Article by Lynda La Rocca
Jury Duty – November 2001 – Colorado Central Magazine
Frankly, I was looking for the money. After spending a month back east this past summer, my husband Steve and I returned to Colorado in mid-August to an official U.S. Postal Service bin brimming with mail. Among the piles of catalogues, bills (and yes, several checks) was an unwelcome piece of news — my summons to report, the following week, for jury service.
Even before I arrived at the Lake County Courthouse, I pretty much knew what this case was about. And one look at some 150 prospective jurors confirmed my suspicions. This was big — and court officials were obviously determined to seat a panel.
Nothing this awful had happened in Lake County for a long time.
On the evening of March 26, 1999, Jerry Harold Garmany killed his 26-year-old girlfriend, Noreen Byrne. Garmany, now 35, stabbed Noreen five times with a folding-blade, Buck-style hunting knife with a four-inch blade. One blow fractured her skull. But the mortally wounded Noreen somehow got to a phone and dialed 911 before collapsing on the dining room floor of the home she and Garmany shared with her parents. There, the woman Garmany described as “the best thing that ever happened to me” bled to death.
Garmany also critically wounded Noreen’s mother Cora. Despite being stabbed seven times, Cora also managed to call 911. By the time she reached the hospital, she’d lost so much blood that her life was in jeopardy. But Cora survived and has since recovered from her injuries.
I remember reading about the attacks shortly after they took place.
But — surprisingly for a small town like Leadville — I knew no one involved in the case, a definite plus for a juror. Resolutely ignoring the voice inside me that insisted, “You’re on for this one,” I told myself that with all the people here, it was unlikely that I’d be chosen.
I had served on a jury only once before, in a 1986 bank fraud case involving a guy accused of defrauding a secured creditor (a bank) and removing secured property (his bank-owned pickup truck).
Amazingly, despite what struck me as a cut-and-dried presentation proving his guilt, that jury did not convict on both counts.
“I know his mother,” one juror announced during deliberations. “He could never do something like that.”
We finally managed to agree on a conviction for removing secured property.
(For God’s sake, the guy drove the frigging truck to MONTANA despite a prohibition against taking it out of Colorado.) But the jury’s majority blocked conviction on the other count.
Afterwards, I approached the judge, literally trembling, to confess my guilt over our failure to convict on both counts. He reminded me that the one-count conviction was sufficient to brand this defendant a felon, and sent me home with a certificate thanking me for my service.
So I was not looking forward to what I envisioned during deliberations in the Garmany case.
The lengthy culling process began with each jury pool member filling out a nine-page questionnaire which gauged our feelings on everything from psychologists to the judicial process.
Those who made the first cut were then questioned in the privacy of the judge’s chambers regarding our written responses. I felt like I’d been summoned before the Inquisition. Flanking the black-robed judge, who sat at the head of a long, rectangular table, were the four defense and prosecution attorneys, the defendant, the court clerk, and the court recorder. All those eyes, all fixed on me. I hadn’t been listened to so intently since Steve and I began dating.
SUBSEQUENTLY, I WAS SENT BACK to the courtroom to await the next test, the dreaded grilling in open court. As the court clerk randomly drew each name, the person summoned entered the jury box or took a seat directly in front of it.
I can’t serve, one woman declared. I was a victim of domestic violence, and this case comes too close. (Dismissed.) There’s no one to substitute for me at my job, said another. (Dismissed.) A third response was chilling. “I was a friend of Noreen’s,” this woman declared before even stepping into the box. “And I know Jerry.” She turned to the defendant.
“Hello, Jerry,” she hissed, her voice hard and furious. (Definitely dismissed.)
Could I serve if I’m called? I wondered, watching this process. I had been a board member of the Advocates of Lake County, Inc., a referral and support group for victims of domestic violence and sexual assault, for a decade. Nine years ago, the father of a dear friend was murdered. I had made all this clear on my questionnaire and again in chambers.
My name was called, and I was asked if I could judge this case on its merits.
Yes, I had to admit. I know myself: I’m capable of looking at the evidence in this case and this case only. I’m capable of not allowing my personal experiences to determine my decision.
No one is a blank slate, the prosecutor responded. Everyone is affected by past experiences. Can you use your common sense?
Common sense. My dictionary defines it as: “the unreflective opinions of ordinary people … [or] sound and prudent but often unsophisticated judgment.”
BUT WHERE does common sense spring from? From past experiences, and the judgments we make and the lessons we learn from them. Yet to faithfully serve on a jury, I believe you have to wipe your personal slate clean of the prejudices that also form as a result of these experiences.
Juries must render a verdict based solely on the evidence presented, not on what may have happened or could have happened, nor on what someone thinks happened because of his or her own personal experience.
Hardly “unreflective.” But, yes. I can do this. And so I became the last person questioned in open court who was retained for the jury.
Following this two-day selection process, fourteen people — two of whom were alternates, although none of us knew which two until the jury was about to begin deliberations and the alternates were dismissed — heard opening arguments.
Garmany had entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity to charges of first-degree murder in Noreen’s death, and attempted first-degree murder and first-degree assault for the savage attack on Cora, then 61.
The defense was not arguing Garmany’s role in the attacks. “This is not a case of whodunit,” said one of his attorneys. Cora Byrne, the only surviving witness to the attacks, told us who did it. It was Garmany.
To deliver a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity, we would have to determine that Garmany was incapable of acting “with intent and after deliberation” (the elements of first-degree murder). In other words, we had to agree that Garmany was incapable of forming the intent required to carry out the attacks and incapable of deliberating over his actions.
Even before I was seated on the jury, I couldn’t take my eyes off Garmany.
SITTING IN OPEN COURT beside me was a woman later identified as Garmany’s sister. Once during a break, I’d seen her take both his hands in her own and squeeze them. When the trial began, Garmany’s mother joined his sister. Day after day, she sat stoically as witnesses described her son’s chaotic and neglect-filled childhood and his sexual abuse by one in a series of stepfathers.
Somebody loves this man, I realized, glancing again at the defendant, who mostly sat with shoulders hunched and eyes downcast.
He looks puny enough for me to break in half, I mused. He also looks as “normal” as anyone else in this courtroom. Yet here sits a human being who murdered another human being. The “banality of evil” personified. But is he legally insane?
No, we decided after a five-day trial and deliberations spanning 5 hours over two days. We found Garmany guilty of first-degree murder, first-degree attempted murder, and first-degree assault. He will be sentenced later this month.
WHILE THE PRESENTATIONS of both prosecution and defense were detailed and competent, I believe Garmany convicted himself in a videotaped interview with an investigator from the district attorney’s office. This interview was conducted shortly after Garmany’s arrest the morning following the murder.
On the video, which the jury viewed twice, Garmany (who, by the way, looked bigger and stronger on tape than in person) appears relaxed for the most part. He sits with legs spread, elbows resting on the arms of his chair, fingers of both hands loosely interlaced.
Claiming that his epilepsy caused him to have no memory of what occurred the night of Noreen’s death, Garmany (who did not testify during the trial) explained in some detail the dosage requirements of his anti-seizure medication. He politely asked for a glass of water. He said, “please,” “thank you,” and “excuse me.” He calmly and lucidly discussed his job and personal history, recounted events the day of the murder, and described the blood-spattered Byrne home that he returned to the following morning.
Despite the investigator’s revelation that Cora Byrne had accused him, the video played for more than an hour without Garmany ever asking anything about Noreen. Nothing about whether she, too, had accused him. Nothing about her whereabouts, her welfare. Nothing.
What Garmany does do several times during this interview is leap halfway out of his chair, arms outstretched and fingers waving, and yell either at the investigator or for his medication–a sudden, startling transformation from composed and cooperative to seething and threatening. What I saw on that video was not insanity, but a person with poor impulse control whose anger periodically became explosive.
The prosecution’s closing argument could have come straight from an episode of Law & Order. Murder weapon in hand, District Attorney Michael Goodbee rapped the knife handle against the podium twelve times, once for each blow suffered by Noreen and Cora. “This,” he intoned, repeating Noreen’s final words, “is not going to be all right.” It takes a long time to stab two people twelve times, I thought, watching with horrified fascination.
Deliberations required us to examine gruesome crime scene and autopsy photographs, blood-stained clothing, and the murder weapon itself, a long, heavy-handled knife which Garmany said on the video he’d stopped carrying because “my wife (his term for Noreen) was afraid of it.” To my absolute relief, these deliberations were nothing like those of the bank fraud case. We — now seven women and five men — worked well together.
We listened carefully to, and respected, each others’ opinions. I felt honored to serve with such a group, and I’d be honored to do so again.
BUT FRANKLY, I hope I never have to. Driving home after delivering our verdict, I had to pull off the road because I was sobbing so hard I could no longer drive. I had no second thoughts about the verdict; it was absolutely appropriate. But the trauma and stress of the seven-day proceedings engulfed me like a tsunami.
I was angry, too. Jerry Garmany didn’t just destroy Noreen’s life and plunge her family into a spiral of unending grief. He destroyed his own life, his own family — and he grievously affected the lives of jury members who, through no choice of our own, were drawn into the horrible cycle of violence he initiated.
I have nothing but praise for the attorneys and for court personnel, particularly Judge David Lass, who was surprisingly solicitous of the jury’s welfare. And while I’m certainly not eager to serve as a juror in a case like this again, if summoned, I would serve, for a murder trial or any other kind of case.
Why? Because “we, the people” must be willing to participate in our judicial process. We must accept a temporary inconvenience for a greater good. And that “greater good” is being a citizen of a country where people are guaranteed the right to a jury trial.
I’ll tell you, if I’m ever accused of a crime, I’d much rather be judged by a panel of my peers than by a group of hooded, anonymous thugs who render a verdict before proceedings have even begun.
I wish the following were an original thought, but it comes from a recent Denver Post column by Trudy Rubin regarding the “hardship” of jury duty.
Rubin points out that the people of Russia, China, Iran, Zimbabwe — countries where there is no jury system or where verdicts are handed down by the powerful with no pretense of justice — would give almost anything to benefit from our judicial system.
Jury service is a privilege. And, especially in light of the September 11 terrorist attacks and the ongoing uncertainty enveloping our country, it’s a privilege no one should take lightly. I know I’ll remember this the next time that once-dreaded summons lands in my mailbox.
Lynda La Rocca now lives and writes in Twin Lakes.
