Judge Werner talks with the jurors prior to going to the deliberation room:
4:25:10 right ladies and gentlemen as I indicated earlier when I read the instructions to you there are four
verdict forms uh one for murder in the first degree after deliberation one for
murder in the first degree child Under 12 by a person in a position of trust one for charge of tampering with a
deceased human body and one for tampering with physical evidence
in a moment I'm going to send almost all of you back to the deliberation room and members of the jury I want to thank you
for listening so closely to the evidence in this case um because
most or all of you have not served as jurors before I would like to give you a
few pointers regarding the process of deliberation however unlike the instructions that I gave you these are
only suggestions and you are free to proceed in any way you wish first You may wish to choose your four
person who will preside over your deliberations you may already have a good idea of someone that you think
would be fair a good listener and a good discussion manager pick someone who is willing and able to
help the discussion remain organized and respectful remember however that the four persons
opinion has no greater value than that of any other juror second you should reach some agreements
about how you will conduct yourselves the four person shall enforce or encourage compliance with these
agreements if he or she is unable to do so or engages in this conduct him or
herself the jurors have the right to select a new presiding juror
jurors are often tempted to hold a preliminary or straw vote at the
beginning of deliberations in order to determine whether they already agree or how divided the group may be
I recommend against this procedure because it may cause some jurors to lock themselves into a position which they
will then feel reluctant to change experience has also shown that such early votes frequently lead to
disruptive unnecessarily lengthy and inefficient debate and to ineffective
decision making if you reach a particularly controversial or difficult point in the
discussion you may want to move to a less controversial or simpler area for discussion and return later to the more
difficult issue You may wish to consider secret ballots if the jury would feel more comfortable
with this procedure you each have the right to your
individual opinion but you should be open to persuasion
it helps if you are open to the possibility that you might be wrong or at least that you might change your mind
about some issues after listening to other views misunderstanding can undermine your
efforts seek clarification if you do not understand or if you think others are not talking about the same thing
the four person or some other juror is agreed to by the jury may wish to take notes of agreements and disagreements
and from time to time set out the items on which you agree in those on which you have not yet reached
agreement you must deliberate as a group while you are all together
in spite of your best efforts it is indeed possible that serious
disagreements may arise in that event recognize and accept
that getting stuck is often part of the decision-making process
it is easy to fall into the Trap of believing that there is something wrong with someone who is not ready to move toward what may be an emerging decision
such a belief however is not helpful it can lead to a conflict of personalities rather than a conflict of issues
it is best to be patient with one another taking a break can often be helpful and lead to a satisfactory
conclusion the bailiff is available whenever you need to stretch to calm down to clear your minds take a walk
around the building something of that nature as I indicated however these are only suggestions
and you are free to proceed in any way you wish when we began this process I told you
that we were going to be selecting 12 jurors plus six alternates the reason why we do that is because in
any case that lasts for longer than a day if something were to happen to a
juror during the process we would have I would have to declare a mistrial start all over on another date
at another time from the beginning with a whole new different crew
um this was the first trial of any length that we've had since covid
um I have had long trials before um and I I understand that uh things
happen uh during trial sometimes people have family emergencies during trial sometimes people get sick sometimes as
in this case we had a juror who didn't know that they knew a witness until that witness got here
um so we always try to plan for that because we don't want to have to put everybody
through another trial at a different time and start all over without any
potential of resolution and without any potential of getting through all of the evidence however the law only permits 12 people
to deliberate in this case uh the alternates in this case are chosen at
random I'm still going to refer to you as number to protect your privacy so we
have nine people in the back number 10 number 11 number 12.
you're 13 14 15 16 17 13 through 17 will
not be deliberating I'm going to excuse jurors one through twelve
um and Mr Combs will take you back to the deliberation room um and there should be do we have food
there should be food or food is on the way we are uh working on that so please be patient with us uh but we're going to
send 12 of you back now the other five please remain in the courtroom because I have further instructions for you I’ll
rise for uh the 12 jurors please
thank you may all be seated records did reflect that the 12 jurors
have left the courtroom um we get to this point in every case almost any case it lasts
longer than a day and I always feel terrible for the people that are the alternates because
you have put in just as much time effort and energy as everyone else you have
dedicated a lot of time to this case over the last
seven weeks eight weeks wherever we are um but you don't get to deliberate
yet which is why um it is possible and we just had it
happen last week in a different case where one of the jurors had to be replaced by an alternate
um so this is going to sound a little strange I'm going to release you but uh
you're not excused from jury service what that means is that you're not going to be deliberating back with a 12 but
you still cannot discuss this case among yourselves cannot discuss the case with anyone else cannot do your own
independent research about any aspect of the case the reason for that is it is possible that I would still need your
services if something were to happen to one of the jurors that is deliberating
um what I'm going to do is I'm going to have uh Mr Sproul take you back to an
um an alternate alternate Jury Room uh because you guys have two of them back there but I want to have a conversation
with you about um some security things and some uh publicity things and also some services
that we offer so I want to have that conversation with you um uh before we discuss anything further
um and you're welcome to stay in that jury room for the rest of the day you're down here I don't know what you want to
do we can talk about that but we'll talk about all that back there I do have certificates of service for you and I
also have a questionnaire which I'm going to ask you to fill out it's something that the state of Colorado
sends out to jurors so if you would take the time to fill it out and I'll be back
to talk with you in about 10 minutes or so I'd greatly appreciate it all rise
for the jurors please
4:34:34 I think you may all be seated records should reflect the jury has left the courtroom
www.postindependent.com
but it’s still interesting to try to analyze her because I’ve just honestly never seen anything quite like her behavior before.
