigation of the crime.

We don’t know the specifics of the misconduct allegation in the O.J. Simpson double murder case. All we do know is that Deputy Dist. Atty. Marcia Clark threw out a tantalizing hint in court Monday, saying: “We may be losing someone from our panel of 12.”

The implication was that one of the 12 jurors sworn in last month may be dumped and replaced with an alternate. Judge Lance A. Ito set a hearing on the matter for today but didn’t provide any details. “You have as much knowledge as I do with regard to what the issues are at this point,” he said. “Each side has to take into consideration that we may lose some of the originals. We may not.”

I wanted to find out more about the subject of jury misconduct but I knew I’d never learn anything in the courtroom. A half a year of writing about this trial has convinced me of the futility of trying to interpret the opaque language of the legal process. So I sought out an expert who operates more on my level.

His name is Keith Rohman, a private investigator specializing in discovering misconduct by jurors, a fascinating but little-known part of the justice system.

Detectives move into action after the verdict. Attorneys hire them to find out if the jury engaged in forbidden conduct that might convince an appellate court to overturn the verdict.

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I’d read about Rohman in a story by Martin Berg in the Los Angeles Daily Journal, the legal newspaper that I’d clipped and put away. When the misconduct issue came up, it seemed like a good time to look him up.

On Tuesday, I drove over to Rohman’s office at 3rd and Alameda streets, on the fringe of the Downtown warehouse district. It sounded like a perfect neighborhood for a private eye, and I imagined a Philip Marlowe kind of character holed up in a loft.

Rohman turned out to be a Marlowe for the 1990s, a former Vista volunteer and liberal political organizer who lives with his family in a house on Mt. Washington and accompanies them to temple on Friday nights. His office was not a run-down loft, but a spacious suite in a more trendy stretch of Alameda Street, across from the Little Tokyo senior citizen housing development and a large mall, and near a few good restaurants.

He told me he’s heard stories of juror bribery but has never seen it. “Most is of the garden variety,” he said.

He mentioned several: “Undisclosed biases, undisclosed aspects of your background or character, conducting your own research or investigation. The idea is that the jury is supposed to have one source for its information and that is what is fed to them through the filter of the trial court. You are not supposed to get comments from neighbors. You are not supposed to go to your minister and say, ‘I need help.’ ”

Why do jurors talk about their cases in violation of judicial orders?

“People, especially people involved in a capital punishment case, are involved in an intense human drama that they may never experience again,” he said.

“Serving on a murder jury is for most people an incredibly painful and wrenching experience. First of all, (jurors) are exposed to things they have never seen before. You and I may have seen crime scene photos, but most people never see them. People talk to me years later about still having nightmares about what they saw when they were on juries. One guy just started to cry. . . . It is just so intense, the responsibility, deciding whether someone is going to spend the rest of their life in prison.”

Some people, he said, find it impossible to keep this experience to themselves and give in to a compulsion to talk.

This helps him in his post-verdict investigations.

“They’ve had this very intense experience that nobody else in their life really understands,” he said. “Their wife is probably bored hearing about it. Their friends don’t really understand the nuances of the evidence. And here is someone showing up at their doorsteps, fascinated about what they have to say, taking it all down, asking questions. . . . It’s cathartic for some of these jurors.”

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This process is magnified in the Simpson trial. When KFWB says, “Give us 22 minutes and we’ll give you the world,” its world usually includes the Simpson case. It’s at the top of almost every television newscast, not to mention the tabloid and discussion shows. Plus print.

We reporters on the case know we’re covering history--tabloid history, maybe, but history just the same. People we meet in shops and parties want to hear about it and, of course, most of us can’t resist holding forth.

It’s the same, I’m sure, for the 12 jurors and the alternates. They know Judge Ito’s order and no doubt intend to obey him. But when you are part of history, about to begin one of the most traumatic six months of your life, it’s difficult not to talk about it.