John
guilty of murder, they should find John guilty
of
accessory after the fact that if they could not
find
Marie innocent of any wrongdoing, they must
find
her guilty of murder.
Deliberation.
The jury
requested excerpts of testimony
that
Ramsey had misquoted.
One example is
Dr.
Block testifying to a medical study that
factually
reported that retinal hemorrhages are
“usually
found in child abuse cases”.
Ramsey
quoted
Block as stating “they are only found
in
child abuse cases … such as
this one”.
Judge
Post asked Ramsey if he had
misquoted
a witness, and Ramsey denied that he had misquoted anyone,
(The
transcripts
do prove otherwise more than one dozen times.)
and
Ramsey objected to the jury being given the
information
they had requested.
Judge
Post had simply taken Ramsey’s
s
‘word’ as gospel and raised the issue of
expense
to the State. Jim
Rowan countered
that
by volunteering to pay for the printing of
what
the jury requested.
This did
not set well with Judge Post. She
went
into an argument of resistance with “what
if”
scenarios that if the jury asked for printouts of other
testimonies … we could
be
here all night and the court is not willing to pay the
reporter
to stay overtime.
This
likely would have been avoided, if at the
beginning
of the trial, Ramsey had not requested to Judge Post to order the
jurors not
to take notes. (One cannot create “false
memories” in one who has a notepad.)
It is
not uncommon for a jury to take notes, or when being disallowed to
do so, to ask for
clarification
during deliberation of an issue in doubt – reasonable doubt – in
writing. The
jury
was
simply denied proof of the truth.
41
After
seven hours of deliberation, the jury sent word that they were
deadlocked (9 to 3) for the past six hours. It was a hung jury. Some had at least
“reasonable doubt” to vote “not guilty” for six
hours.
Judge
Post expressed distress at all of the work that had gone into
preparation to prosecute this case – emphasizing all the money the
State had spent to get this job done. Completely ignoring that
it was, in fact, over.
There was, at the very least, reasonable
doubt.
It was
late and Judge Post ordered the jury to go outside on the lawn for
a few minutes to smoke a cigarette and get some fresh air. When she called them back
in, she gave them what is called the “Allen
charge”32.
A decade
ago, the Supreme Court approved th
trial
courts practice of admonishing a deadlocked
jury
to make a further effort to “reach a verdict”.
Not
necessarily a unanimous
verdict, but a verdict.
Because of the coercive nature of an Allen charge,
some
circuit courts, such as the Third Circuit and
the
D.C. Circuit had rejected the use of the Allen
harge. The Tenth Circuit approved
a modifie
version
called the Aldisert
charge, as it is preferable
in
that it calls upon every juror, not just
minority,
to
reflect on the appraisal of evidence; no juror
should
surrender honest convictions.
The
Eighth Circuit found no coercion when
content
of Allen was acceptable
and deliberations
continued
an equal amount of time in deliberations
after
the Allen charge to the
time before the charge
is
made.
The
Nineth Circuit developed a four-part test for determining
coerciveness of an Allen
charge. Judge
Post would fail all four parts, especially the “indica of
pressure on the jury”.
The
yelling at the foot of the stairs from the deliberation chamber on
the floor above, “I’m losing $20 an hour while y’all are keeping
us up here for $20 a day!”
42
It has
been reported to this author that some of the jurors have voiced
dismay to Stanart family members that they did, in fact, feel
coerced into changing their decision to be free to go home or stay
in that room indefinitely or until they all agreed to send the
Schoonovers to prison.
(The Schoonovers appealed once, they can
again.)
In order
to be discharged and go home, the jury had to quickly agree to
convict Marie Schoonover of First Degree Murder and sentence her
to life in prison.
The jury found John Schoonover not guilty of the first
degree murder charge for which he had been tried, but convicted
him of “accessory after the fact”, and levied a seven year
sentence – five and one-half of which had already been
served.
Kevin
Adams (John’s attorney) submitted a motion to arrest judgment as
it was clear that the Statute of Limitation {22 O.S. section 152
(G)} had expired six months prior to Ramsey/Post filing and
instructing the jury to convict on that charge. Ramsey did not counter
with any authority (law) to support his position. Post took it upon herself
to ignore Oklahoma Law {our Statutes}, write her
own and uphold the illegal charge/conviction without any
authority, except her own self-appointed
authority.
“There
is no more cruel tyranny that that which is exercised
under the cover of law, and with
the colors of justice.”
Montesquier de le Spirit des Lois
(1748)34
