Samizdat

Charades played while McCowen fate weighed

The parking lot at Barnstable Superior Courthouse was a mob scene Thursday. Peter Robbins photo.

Worthington lover Tony Jackett gets swarmed by media today in Barnstable. Photo by Peter Robbins

Turns out, the jury actually did play charades. Back at the hotel where they were sequestered during deliberations, one of the jurors led a game she called Catch Phrase, a game like charades but with a twist: the answer to any pantomime she did was always the same, "Oh! I'm a racist!"

The joke may finally be on the jurors

Her little joke served to split the jury into two camps (although, the only math that ever really mattered was the unanimous verdict that found McCowen guilty of rape, burglary and murder). Those gathered in the hotel room were all laughing and enjoying this moment of comic relief, and those who were late to the game, including two of the three jurors who filed affidavits with the court that alleged racial bias in jury deliberations, showed up and the game immediately stopped.

The jurors played a game like charades but with a twist: the answer to any pantomime she did was always the same, "Oh! I'm a racist!"Charades. The jury actually played charades in which the punch line was, Oh! I'm a racist! even as they deliberated over the fate of a black man who was arrested for the crime despite no evidence of rape, no evidence of burglary, and sketchy evidence of his role, if any, in the murder, especially compared to the evidence pointing in other, as-yet-unexplored directions, such as the Truro police officer who reportedly refused to submit his DNA, to a convicted murderer whose cell phone was in use that night by a drug snitch with family ties to police, to the drug snitch himself, Jeremy Frazier.

Before he questioned the jurors one by one in front of a packed house in Barnstable Superior Court today, Judge Gary Nickerson addressed them as a group and thanked them for their cooperation in this "extraordinary, unusual situation."

Author Peter Manso arrives at the Worthington hearing and creates an interesting intersection of key players; him because he's writing a book about the case and is facing possible charges relating to his sloppily stored firearms and District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, his nemesis, whose own guns were stolen a year ago from his home in a gated golf community known as the Ridge Club in Sandwich, a theft that was very little reported by its victim.  Peter Robbins photoNo one declined to answer the judge's questions as of the lunch break, although several had difficulty remembering certain events, and the more incriminating the event, the worse the memory.

No one else asked questions of the jurors, just the judge, whose questions during this First Phase of the hearing were restricted to who said what to whom -- He said, She said - as opposed to his plan for Phase Two, in which he will allow not only hearsay but interpretations and opinions and feelings from the jurors on how they may have been affected by certain words and actions from other jurors, meaning -- did the racist language used by some affect the decisions of others.

To the question that hangs over all others - if 9/12ths of the jury was racist, why did the other 1/4 go along with the guilty verdict, that was answered indirectly through the jurors' various renditions of the deliberations.

One after another described tensions that rose to the level of near-violence, with one woman admitting that she stuck out her foot to prevent a second woman from getting any closer to a third woman over the question that has clouded the case from the get-go, was McCowen being charged with the crime as a black man who did it or was he charged and convicted because he's "a big black guy," an accused murderer who made one of the suspect jurors either "uncomfortable or intimidated," her words, by the sight of him.

Inquiry may result in new trial 

But were you uncomfortable or intimidated because he was a "big black man," Judge Nickerson inquired.

"No," said Juror Cahill.

Did you ever refer to his race in your deliberations? Nickerson asked.

"No," she said, and the room remained silent, with no one in a position to tell her that the court had just heard several jurors testify otherwise, and she was left to squirm.

The state's case was now unraveling in the hands of a woman who played charades with another man's life.Did anyone say anything about how blacks are prone to violence? Nickerson asked.

"I don't think so," she said. He asked another, she said no, and another, she said no, and another, she said no. Was there any bad blood between you and these other jurors? "Not that I know of," she said, and that was when you could feel the air leave the room for Cape and Islands District Attorney Michael O'Keefe, who now sat about 12 feet away from a woman named Carol Cahill who was slowly, painstakingly losing everything he worked so hard to achieve as it concerned the arrest, conviction and incarceration of Christopher McCowen in the murder of Christa Worthington.

In front of the whole wide world as it would soon learn through Fox and the rest, the state's case against a convicted murderer, a gap-toothed hulk of a man who now stood in the courtroom in shackles and the same snappy suit and tie he was last seen in a year ago, before he was sent to prison for life and the jury was treated to a celebration dinner at Wimpy's in Osterville, on the district attorney's tab, the state's case was now unraveling in the hands of a woman who played charades with a man's life.