Seinfeld moments in Peterson jury watch By JEFF JARDINE BEE LOCAL COLUMNIST Last Updated 3:06 pm PST Monday, November 8, 2004
REDWOOD CITY � Dana Clohan worked her long wooden needles and yarn like she was on automatic pilot as she sat in a San Mateo County courtroom. Scott Peterson's courtroom.
The Los Gatos woman glanced at her knitting only occasionally as she created a growing expanse of black fabric.
"My jury-watch sweater," she said. "I've almost got the back done." While 12 jurors huddled a couple of rooms away to deliberate the evidence in America's murder trial du jour, Clohan did what others at the court are doing until some kind of decision � or none at all � is reached.
She waited. Clohan and several other private citizens came to the court Friday, just hoping to be there in the event that the jury would reach a verdict on its third day of deliberations. She simply came a bit more prepared for the waiting game � doing time, as some call it � than most.
This is what I call the Seinfeld Phase of the trial. It's about nothing � nothing but waiting for something to bring a dramatic end to the nothingness.
You see, you're not supposed to read a newspaper in the courtroom. The shuffling distracts the proceedings even when there aren't any in progress. Clever folks tear the crossword puzzle from the local paper and bring it in anyway.
You're really not supposed to bring a book to read in court either, although the bailiffs don't enforce that rule during deliberations.
Reporters and other court visitors talk, but the bailiffs frequently tell the gallery to keep it down because the noise will disturb the trial in progress in the courtroom next door.
So you look around, noticing things about Peterson's courtroom that hadn't captivated your imagination during the five-month-long trial.
The wood-grain paneling? Upon closer inspection, it's not wood or even paneling. It's vinyl wallpaper. So � so � un-Martha.
There are more than a dozen paintings or wall hangings, and only one � a brass government seal above the bench � is level, and that's only because it's round. The others are crooked, like casualties of a low-magnitude earthquake.
Each of the two long coat racks on the wall has 12 hooks. The courtroom holds a maximum of 125 people.
The court clerk is a chocoholic. When she opened the door to her storage area, a big bag of Reese's peanut butter cups tumbled out and landed on her bright-red ceramic Hershey's Kisses jar.
Scintillating stuff, indeed, when you have time to burn � .
Yet, there is a tension that pervades the courthouse � the idea that at any moment, jurors could send a note to the judge telling him they have reached a verdict.
"There's an energy that goes with waiting for a verdict that is unbelievable," said Paula Canny, a defense attorney who has been observing the case. "The hardest thing is the wait, and this isn't even my case. Everybody needs therapy."
That tension heightens each time one of the attorneys passes through the courtroom and into the judge's chambers. At one point Friday morning, Pat Harris � Scott Peterson's co-counsel � sauntered in. He wore an open-collar shirt with no suit coat or tie. What could that mean? Where are the analysts to dissect this startling development? After lunch, Harris returned � this time wearing the tie and the coat � followed 10 minutes later by prosecutors Rick Distaso, Birgit Fladager and Dave Harris. They all went into the judge's chambers.
"They pay you all to just sit around?" Distaso joked as he passed through the courtroom.
About 40 minutes later, the attorneys left, offering no explanation.
And at 3:50 p.m., Judge Alfred Delucchi popped in to tell the gallery there would be no verdict this day.
"Have a nice weekend," he said. "What are you going to do to keep yourselves occupied?"
The reporters left to file their stories, the TV types to do their live shots about nothing.
Dana Clohan, meanwhile, packed up her knitting supplies. She's a veteran observer of murder trials. She started accompanying her tax-attorney husband to court for his cases, but found herself dropping in on murder trials because they are far more compelling. She sat in on the Richard Allen Davis and Cary Stayner trials and went to Los Angeles for a day of the O.J. Simpson case. During the Peterson trial, she periodically sat in on another murder trial on the same floor of the San Mateo County Courthouse. In that one, a jury convicted the defendant of using a claw hammer to kill his neighbor.
Friday, Clohan finished the back of her jury watch sweater-in-progress.
She got a clerk to snip the last piece of yarn and then leaked the day's breaking story.
"Big news flash," she joked, holding up her needles and yarn. "I'm starting the front now."
Remember, you read it here first.
http://www.sacbee.com/24hour/special_reports/laci_peterson/peterson/trial/story/9399152p-10302532c.html
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