RALEIGH — I may be way off base here, but I fear that we may shortly see an attempt by some to belittle the jury who convicted Michael Peterson last week of the first-degree murder of his wife.
Not following this case as intently as many apparently did, I’ve stayed away from offering any thoughts about it. But when I saw some of the media coverage Tuesday of a joint appearance by several of the jurors in Durham, I began to have some concerns.
These are just ordinary folks who, in doing their civic duty, have been put in an extraordinary position. It was in their power to send a man to prison for the rest of his life, or to let him go. On top of that, they had front-row seats at a major media circus and then became significant if not famous performers within it. They aren’t used to the glare of media scrutiny. Quite a few looked uncomfortable in it.
Here’s what bothers me the most, I guess. Lots of people, smart people, people following the case day-to-day with an emotional intensity beyond my understanding, predicted rather confidently that Peterson would get away with it — or that he was, in fact, innocent of the crime, though that appeared to be the minority view. These observers chalked up the state’s weak case to shoddy police work by Durham cops, poor preparation by District Attorney Jim Hardin and his staff, bad luck, an attempt to shock the jury by exposing Peterson’s sexual proclivities, and so on. Frankly, these knowing ninnies went out on a limb in their legal punditry, and then average, run-of-the-mill jurors rather swiftly proceeded to saw it off.
According to their post-trial comments, they came quickly to the conclusion that Kathleen Peterson had not died from a stroke and/or fall. A beating seemed the only reasonable scenario. Nor did they exhibit any bias against the defendant based on his sexual preference, nor did they appear to engage in rank speculation, nor did they consider errors in the gathering of evidence an invalidation of the quantity of evidence presented to them.
I think, in short, they did their jobs well. It is not a juror’s burden to have a deep understanding of the law, an expertise in science, or a facility at language to aid them in the glare of a media spotlight. What I fear is that those hoping to salvage their credibility, or fill in the gaps that remain in the story, will jump to conclusions and conclude, without evidence, that the jurors did in fact convict man because they thought he was creepy or gay or because they thought him guilty beyond a reasonable doubt of a different but similar crime years ago in Germany.
Let’s allow the jurors’ own statements to stand at face value. They certainly make sense to me. And these jurors deserve a chance to fade back into the protective seclusion of an ordinary life.
Hood is president of the John Locke Foundation and publisher of Carolina Journal.