THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1994, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Tuesday, July 19, 1994 TAG: 9407190335
SECTION: LOCAL PAGE: B1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY JOSEPH P. COSCO, STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: NORFOLK LENGTH: Medium: 81 lines
It was the largest trial jury to ever pass judgment in U.S. District Court, and they did it in record time Monday: 10 minutes to acquit an aspiring writer accused of murdering his estranged wife.
The jurors - 16 professors of English and three lawyers, all from Russia and other former Soviet republics - weren't unanimous in their verdict, but then it was only a mock trial.
The case, the witnesses and the evidence were concocted, but U.S. Magistrate Judge Tommy Miller, the lawyers, and the lesson in the American jury system were very real indeed.
It was a lesson that might soon have a practical value as the republics of the former Soviet Union begin to experiment with juries of one's peers.
The jurors said the jury system existed in Russia before the 1917 revolution and is being experimented with again as the republics move toward more democratic institutions. Juries are already sitting in some areas of Russia.
``People are discussing the question of a jury system, but they have not decided it yet,'' said Alexander Ponomaryov, a professor of English from Cheboksary, east of Moscow.
Ponomaryov said the jury system is a valuable counterbalance to judges who might be swayed by outside influences.
Asel Djusupbekova, a government lawyer from Kyrghystan, said the jury system is the best way to reach a verdict on guilt or innocence. ``Here, not only a judge will decide,'' she said. ``Here, people will decide.''
However, several of the jurors said the people of Russia and the other republics may not be ready to sit as jurors in a revamped legal system.
The professors of English are spending eight weeks at Old Dominion University, observing American teaching techniques and experiencing American culture. The three lawyers will attend American law schools, two in California and one at the College of William and Mary.
On Monday, they got a realistic glimpse of two well-known components of American culture: crime and punishment.
Miller staged the mock trial, using a case study developed by a law professor. Miller knows a thing or two about the Soviet Union. He told the jurors that, as a federal prosecutor, he helped convict Arthur Walker, who was sentenced to three life terms for spying for the Soviet Union.
``That's past history, because we are not prosecuting spies because there aren't anymore - although I'm not sure I believe that,'' Miller said.
Cynthia Shepherd, an assistant commonwealth's attorney from Virginia Beach, prosecuted the mock case and defense attorney David A. Arnold of Virginia Beach represented the accused, ``Joe O'Neill.'' The defendant and three witnesses were played convincingly by law students who are serving legal clerkships in Hampton Roads.
The trial was simple, but offered various realistic twists. There was an eyewitness, the victim's stepmother, who thought her son-in-law was a no-good, no-account writer; an alibi witness, a boarding house owner, who had a felony conviction for receiving stolen property; and the defendant himself, who wrote what might have been construed as a threatening remark to his wife before the murder.
Some of the jurors sat at the edge of their seats, chins resting on palms, sometimes snickering, sometimes smiling at some of the nuances in the testimony and the lawyers' arguments.
Natalya G. Prisekina, a professor of international law married to a judge in Vladivostok, said she was convinced by the evidence and the persuasiveness of the prosecutor.
Self-assured in her Yale T-shirt, she seemed perfectly capable of hanging the jury. But in real life, her credentials and her husband would have stricken her from the jury in the first place. ILLUSTRATION: Drawing
ALBA BRAGOLI
Attorney David A. Arnold, standing, pleads for ``Joe O'Neill,''
seated, accused of slaying his wife, in an artist's depiction of a
mock trial staged for visitors from the former Soviet Union who
served as jurors. U.S. Magistrate Judge Tommy Miller presided.
Virginia Beach assistant Commonwealth's Attorney Cynthia Shepherd,
lower left, prosecuted.
by CNB