'Voir dire' isn't English, either

Laura Vozzella

June 13, 2008

A Democratic Party Web page created during the most recent race for governor and featuring Bruce Bereano still angers the longtime lobbyist. (Sun photo by Glenn Fawcett / March 5, 2008)

Take the daily pay for a Baltimore Circuit Court judge, prosecutor, public defender, two cops, a government chemist, sheriff's deputy and court clerk. Multiply by two.

What do you get? The cost incurred this week when a two-day drug trial went down the tubes because one of the jurors spoke little English.

The prosecution and defense had done their things, two alternate jurors had been sent home, and the jury was a couple of hours into deliberations when it sent a note to Judge Emanuel Brown.

One of the jurors spoke Chinese, and the trial was all Greek to her. A mistrial was declared.

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"They're supposed to catch this in a bunch of ways before" a trial gets that far, said prosecutor David Kessler.

Starting with the questionnaire sent to potential jurors, which asks if they speak English.

"She indicated" - afterward - "that her husband had filled it out for her," Kessler said.

During jury selection, potential jurors are asked a bunch of questions as a group and instructed to stand up if their answer is "yes." It's standard stuff that will get you ejected from a jury, like, "Have you ever been the victim of a crime?"

She stayed seated and made the cut.

"The voir dire process that selects jurors is essentially a self-reporting system," said Assistant Public Defender Anne Stewart-Hill, who represented Raymond McGowen, accused of heroin possession and distribution in the case. "Prospective jurors swear to answer the questions posed to them truthfully. ... If a prospective juror doesn't understand the oath or questions to begin with, the voir dire process may fail to anticipate any problems. The solution may lie with the initial juror qualification process; I understand that that is being looked into in relation to this case."

The woman, who has been in the United States for 27 years and works in a family business, was able to follow "rudimentary" instructions - where to sit and so on - Kessler said.

"She followed directions magnificently," Kessler said. "No one had any idea she didn't understand English."

But she was hopelessly lost once the trial got under way, Kessler said.

"We weren't using rudimentary questions when we were arguing back and forth," he said.

McGowen is expected to be retried, but not by Kessler, whose last day on the job is today. After two and a half years as a prosecutor, he is going to work for the FAA in Kansas City, his wife's hometown.

Was this a tough way to go out?

"It's just a shame," he said. "My opening and closing [arguments], I put my heart into that."

Ballpark dollar figure for the snafu, based on average salaries, including jury per diems but not stuff like lights and air conditioning?

About $4,000.

Another way to be the green party

Just because Barack Obama has banned lobbyists from giving to his campaign and the DNC and Martin O'Malley has said he wouldn't deal with the felonious variety, doesn't mean they should feel totally left out of the election-year fun.