BARNSTABLE, Mass. (AP – Several jurors who convicted a black trash collector in the murder of a white fashion writer denied Friday that racially charged remarks were made during deliberations.
Their testimony came on the second day of an unusual hearing into whether their verdict against Christopher McCowen was tainted by bias.
Judge Gary Nickerson finished interviewing the jurors on Friday and scheduled another hearing for Jan. 18, when he will hear from two experts testifying for McCowen about the general effect of race on jury deliberations.
The judge said he would then decide whether the remarks made in the jury room influenced the verdict in any way. Nickerson has said he could order a new trial if he found that bias affected McCowen’s conviction for the rape and fatal stabbing of Christa Worthington at her Cape Cod home in January 2002.
On Thursday, juror Roshena Bohanna, who is black, testified she was offended when one female juror said the bruises on Worthington’s body would have been caused by a “big black guy.”
Bohanna said that comment and several others seemed to show racial bias on the part of several white jurors.
On Friday, juror Taryn O’Connell, who is white, said the remarks were not disparaging and were used only to describe McCowen’s race.
“It was always used descriptively,” O’Connell said.
Juror Matthew Maltby, who is also white, said he recalled the juror who made the remark telling Bohanna that “it doesn’t have anything to do with race. The defendant is big and black.”
Maltby also said he recalled the jury foreman telling other jurors that race should not play a role in their decision.
“He said, ‘We want to make sure we get this right – totally right – because race does not come into it,’ – and it didn’t,” Maltby said.
Nickerson continually had to remind the jurors Friday that he was interested only in what was said in the jury room, not their opinion on whether the words had racial overtones.
McCowen, who was Worthington’s trash collector, claimed he had consensual sex with her but that his friend killed her. His defense maintains authorities wrongly focused on him as a suspect because they did not believe Worthington, a 46-year-old writer who had covered fashion in New York and Paris before moving to the small town of Truro, would have a consensual relationship with a black garbage man.
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