Courts Move Much Slower After 100 Years of Progress
January 1, 2004
by Joseph P. Tartaro
Executive Editor
Robert T. Noble, a Gun Week reader in Maryland who is one of our most regular providers of news clips, sends clippings from papers in the Baltimore-Washington, DC-area—The Baltimore Sun, Washington Post, Washington Times and occasionally New York City newspapers. Most of his news clips come from what is commonly called the “Beltway.”
That being the case, it is not surprising that his envelopes of recent news from that area have focused so much on the trials of the two “Beltway snipers”—Lee Boyd Malvo and John Allen Mohammad. Most Americans who do not live in that region of the country are certainly aware of the recent trials; their local newspapers, radio and television stations have provided brief reports on the progress of the trials.
However, most would be surprised at the multiple page coverage in the Beltway media. Every detail of the trials, the testimony, the victims and their survivors, the defense and prosecution strategies has been provided with photos, diagrams and charts. The extent of the detailed reporting and the space devoted to the two separate jury trials in venues removed from the Beltway is a measure of the impact that the series of random murders in the Fall of 2002 had on people of that part of the country.
While the two suspects were also linked to one or two random murders in several other states, the frequency and the randomness of their assaults in the relatively small area centered on Washington, including parts of Maryland and Virginia, had an extraordinary impact on almost every resident there.
People Affected
The lives of millions of people were changed by the series of shootings. Gun Week reported on only part of it at the time, including how almost everyone living in that area who owned a semi-automatic rifle in .223 Remington caliber received or expected to receive a visit from federal agents who wanted to inspect and possibly test the firearm. If the gunowner also happened to own a light-colored van he had further reason to anticipate a visit from the authorities.
The majority of people in that area lived in fear, afraid to send children to school, to go out to a restaurant, to buy gasoline, to go shopping, and to do so many things that we all consider part of our daily routine.
During the Firearms and Fiction seminar reported by my daughter Peggy in the Dec. 20 issue, three or four of the novelists who attended the seminar came from the Beltway area, some from Maryland, some from Virginia. During the discussions about crime and guns, the Beltway snipings came up and they provided us—in personal and graphic detail—with descriptions of what it was like to be living in constant, daily fear while local and federal law enforcement agencies seemed to be unable to apprehend the murderers. Not only did they not venture out of their homes and offices unnecessarily, they didn’t sit near windows and kept shades and blinds drawn.
When the suspects were finally apprehended by authorities due to a tip from an observant private citizen, there was a huge sigh of relief, they said. One described it as though after holding one’s breath for an extraordinarily long time under water, one could suddenly breathe air again. The different jurisdictions involved immediately began wrangling over who would get to try Muhammad and Malvo first and Virginia won. Given the fact that almost every citizen living in the Beltway area was somehow affected by the serial murders, it was not surprising that the courts moved the trials to two different cities in the southern part of the Virginia.
Criminal Jury
Much of the news of Malvo’s trial in December coincided with my own jury service in Erie County, NY, for two full weeks beginning on Dec. 1. As a result, I realized that even with the extensive coverage of the Beltway sniper trial in the Beltway newspapers, there was a lot that was still not being reported.
Anyone who has ever been on a jury or been a party to a trial or a witness will know that real trials are nothing like the movies or television.
I had served on juries before, but I had forgotten how confining and tedious the process can be. You may report for jury duty and never get called or selected for a civil or criminal trial. In my case, after arriving at 8:45 a.m., passing through a court security checkpoint more intrusive than at an airport and filling out a questionnaire for possible service on a civil case, I and about a hundred other prospective jurors were herded from the bullpen to a county court for possible selection for a criminal trial.
The completed civil trial questionnaire was trashed. In spite of my linkage to the gun movement, relatives in the police force, friends in the court system and even the presiding judge acknowledging that he and I had met previously (when he was a pretty decent pistol licensing authority) and his recognizing me as “the gun guy,” I was one of the first six jurors selected for the trial, which involved two counts of first degree assault (with a knife).
The rest of the first day and most of the second were spent just waiting around for the rest of the jury to be picked. The waiting is all done in a jury room in a smoke-free building under the watchful eye of a sheriff’s department deputy acting as bailiff. The waiting in that room would become more and more wasteful. Once the trial began, the jurors would report punctually every morning only to be counted by the bailiff who would then promptly say there will be “a short delay.” The short delay might be anywhere from a half hour to an hour and would come several times a day, notably in the morning, after lunch or an occasional break, or whenever the prosecutor, defense attorney and judge would get into a lengthy procedural or legal discussion other than a sidebar.
Needless to say, much of the day on the jury was wasted, but the sessions in court were intensely demanding if a juror was going to pay attention to the testimony, cross examination, redirect and recross of each witness. How much moreso for the snipers’ trials juries?
Time to Trial
In my case, the witnesses themselves present some interesting studies in humanity. The alleged stabbings/cuttings took place at 3:45 a.m. outside a bar that seems to be a regular hangout for students and fraternity/sorority members from a neighboring state college in Buffalo. That the brawl surrounding the knifings involved people who had all been drinking for several hours (and some had smoked marijuana) made it difficult to sort out the most believable witnesses and the real evidence. Jurors certainly had to pay careful attention and use big helpings of common sense and street smarts.
About 9:30 p.m. on the Friday of the second week of the trial, the jury found the defendant not-guilty of the two first degree assault charges, but guilty on two counts of second degree assault.
The Malvo and Muhammad trials have been even longer, but a brass plaque outside the courtroom where I served provided an interesting commentary on how the trial system has changed in about 100 years.
The plaque commemorated that the same court I served in December had been the venue for the trial of Leon Czoglocz in the assassination of President William McKinley in Buffalo in 1901.
McKinley was shot during a visit to the Pan American Exposition that year late in the afternoon of Sept. 6; he died on Sept. 14, 1901. Czoglocz, who used a revolver wrapped in a cloth to shoot the President, was tried in that same courtroom in which I served and convicted in two days, Sept. 23-24, 1901.
The defendant in my case was alleged to have committed the cuttings on Nov. 3, 2002. The “Beltway snipers” killings mostly occurred in the Fall of 2002.
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