Legal News

WSJ?s Emily Steel Reports on Her Experience as a Juror in Uma Trial

By Dan Slater

Oh, to be a juror in the Uma Thurman stalker trial, to gaze for days at the dark underbelly of our celebrity-obsessed culture! What must it have been like?

As it turns out, the Law Blog needed to go no further than our front stoop this morning to find out. On the front-page of today’s WSJ, Journal reporter Emily Steel, who served as a juror in the week-and-a-half-long trial, penned a first-person narrative of her experience.

“Tuesday around lunchtime,” writes Steel, “my fellow 11 jurors and I — including two lawyers, a former editor for the TV show “Wife Swap” and a rock-show caterer — convicted [Jack Jordan] on one count of stalking and one count of aggravated harassment. We acquitted on two aggravated-harassment counts. . . . Our debate centered on a surprisingly complex question: Where is the line between obsession and menace?”

Steel reports that the stalker trial, which has transfixed New York, at times seemed like it was stalking her and her fellow jurors — metaphorically speaking — as the trial’s characters seeped into her dreams. “I was talking with Ms. Thurman,” writes Steel, “although — as is the case with dreams — I can’t recall precisely what we were discussing. Walking down the street, in my dream, I saw Mr. Jordan stroll by. . . .Tuesday morning, when we reconvened, a couple of my fellow jurors said they woke up sick to their stomachs. Another burst into the room saying he’d seen the drawings sketched by the court artists, and that they’d done a good job depicting us.”

For the details of the jury’s deliberations, here’s Steel’s story. For more on the verdict, here’s an NYT story.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on May 07, 2008 (boomark / email).