Deliberations Deadlocked From The Start Others On Panel Say Juror’s Mind Was Made Up

From the onset of deliberations, one juror threatened to deadlock the verdict.

The nine men and three women were sitting around a table last Friday in the federal courtroom, surrounded by hundreds of pieces of evidence presented during the five-week trial.

Someone interrupted the man identified publicly as Juror No. 2. In reply he said, “I could hang this jury, right now.”

On Wednesday, he did.

The jury deadlocked 11 to 1 on the eight most serious charges against the three North Idaho men accused of bombings and robberies in the Spokane Valley. They convicted the suspects of four more minor crimes.

Interviews with eight of the jurors revealed a grueling 3-1/2 days of deliberations that ended with one juror, No. 2, refusing to convict on the robbery and bombing charges.

Juror No. 2, who said during jury selection he lived in rural Yakima and worked for a wood products firm, couldn’t be reached for comment Wednesday.

Many of the jurors said they thought he was kidding when he first threatened a hung jury.

Kim Dugan didn’t. The 28-year-old woman from north Spokane County said No. 2 made the same comment several times throughout the discussions.

“As time went by, it became clear that he was going by his feelings and not by the evidence presented to us,” she said. “I mean it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to put it all together.”

The jury started deliberations last Friday split down the middle on the eight counts relating to the bombing and robberies of U.S. Bank and the bombings of The Spokesman-Review and Planned Parenthood.

The panel spent most of Friday simply sorting through more than 500 pieces of evidence and reading the instructions.

“We must have read those instructions 30 or 40 times every day,” one juror said.

The defendants, Jay Merrell, Robert Berry and Charles Barbee, had admitted to four counts: conspiracy to commit a crime, possessing two stolen cars and possession of hand grenades.

When the jury returned to the courtroom Monday after the Easter weekend, they started making real progress, jurors said. They took turns going through the evidence and explaining the case in their own words.

Juror Wade Dixon and foreman Alan Eschenbacher both said they weren’t surprised by Merrell’s testimony. They both said they would like to have heard from the other two defendants.

One juror from the Tri-Cities, who had initially thought he would vote not guilty, changed his mind on Monday. “I believed they each did part of it and knew about the rest of it,” he said.

A shotgun turned in by Berry’s brother linked him to July 12 robbery. A jeans expert tied Barbee to the April 1 robbery and bombing at the bank. And the letter that federal agents found in Merrell’s computer, similar to the one left at the newspaper bombing, tied Merrell to the crime, he said.

“It all jelled,” said one of the three women jurors. “It’s like making Jell-O. You put in your ingredients, you stir, you put it in the refrigerator, and it jells if you do it right.

“That’s what happened with 11 of us. It jelled.”

As his fellow jurors abandoned him, the holdout would “get louder and louder,” another juror said. “He thought we were picking on him. We were just trying to get him to agree with us.”

He repeated his threat on Monday to cause a deadlock, the jurors said.

Jurors said No. 2 wasn’t convinced by such evidence as the jeans, the shotgun, the vans and the bank takeovers. He kept saying there was “reasonable doubt.”

“It took three prosecutors to convince 11 of us,” Dugan said. “But 11 of us could not convince one.”

Late Tuesday morning, jurors announced they were stuck on many of the counts 11-1. The judge told them to keep trying to reach a verdict.

“We felt there was some light at the end of the tunnel,” Eschenbacher said. “We weren’t totally locked. We reconstructed the case one step at a time.”

At 3 p.m. Tuesday, one juror was picked to try to reason with the holdout. He spoke in mellow, calm tones. For two hours, he and No. 2 talked. Everyone else kept quiet.

Some of the jurors said they left Tuesday at 5 p.m. feeling hopeful. Others said they were resigned to indecision.

“When we left at 5, he agreed on two issues,” said one of the jurors. “We came back at 8 this morning. We figured, OK, we’re really going to put a lot of effort into this.”

But No. 2 balked Wednesday morning, reverting to his original feelings.

“We kind of threw our hands up in the air and said, ‘It’s over,”’ one woman said.

“We worked and worked,” another juror said. “We all tried to talk to him. And you know what? In my eyes, these three are guilty as sin.”

By midmorning Wednesday, the foreman notified the judge they were done. Shortly after noon a court clerk announced the four convictions and eight non-decisions.

After the verdict, several jurors decided to have one more lunch at government expense at the Spokane Club, near the U.S. Courthouse.

No. 2 didn’t join the others. “He just left,” one juror said.

Disillusioned and disheartened after the five-week ordeal, many jurors said they would never again agree to jury duty.

“It’s hard on a person,” one man said. “You can’t talk about it, can’t read anything in the paper. All this stuff builds up in your mind. Then to have it end in a mistrial, that’s the last thing you want.”

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: 3 Photos (1 Color)

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: What’s next? U.S. Attorney Jim Connelly is expected to announce today that prosecutors will retry the three suspects on bombing and robbery charges. A June 30 sentencing date for the crimes they were convicted of likely will be postponed. A federal grand jury will meet Tuesday to consider indicting a fourth suspect who was arrested last month. Prosecutors may seek to try all four suspects together.

The following fields overflowed: BYLINE = Kelly McBride and Kim Barker Staff writers Staff writers Bill Morlin and Craig Welch contributed to this report.