Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, January 23, 1994 TAG: 9401230056
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: The Washington Post
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
They tried to place themselves in her bedroom, to imagine the moment. They decided to re-enact the crime.
A male juror played the role of Lorena Bobbitt and held the same 12-inch kitchen knife she had used. On a blackboard, he drew a timeline with marks for the events that had occurred in the 15 minutes before she cut her husband as he lay sleeping.
John Wayne Bobbitt was a paper cup.
Was it an act of irresistible impulse, as defense attorneys argued? The jurors listened, again and again, to the statement Lorena Bobbitt gave police about how her husband earlier had raped her.
"The more we did, we realized that this was not a person who was acting in a sane manner," juror Jeanne Elmore, 42, said Saturday. "You could see, as we were reading her words, the emotion building."
Elmore and four other jurors interviewed Saturday said the re-enactment was a turning point in reaching the verdict that the 24-year-old woman was not guilty of malicious wounding by reason of temporary insanity.
Although all 12 jurors did not agree on exactly when Lorena Bobbitt snapped, in the end they were unanimous in their belief that she did.
"We felt she'd been really abused, a victim," said a juror who asked that her name be withheld. "Unfortunately, over a period of time, most of us would be able to react" in a more rational way.
"In my mind in a way," Elmore said, "she went after what threatened her most."
The jurors said they had no trouble believing the crux of the defense team's case. Lorena Bobbitt, they concluded, was raped by her 26-year-old husband in the early morning hours of June 23 and then suffered a brief psychotic breakdown brought on by years of abuse.
No one witness or incident convinced them of this. Rather, it was the litany of beatings, verbal threats, sodomy and rape that they heard during the two-week trial. The couple's friends testified to this abuse, as did psychiatrists appearing for the prosecution and defense, and Lorena Bobbitt, herself.
"I believe John raped her over the course of the years he was with her," said one male juror, who also asked not to be identified.
The juror said that John Bobbitt's acquittal in November on a charge of marital sexual assault was no secret to the jury. It was briefly mentioned in the jury room, he said, but was given no weight during the 7 1/2 hours of deliberations Thursday and Friday.
But had Virginia law not limited what was said about John Bobbitt's earlier conduct during his trial, the former Marine and bar bouncer surely would have been convicted, this juror said.
In fact, those interviewed said they believed that John Bobbitt, a witness for the prosecution, actually did more to help the defense team.
Although the jurors saw Lorena Bobbitt as the victim of her marriage, they also thought she brought problems of her own to the union.
"She was not completely guiltless," said a juror, citing the young woman's temper tantrums, immaturity and low IQ. "They were real bad for each other."
by CNB