Convicted juror fights to reverse judge's fine
Woman didn't disclose arrest for LSD

By Valerie Richardson

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DENVER Living among the hippies and ski bums who inhabit the tiny
mountain town of Nederland, Colo., is the young hemp activist who has the
nation's legal community in an uproar.

Her name is Laura Kriho, and she's a 33yearold research assistant who
was called two years ago for jury duty in a drugpossession case in
Gilpin County, Colo. During jury selection, she said nothing about her
support for legalizing industrial hemp or her arrest at 21 for possession
of LSD.

Once jury deliberations began, she refused to vote to convict the
defendant, instead trying to convert fellow jurors to her position by
discussing the criminal penalties involved and the rights of jurors to
nullify the law.

When word reached the judge, he declared a mistrial. Two months later, he
took the highly unusual step of charging Mrs. Kriho with criminal
contempt of court. She was convicted in March and fined $1200.

Her case is believed to be the first in which a juror has been so charged
since a jury refused to convict William Penn for preaching to an unlawful
religious assembly. That was in 1670, and in his case, the appeals court
sided with the jury, thus establishing the right of jurors to weigh the
law along with the facts of the case.

Her critics, who include judges, prosecutors and prominent lawyers, have
blasted her as a rabblerouser who deceived the court in order to insert
her prodrug views into the judicial process. The prosecutor, James
Stanley, said at the time of her conviction that she "played games" to
"further her personal agenda."

"This woman would like to make herself out to be a martyr, but what she
did and failed to do was really not commendable," said Miles Cortez, a
past president of the Colorado Bar Association.

But her supporters in the jury nullification movement see her as no less
than a constitutional heroine, someone with the courage to defy the court
by upholding the jury's historical role as a check on government
tyranny.

What exactly she is will now be decided by another round of judges. Her
attorney, Paul Grant of Parker, Colo., filed a brief yesterday with the
state Court of Appeals, but says he may ultimately leapfrog that body and
instead bring the case directly to the Colorado Supreme Court.

If she loses, that would clear the path for an appeal to the Supreme
Court, where Mr. Grant believes the issue ideally should be decided.

"It's unprecedented, prosecuting a juror. It's just out of control," said
Mr. Grant. "There's too much control by the court and prosecution, and it
threatens to destroy the purpose of having jury trials."

"The jury is a check on the government's power, and it's not surprising
the government resents it," he said.

Her conviction has lent legitimacy to the small but resurgent
jurynullification movement which is based on the principle that jurors
should decide whether the law is just or unjust instead of confining
themselves to the facts of the case. Not surprisingly, groups such as the
Fully Informed Jury Association have made her their "poster child," she
says, while helping raise money for her defense.

Even those uncomfortable with jury nullification say her case has raised
crucial questions about how far the court may go to sanitize a jury of
any preconceived opinion or bias. Her supporters note that defendants are
supposed to be tried by juries of their peers, and in places like Gilpin
County, their peers are bound to include those in favor of some form of
drug legalization.

"Sure, Kriho has been an active hempie a strange but not uncommon
breed in our mountains," said the Rocky Mountain News in a Feb. 15
editorial. "But it's not the business of the court to ascertain juries'
political philosophies. When you command their appearance, you should
take what you get and be grateful for it."

Critics say the crux of the debate centers on her conduct during the
juryselection process, not in the jury room. The case dealt with a
19yearold woman accused of felony possession of methamphetamine, and
Mrs. Kriho was one of the last in a long procession of prospective jurors
to undergo questioning.

While waiting in the gallery, she heard prosecutors ask prospective
jurors whether they had ever been arrested. But when it came to her turn,
she was asked instead, "You listened to all of our topics; would you have
answered anything differently?" She replied "No."

Mrs. Kriho was picked for the jury, something that prosecutors say never
would have happened if she had brought up her 1985 arrest for possession
of LSD. But Mrs Kriho notes that she received a deferred judgment, and
that the charge was supposed to have been erased from her record after
two years of probation.

In addition, she argues, prospective jurors were asked about 350
questions that day. Her crime was failing to do the prosecutors' job by
volunteering information her attorney said.

"They were trying to compel jurors to volunteer information not connected
to the trial," said Mr. Grant. "She's being punished for not answering
questions they didn't ask. Well, jurors aren't going to do that
they're intimidated as hell."

But in his ruling against her, First Judicial Chief Judge Henry Nieto
insisted her crime lay in misleading the court by refusing to reveal her
past involvement with drugs, not her advocacy for nullification in the
jury room.

"It is one thing to laud the efforts of a jury fairly picked and honestly
chosen to decide a case in conformity with their conscience" he wrote in
his decision. "It is quite another thing for a juror to deliberately
mislead the court in an effort to obstruct the administration, of
justice."

For her part, Mrs. Kriho doesn't buy it. "If we'd come back with a guilty
verdict," she says, "none of, this would have happened."
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