7.Individual Voir Dire — Jurors 46, 47 and 49
158 lines(In open court:)
THE COURT: Number 45 is not here because we postponed that, so we'll see 46 now.
COURT CLERK: Next is Juror No. 46.
JAMES MCALEAR: Juror No. 46, you can have a seat right there.
COURT CLERK: Have a seat right here, sir.
THE COURT: Good afternoon.
JUROR: Good afternoon.
THE COURT: That's the questionnaire you filled out when you were here before.
JUROR: Uh-huh.
THE COURT: We may refer to it from time to time.
JUROR: Okay.
THE COURT: Since the time of that when I asked people to avoid talking about the case or reading things -- seeing things about it, have you been able to abide by those instructions?
JUROR: I tried to.
THE COURT: Did you succeed?
JUROR: Well, there was a thing about a -- scrolled across the TV about a delay or something when I was watching something.
THE COURT: Yeah. Well, with respect --
JUROR: I mean, I wasn't deliberating looking for this.
THE COURT: I mean, if you see a crawl on the TV screen or you see the headline of a paper that's at a newsstand or something, you might have to recognize that it's about the case in order to avoid it. But other than that, have you read any stories or watched any reports significantly about the case?
JUROR: No, not really.
THE COURT: Not really?
JUROR: No. No, I haven't read any reports.
THE COURT: You told us about some medication you're taking and so on. Would that substantially affect you if you were sitting as a juror?
JUROR: Well --
THE COURT: If you want -- if this is private, we can cut --
JUROR: To be honest --
THE COURT: Do you want this --
JUROR: No, this is fine. When I am in a situation like this and I have to sit in a room where I know I can't leave -- even when I was filling out the questionnaire before they said "You can't leave," it kind of freaks me out that I can't just -- you know, it's hard to focus sitting like that for any amount of time. It's kind of like an anxiety-type thing.
THE COURT: Okay. I understand what you're saying, and that's something to be considered.
I was actually asking about -- you said you're taking medication that makes you dizzy. Is that a serious issue or is it just --
JUROR: I take 40 milligrams of lisinopril for high blood pressure and sometimes it makes me dizzy. I did black out one time on a plane.
THE COURT: Okay. It's the "sometimes" I guess I'm wondering about. How commonly does this occur, or how frequently?
JUROR: If I get up quick or something, or if I'm bent over and come up, I might get a little light-headed and a dizzy spell.
THE COURT: So your employment is for the town and you maintain the athletic fields for the town?
JUROR: Yes.
THE COURT: And you've done that for some years, I guess?
JUROR: Yes.
THE COURT: It looks like about 20 years?
JUROR: Yeah.
THE COURT: The condition you were just talking about, the dizziness or anxiety, do they affect you in your work at all?
JUROR: No, because I'm on the field in a wide-open space. But if I do get bent over and come up quick, like I'm painting a field, you know, stripes, I get a little light-headed and dizzy.
THE COURT: Does it pass? I mean --
JUROR: Yeah, it passes.
THE COURT: Do you use Facebook a little bit?
JUROR: Not really. Sometimes my wife will show me some pictures somebody posted. I'm not a big fan.
THE COURT: You have a friend who's in the police department?
JUROR: I have -- working for the town, I know most of the cops that are my age or a little bit younger.
THE COURT: Uh-huh.
JUROR: I just listed one. I actually used to work with that one.
THE COURT: Right.
MS. CLARKE: Your Honor, I think that the parties would be interested in Question 80, and then perhaps --
THE COURT: Question 80?
Would you look -- it's on page 20 of the form. Your son apparently was in the --
JUROR: Yeah.
THE COURT: -- nearby the marathon finish line and he was, I guess --
JUROR: Those are chicken scratches because I was shaking.
THE COURT: He was going to go to the finish line. Is that it?
JUROR: Earlier that day he went down that way for lunch and he went back, and then he was going to go to the finish line previous, and then both explosions occurred. Because he called me and told me bombs were going off. But he planned on going down there.
THE COURT: And what's your reaction to that? I mean, how do you --
JUROR: Well, I'm glad he didn't get there, you know.
THE COURT: Naturally. That's a natural feeling, of course.
Is that something you think might come back to you if you were a juror and were listening to the case? Would you be thinking about your son's near miss?
JUROR: Yeah, I think about that little boy, that eight-year-old. They lost their son.
MR. WEINREB: All right.
THE COURT: All right. Thank you very much.
(The juror is excused.)
COURT CLERK: Juror No. 47.
JAMES MCALEAR: Juror No. 47, have a seat right in front of the judge.
COURT CLERK: Right here, sir.
THE COURT: Good afternoon.
JUROR: Good afternoon.
THE COURT: I'm sorry?
JUROR: Good afternoon.
THE COURT: Oh, thank you.
When you were last here to fill out the questionnaire, which is before you, I asked people to avoid discussing the case or reading about it or watching TV. Do you remember that?
JUROR: Yes, sir.
THE COURT: And were you able to follow those instructions?
JUROR: Yes.
THE COURT: Okay. Do you want to take a minute to refresh your -- I would be happy to give you a chance to leaf through it; otherwise, I'm going to go through and ask some of the questions, and I'll point to the ones --
JUROR: Sure.
THE COURT: Actually, I want to go back to page 4. You expressed some concern about your facility in English and the ability to follow if things got going fast and so on.
Give us your assessment of that. How difficult do you think that would be? English is not your first language.
JUROR: It is my second language.
THE COURT: Right.
JUROR: And I could read okay, but sometimes I cannot understand some of the words. Like it's not -- it's just some of them, like, I don't know the meanings or -- because my work is more into computer, and I'm not really much talk to people.
THE COURT: So, for example, you've heard me at length a couple of times. One was the last time when you had the occasion to fill out the questionnaire, and then this morning I spoke for ten or 15 minutes or so. Did you have difficulty following that or not?
JUROR: I had some problems like with the death penalty and some of the rules, and like I'm not getting all the words.
MR. WEINREB: Your Honor, I'm sorry to interrupt. This might be a good place to pause.
THE COURT: Okay. Do you agree?
MR. BRUCK: Yes, I do.
THE COURT: The lawyers and I are going to caucus for a moment. Would you excuse us? Just go this way for a minute.
(The juror is excused.)
THE COURT: Number 48.
MS. CLARKE: Is Tuesday.
THE COURT: Oh, that's right. We postponed it. You're right. 48 is not here because he had an appointment this morning, so we're going to come back to him.
49 is the next one.
COURT CLERK: Juror No. 49.
THE COURT: Good afternoon.
JUROR: Good afternoon.
THE COURT: When you -- we put the questionnaire you filled out when you were last here in front of you. We're going to refer to it because I'm basically following up on some of the answers to the questionnaire. You'll remember at that time I asked you to avoid any discussion about the case or any exposure to the media accounts and so on. Have you been able to follow that pretty much?
JUROR: Yes. Yes.
THE COURT: So I think you have told us you are currently retired?
JUROR: That's right.
THE COURT: And it looks like you had brief employment in 2013-'14, but most of your employment was prior, in --
JUROR: 2012.
THE COURT: And you're a technologist in CAT-scanning?
JUROR: That's right.
THE COURT: But no employment now. Full retirement?
JUROR: I think so.
THE COURT: How is it?
JUROR: It's good so far.
THE COURT: Good.
We asked a series of questions about what might be called international events and so on, attitudes towards Muslims and Islam, for example, attitudes towards the war on terror, so-called, and so on and so forth.
Since you filled out the questionnaire and gave the answers you gave, there has been an incident in Paris that could be called terrorism. Are you aware of that and have you followed it to any degree?
JUROR: Yeah, I've been following it.
THE COURT: How closely or not closely? How would you characterize that level?
JUROR: I'm pretty much a news junkie.
THE COURT: Oh, you are? How do you pursue that?
JUROR: I watch TV mostly.
THE COURT: TV mostly?
JUROR: Mostly. And online.
THE COURT: What kind of news sources do you see online? You probably told us already.
JUROR: CNN a lot, sometimes Fox.
THE COURT: Does the Paris incident -- would that lead you to change any of the questions -- answers you gave to any of the questions about --
JUROR: No. No.
THE COURT: We asked at one point what you -- how you reacted when you received the jury summons and thought it might be this case. And if you want to look at it, I'm looking at page 19, at Question 74 and 75. And you said your reaction to the summons was nervousness, which is certainly understandable.
JUROR: Yeah.
THE COURT: And then we asked what did you say to others or others say to you about that, and you wrote, "Discussed possibility of being dismissed since I don't believe in the death penalty."
Tell us about that discussion, if there was one, and who it was with and so on.
JUROR: I guess I told a couple of friends, probably, that I had read that that was true. I heard it on TV, that you wouldn't be considered, and that since that's what I believed, I thought I would be dismissed.
THE COURT: Well, let's turn to that, if we could. This is Question 88. We asked in Question 88 -- you could take the clip off of there if it's more convenient for you.
JUROR: That's okay.
THE COURT: We asked for your general views about the death penalty, and you indicated you were against it. And then in the next question we asked you to gauge the strength of that belief, and you put it at the strongest level.
JUROR: Hmm.
THE COURT: And then in the next page we presented a series of possible views and asked you to select the one that was closest to yours.
JUROR: Right.
THE COURT: And it looks like you made one selection and then put an X through it and made a second selection.
JUROR: I think I just made a mistake the first time.
THE COURT: Okay.
JUROR: Yeah.
THE COURT: So the question -- the answers you gave to that question indicated that you would -- you were opposed to the death penalty and you would never impose it in any case, no matter what the facts.
JUROR: Right.
THE COURT: Is that correct?
JUROR: That's correct.
THE COURT: You can't conceive of any circumstance in which the facts of the case were so disturbing, perhaps, or morally repugnant that you could not, even in that circumstance, vote in favor of the death penalty?
JUROR: I'm pretty sure no.
THE COURT: Anybody?
MR. WEINREB: Nothing further.
THE COURT: Anything further?
MS. CLARKE: No.
THE COURT: Thank you.
JUROR: You're welcome.
(The juror is excused.)
THE COURT: Can we have a moment and cut the audio?
MR. DOREAU: Audio cut.
(Discussion at sidebar and out of the hearing of the public:)
THE COURT: This is for Juror 50.
The reporters, would you excuse us for a couple of minutes?
I'm trying to find it. These things are annoying to read.
(Pause.)
[REDACTED]
MR. BRUCK: Before we have a -- I have a quick request --
[REDACTED]
JAMES MCALEAR: Okay.
THE COURT: While he's doing that, now you can --
MR. BRUCK: Thank you.
Your Honor, we really do appreciate your asking the Paris question. My request is just that it be phrased a little more broadly. It could be relevant to more than just the answers about feelings about Muslims. There's been a great deal of press coverage linking Paris to this offense. So generally -- in other words, the supposed parallel: two brothers, similarly motivated, connections to Anwar al-Awlaki and so on, there has been a lot in the press. We filed a lot of clippings just from the Boston press with the Court to make that very point.
And so I think a more broad question would just be: Is there anything about what you have read or learned that affects your feelings in any way about this case or this defendant or that would affect your answers?
THE COURT: Okay.
MR. WEINREB: No objection.
THE COURT: By the time the jurors are considering this case, they won't remember Paris.
COURT CLERK: 51.
MR. DOREAU: Audio?
THE COURT: Audio back, yes.