A woman who answered “No” on a juror questionnaire to an inquiry about domestic abuse more than a decade ago now is being threatened with jail and a six-figure fine because she later said she had been a victim.
The unusual situation involving the juror is developing in Grand Junction, Colorado, where KUSA-Television from Denver reported on what is facing Marilyn Charlesworth.
Last year, a judge cited her statements in overturning the 2004 conviction for first-degree murder for Michael Blagg, suspected of killing his wife, Jennifer Blagg, in 2001, and dumping her body in a garbage bin. The couple’s young daughter, Abby Blagg, remains missing even now and is presumed dead.
Charlesworth was on the 12-member jury that returned the guilty verdict, after she filled out a jury questionnaire that asked, “Have you, a family member, or close friend ever been involved in domestic violence?”
She said no, the station reported.
But then in 2013, she appeared at a Grand Junction City Council meeting to protest a city councilman-elect who had been accused of hitting his girlfriend.
She said she “was a victim of domestic violence for 10 years,” and her words were noticed.
Blagg’s defense counsel filed a motion, and the guilty verdict was overturned with Judge David Bottger’s conclusion that her “deliberative failure to disclose her domestic violence involvement makes this not a close question at all.”
The office of prosecutor Pete Hautzinger had helped defend Charlesworth earlier from accusations from the public defender about vision troubles and a failure to disclose the use of a prescription drug, none of which rose to the level of being an issue for the judge.
But KUSA reported the prosecutor has a new perspective.
See the report:
“I think it’s reasonable to ask the court to consider imposing some significant financial penalty on her,” he said.
The prosecutor’s concern, however, also was raised because of the tactics of the Colorado Public Defender’s Office, which has investigated Charlesworth for 10 years, on and off.
“The idea that it’s OK to investigate jurors’ pasts months, if not years, after they did their juror service is troubling,” he told KUSA.
The station reported Charlesworth declined to answer questions about domestic violence, but said court records show she filed for restraining orders against former husbands twice in the 1990s.
A friend told the broadcast outlet that the understanding Charlesworth has of domestic violence now is far from what she understood then.
“It’s very subjective, how you feel when you go through it, how you would answer that question,” said the friend, Anne Landman.
The station reported Amy Pohl, of the Colorado Coalition Against Domestic Violence, said victims frequently don’t understand clearly what domestic violence is, “because they weren’t being physically abused.”
And Pohl said the wording on the question failed because there was no definition, leaving “a lot of gray area.”
“It’s absolutely frightening. We could lose everything,” Charlesworth told 9Wants to Know.
A retrial for Blagg is scheduled later this year, and Charlesworth has an April 29 hearing in her case, KUSA reported.
Among other questions? How did her name get out into the public, as jurors in Colorado generally are shielded from being identified.
from PropagandaGuard https://propagandaguard.wordpress.com/2015/04/24/juror-threatened-with-jail-11-years-after-jury-duty-2/
from WordPress https://toddmsiebert.wordpress.com/2015/04/23/juror-threatened-with-jail-11-years-after-jury-duty-2/
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