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| Joshua Carrier |
04/17/2012
By LANCE BENZEL
The jury in the case of former police officer Joshua Carrier deadlocked on 150 of the 207 counts against him.
Carrier was convicted Tuesday of 21 felonies related to exploitation of children and was taken into custody. He was acquitted on 36 counts, according to a defense attorney.
He was not convicted of any touching-related charges.
The judge read the 139 verdict forms prepared by the jury to a packed courtroom.
Initially, one guilty verdict was returned on a touching-related charge, but as the jury was polled a woman juror said she was changing her decision to not guilty. The jury returned to deliberate on that charge and returned with a "no finding" verdict.
The judge warned the courtroom before the verdicts were read to avoid any outburst. There was some sniffling from the accusers side of the courtroom as multiple not guilty and no finding verdicts were read.
Court recessed about 4 p.m., and Carrier embraced his parents and grandmother.
It reconvened to discuss whether Carrier would be jailed on the convictions or allowed to remain free on bond. Parents were testifying that their children are in fear of what happens next.
The judge ordered he be taken into custody, and Carrier was placed in handcuffs.
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After days of struggling in its deliberations, the jury in the Joshua Carrier sex-assault trial announced shortly after 3 p.m. that it had reached a partial verdict.
People packed the courtroom to hear the results of the month-long trial.
On Monday, the jury told 4th Judicial District Judge David A. Gilbert that it was deadlocked on some of the 207 courts against Carrier, a former police officer and school resource officer accused of molesting 22 middle school boys while he was their volunteer wrestling coach.
After signs of trouble surfaced on Friday, a juror Monday asked for the court’s instruction on what happens if the jury has reached a unanimous verdict on some counts and is unable to reach an accord on others.
“I don’t think they meant it as a hypothetical,” Gilbert told the courtroom on Monday.
Gilbert read a special instruction encouraging the jury to continue deliberations — while advising potential hold-outs that it’s unnecessary to surrender their “honest conviction” to reach a verdict.
The instruction is a modified version of the so-called dynamite instruction, designed to blow up sources of deadlock.
If the jury failed to agree on some counts, prosecutors would have the option of re-trying them in front of a new jury. Any unanimous decisions of the jury would stand, however, whether they are convictions or acquittals.
The jury of eight women and four men heard about three weeks of testimony. It began deliberating on April 10.
The first sign of trouble from the Carrier jury came Friday morning, when a juror asked “What do we do if a juror says, ‘I quit?’”
Afterward, the judge sent instruction encouraging them to continue in hopes they would resolve any disputes.
Carrier, 31, is accused of sexually molesting 22 adolescent boys while working as a volunteer wrestling coach at Horace Mann Middle School in Colorado Springs during the 2010-2011 school year. Police say he also kept a collection of child pornography on his laptop and in the bedroom of his El Paso County home.
The six-year Colorado Springs police veteran resigned last July as officials were in the middle of an administrative process to fire him.
As is usual these days, I've noted that reporters are less interested in the details of a story and focusing on the minutia...
ReplyDeleteYou have to read all the way through the story to get past the constant references to the "deadlock" and the "207 counts" just to find out that he is "accused" of molesting 22 boys. This comes after being told that the jury acquitted him of all touching charges. So really, what's the point of mentioning it at all?
This story jumps around like a flea on a hot brick...
I also have to take issue with the jury selection. Anybody else see a problem with having 8 women to 4 men on the jury? Despite the sizable number of "not guilty" verdicts, it still seems that a more balanced assortment should have been striven for. They might as well have thrown him into a pool and told him not to float...
In my opinion, of course...