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Jurors bound by their task

BY ANDREW METZ AND TINA SUSMAN | STAFF WRITERS

June 14, 2005

They came to the day of judgment in khakis and short-sleeve shirts, in plaids and pink and purple, a folksy sampling of Santa Maria, Calif., who delivered a stunning decision.

The eight women and four men who acquitted Michael Jackson yesterday emerged from deliberations as if having survived an Outward Bound adventure, bonded by wading through four months of media glare and often bizarre and seamy testimony so they could reach their comparatively normal lives again.

"We the jury feel the weight of the world's eyes upon us," they said in a statement read by the judge. "We would like the public to allow us to return to our private lives as anonymously as we came."

Later, seated around a conference table, the retired school counselor with a handlebar moustache, the grandmother who watches "Jeopardy," the supermarket worker, the horse trainer and the other members of the jury offered a straightforward (if anticlimactic) explanation of their verdict.

"We considered all of the evidence," said one juror, a 62-year-old civil engineer who remained cloaked behind the number he was assigned during jury selection. He was Juror No. 1.

There were no blacks on the panel, but the members seemed to come from diverse backgrounds, based on the many news accounts of the jury make-up. There were three Latinos, one Asian woman, a 21-year-old man who uses a wheelchair and a 79-year-old retired woman.

In describing their deliberations, the jurors were at times jovial and didn't appear unduly uncomfortable with some of the racier aspects of the case.

Asked about pornographic materials seized from Jackson's ranch, Juror No. 1, who has four grown children, said straight-faced: "Those were adult magazines. Anyone can own them. ... It doesn't prove the charge."

When questioned about Jackson's admission that he shared his bed with children, another juror, a supermarket worker with three children, responded, "What mother in her right mind would allow that to happen?"

The jury foreman, a 63-year-old Latino man identified by CNN as Paul Rodriguez, later told the network, "We would hope that doesn't sleep with children anymore."

Despite Jackson's megawatt stardom, he said, the panel "looked at him as any other individual, not just a celebrity."

And the jurors were not without emotion upon completion of their service.

One juror, a rosy-cheeked education aide, was openly sobbing in the courtroom and later said that "just realizing it's done, it's over" sent a jolt through the close-knit group.

"We certainly have formed lasting friendships," said the eldest member of the panel, the 79-year-old grandmother. "I think we are all going to keep this up as friends."

This story was reported by staff writers Andrew Metz in New York and Tina Susman in Santa Maria, Calif., and written by Metz.