Jury Misconduct, for the Record...

this is a silly story. But since it really happened (according to my sources), it's a silly piece of American Jurisprudence History.

It is extremely doubtful that any of you have ever asked yourself, "What's the longest time a jury has deliberated before returning a verdict?"

Lucky for you guys, I did wonder that question and then set out to discover the answer. And here's my answer:

Romanos v. New Testament Life Assurance Company, New York Supreme Court, Borough of New York, Case # NYSC0003045, filed 10/22/1931. It took me longer to find out what the case was about than how long the jury "deliberated." This last answer is six months, 18 days. They returned a verdict for the plaintiff, ruling that New Testament Life Assurance Company owed Gladys Romanos the $5000 value of the life insurance policy Rodolfo Romanos had purchased from the company two days before telling his wife that he wanted a divorce. When he told her, according to the only witness, their son, Hubert Romanos, Gladys didn't say a word. She walked from the front room of their third floor apartment on the upper West Side, into the kitchen. The two Romanos men watched her retreat from their view. But she was gone for only five seconds, at most. She then ran screaming back from the kitchen, brandishing a cheese knife. Rodolfo bolted from the apartment and out into the corridor, and thence towards the stairs, with Gladys in hot pursuit. Mr. Romanos started down the stairs, tripped, rolled down to the first landing where, according to expert, undisputed testimony, he came to rest with a his neck broken and his life over. Mrs. Romanos, a delicate flower of a woman, came daintily down the stairs where she stood over the body of her deceased, almost ex-husband, cursing at him with a vocabulary that made one tenant on the second floor faint dead away, such was its perversity. Then about three minutes into her soliloquy, she reared back and tried to stab her husband's body in the rectum. (Rectum? She killed him!)

The life insurance policy had a clause that forbade a named beneficiary from collecting if that beneficiary caused the death of the policyholder. So the issue for the jury to decide was, "Did Gladys Romanos cause the policyholder's death." While not denying that she was a factor, Gladys Romanos, through her attorney, argued that being a factor was not the same as being the cause and that the cause was Mr. Romanos own actions, across the board.

Now to the issue of the jury's deliberations. The case-in-chief took only three-quarters of a day to present. The defense took the rest of that day, and the following day, to explain and justify their refusal to pay, including the presentation of the fact that while Mr. Romanos bought a $5000 policy naming Gladys as the sole beneficiary, he had also purchased a policy for Miss Trixie Ann Cutterhunt, identifying her as his fiancee. That policy was in the amount of $250,000. (Miss Cutterhunt collected her check and disappeared from the annals of history.)

So on 10/26/1931 the jury was given it's instructions and the twelve men retired to the jury room where they began their deliberations. At that time, jury duty paid $1 per day and they got lunch. This was paid out of a fund which got it's money from "jury fees" that have to be paid by any litigant demanding a jury trial.

In April of 1932 the jury finally returned its verdict. One intrepid New York Times reporter, when he wrote his story about this record time to come back with a verdict, took the time and trouble find out why it had taken so long. As he remarked in this story, it wasn't until he met with the fourth jury, and promised anonymity that he got the truth.

Twelve Depression-era men, all out of work, all facing what turned out to be a harsh winter, and who found out that they all played Bridge, parlayed their jury time into a nice, warm, fairly coddled winter. It started when they came to their decision within an hour of sitting down to discuss it. But one of the men pointed out that if they delayed returning the verdict until the afternoon, they would get a free lunch. After returning from the best meal many of them had had in months, their path down the slippery slope had shifted into high gear. This is when the fact that they all played Bridge came to light. And that was all she wrote, folks...

So for over six months they all ate one fine meal a day, courtesy of the court system. When the weather finally cleared and they had just finished a marathon Bridge tournament, and decided that $200 in jury duty money was enough, they turned in their verdict.

so now you know...