Steve Emerson’s IPT uncovers jury bullying in Holy Land Foundation trial?

posted at 8:06 pm on December 10, 2007 by Bryan
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Allahpundit will probably weigh in on the legal ramifications, if any, that this story might have if it turns out be true.

She felt the men were guilty and tried to explain why to the 11 other jurors. When she finished, one juror spoke up in an angry tone.

“If you’re going by the evidence in this room,” she recalls him snapping, “then you need to go home.”

The terrorism-support trial of five Holy Land Foundation for Relief and Development (HLF) officials, which began July 24, already had been stressful for 49-year-old Kristina Williams. She had lost her job two weeks into it. Now during deliberations, she felt bullied and intimidated virtually every time she voiced an opinion.

“When I’d get off the jury I’d come home every night and basically cry because I felt like every time I spoke I would get knocked down, criticized, one way or the other for something pertaining to the way I voted,” Williams said in an exclusive interview.

While several jurors favored acquittals, just one out of the 12 did most of the knocking down. In fact, interviews with three HLF jurors – speaking publicly for the first time – suggest that juror William Neal’s stridency may have changed the trial’s outcome. Neal even claimed credit for steering jurors away from convictions in a recent radio interview. Until now, he has been the sole source for public perception of the deliberations and the government’s case.

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The effect this had on the case is clear. When a juror walked out in frustration after just four days of deliberations, it followed a confrontation with Neal. When another juror briefly refused to cast a vote, it was after a confrontation with Neal. Williams broke down several times during the 19 days jurors spent locked in debate. Each incident followed what she felt was an attack by Neal.

In an interview with the IPT Dec. 3, Neal said he had no regrets. He disputed only some parts of the other jurors’ stories – he said he can’t remember telling Williams to go home if she was relying on the evidence in the jury room — but stopped short of saying it didn’t happen.

“We had so many conversations they tend to blend together,” he said.

Read the rest and watch the clip at the link. It’s hair-raising in its implications. Williams says she believes that the defendants were guilty on conspiracy but not on wire transfers. As for Mr. Neal:

“A lot of the jurors couldn’t even say words that had four syllables,” Neal said on the Ernie and Jay show on KRLD 1080 AM. “They just picked the jury based on socio-economical reasons. A lot of these people are blue collar, you know, working UPS, working food, cafeteria cashier. You had people [from] secluded lifestyles. They had no idea of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. They had no idea about worldly affairs. To get them and you show them bombs and show them kids – that’s not our lifestyle so we’ve got to vote them guilty because of that. That’s the whole reason.”

The Dallas Morning News noted Neal “also had difficulty calling Hamas a terrorist group. ‘Part of it does terrorist acts, but it’s a political movement. It’s an uprising.’”

If the government has the evidence, perhaps her statement can help them determine how to proceed in the second trial.

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