Legal News

Jury Hangs in Hal Turner Case; Retrial Scheduled for March

By Ashby Jones

Is there anything in the world of law more annoying, more frustrating, more wasteful than a hung jury? If there is, we’d love to hear about it.

One man who’s okay with the old hung jury, however, is Harold Turner, the radio shock-jock who was stood trial for allegedly inciting violence against three judges on the Seventh Circuit.

On Monday, after jurors in Brooklyn said they were deadlocked, the judge declared a mistrial. Click here for the NYT story. Click here, here, and here for previous blog posts about Turner.

According to the NYT, the three-day trial featured a compendium of his comments about various officials he called “sleazy and cunning” tyrants, and centered on a posting in June that three federal appeals court judges in Chicago who had upheld handgun bans "deserve to be killed."

But there were problems with the prosecution’s case, as well. Writes the NYT’s William Glaberson:

[T]he trial did not feature evidence that prosecutors had suggested that it might: exhaustive information of threats over a long period, and testimony from the three judges. And because of that, the jury had formed an impression that the prosecution had "bailed out," one juror said, while another added that there was "not enough evidence."

The jury was split 9 to 3 for acquittal, said one of the jurors. He said the jury was troubled because federal prosecutors abruptly halted the presentation of their evidence after three days in a trial that had been expected to last more than a week.

"He bailed out in the middle of it," the juror said of the chief prosecutor, William R. Hogan Jr. The prosecution rested after testimony by six federal agents and did not call the three judges from the United States Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit in Chicago: Frank H. Easterbrook, Richard A. Posner and William J. Bauer.

Prosecutors said they would retry Mr. Turner, and Judge Walter set a March 1 date.

Photo: AP

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on December 08, 2009 (boomark / email).