ONE JUROR'S CONVICTIONS

Holdout in Colo. Case Found Guilty of Obstructing Justice

CENTRAL CITY, Colo. -- When the jurors first filed into secluded room to
begin their deliberations, Laura Kriho moved quickly to claim the chair at
the head of the table. It was a signal to the others that she was up to
something.

As it turned out, she was. And over the course of the next two days, the
34-year-old college research assistant would make legal history, becoming
the embodiment of an escalating phenomenon in which jurors refuse to
convict despite the evidence presented at trial -- and in her case being
punished for it. Jury deliberations normally are secret. But because Kriho
herself became the subject of a criminal investigation, her still-evolving
case offers a rare window on the 12 strangers who come together to decide
someone's fate and what can happen when one of those jurors has her own
view of justice.

Court transcripts, as well as interviews with six of the 12 people who
served on the original jury, including Kriho, show how the drama unfolded
two years ago as Kriho and the other jurors argued over the fate of
Michelle Brannon. The 18-year-old defendant had been caught with bags of
white powder that turned out to be methamphetamines, and she soon found
herself up on charges of drug possession.

To prosecutors, her case seemed an easy win: Police had found the drugs in
Brannon's purse. What they couldn't have known were the personal agendas of
those sitting on the jury.

To start their deliberations in the brightly lit confines of the Gilpin
County jury room, they took a preliminary tally on whether Brannon was
guilty of drug possession. The vote was "guilty," "guilty," "guilty,"
"guilty," a "pass" here and there, then one lone voice, Kriho's, saying
"not guilty."

"She's just a kid," Kriho said of Brannon, who was jobless and living out
of her car at the time she was arrested. "She didn't hurt anyone else."
Besides, Kriho said, the drug problems of first-time offenders should be
solved in the family, not the courts.

Foreman Russell Carlson and some of the others explained why they thought
Brannon was guilty: When police stopped her for driving down a narrow
street that had been closed to traffic, she at first resisted turning over
her purse. When the police insisted on looking in it, they found drugs. How
could Brannon not have known the drugs were in there?

Juror Betty Hammock emphasized that the police not only had found the drugs
but also a pipe for smoking drugs in the van Brannon was driving. And,
Hammock noted, at first Brannon had lied to police about who she was.

Kriho was unmoved. Her attitudes and appearance -- waist-length hair and
long, flowing skirts -- left the others thinking Kriho was a throwback to
the 1960s. But she was also poised, and had a certain reserve in presenting
her point of view. She sat with her hands folded neatly on her lap and
spoke softly as she tried to persuade the others that drug problems should
be solved through counseling.

Daniel Cooper, who became one of the most aggressive of the jurors in
attacking Kriho, said it was obvious that Brannon was guilty: "We aren't
trying to change the whole world or change the laws. We're just trying to
decide on this one case." Juror Rose Hosmer was sympathetic to Kriho and
felt sorry for Brannon, too, but kept coming back to the belief that
Brannon was guilty.

Realizing she was convincing no one, Kriho played what she hoped would be a
trump card. She told the others that the night before deliberations began,
she had looked up Brannon's potential sentence on the Internet. If she had
classified methamphetamine possession correctly according to Colorado
statutes, Brannon could get 4 to 12 years. For Kriho, it was a way of
showing the others that their guilty votes might land Brannon behind bars
for a significant time. Probation, as some had speculated, was not in the
cards.

Her fellow jurors were stunned and shoved the judge's instructions in front
of her. At the top of the stack of written instructions was this statement:
"It is my job to decide what rules of law apply to the case. . . . Even if
you disagree or don't understand the reasons for some of the rules, you
must follow them." Another customary rule is that a possible punishment
should not sway whether jurors think the person is guilty or innocent of
the crime.

Cooper then wrote a note to the judge: "Can a juror be disqualified for:
(1) looking up the sentence on the Internet . . . (2) [for saying] "the
court criminal system is no place to decide drug charges . . . that [drug
problems] should be decided by family and community."

Reading the note, Judge Kenneth Barnhill was furious and felt he had little
choice but to declare a mistrial. He summoned the 12 back into the jury box
and began reprimanding them, not knowing which one to single out.

Glaring as he spoke, Barnhill reminded the jurors that he had asked before
the trial began whether anyone had a problem with the drug laws and that no
one had volunteered anything.

They were stone-faced as Barnhill declared the mistrial, and as the
consequences of that sunk in: The defendant was a free woman, unless
prosecutors decided to try her again with a new jury.

After they were dismissed, some of the jurors went to the judge and told
him that it was Kriho who was the instigator.

And Kriho didn't let up. Outside the court building, as the other jurors
milled around in confusion over how quickly everything had come to an end,
Kriho pulled a brochure from her purse and handed it to Ronald Ramsey, a
juror she thought seemed sympathetic. The leaflet carried a simple message:
Jurors should make "the right decision when the law is wrong."

Kriho then approached Michelle Brannon, who was leaving the courthouse with
her mother. "I'm the one who caused this to happen," Kriho told them.
Brannon and her mother expressed their gratitude, and even gave Kriho a
ride home.

Two months later, Kriho received a summons at the Rollinsville home she
shares with her husband. She was being charged with obstruction of justice
for failing to reveal during the juror screening known as voir dire that
she had been arrested and received a deferred judgment for LSD possession
12 years earlier. She was also cited for failing to disclose that she was
opposed to the enforcement of some drug laws.

In the end, Kriho was not punished for what she did in the jury room, but
for what she failed to reveal beforehand. "No juror can be punished for
their vote in deciding a case," Judge Henry Nieto said as he ruled against
Kriho in 1997.

But what Kriho had done was obstruct justice by refusing to speak up before
the trial ever began about her concerns with the law.

"Ms. Kriho's lack of candor about her experiences and attitudes led to the
selection of a jury doomed to mistrial from the start," he wrote.

Kriho was fined $1,200 and appealed. The Colorado Court of Appeals, which
heard arguments in her case last summer, is expected to rule any day.