When the story of Doreen Guiliano’s efforts to save her son, she was hailed as the “hero mom.”  Apparently, Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alan Marrus didn’t think as highly of her as did Christopher Ketchum at Vanity Fair.  From the New York Law Journal,

Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Alan D. Marrus emphatically rejected the motion.

Citing the threat posed by such “vigilante” actions, Justice Marrus called on the Legislature and appellate courts to ramp up the protections afforded to juror privacy.

“Every juror who has served or will serve in a case should be alarmed by the conduct of the defendant’s mother in this case. Years after rendering a verdict, any juror could be the subject of a ‘sting’ operation by an associate of the party the juror voted against at the trial. The extraordinary actions of Giuliano to invade the privacy of jurors require a decisive response which sends a clear message that New York courts will protect its jurors,”

The decision in People v. Giuca goes to extraordinary lengths to show that Guiliano, and not “juror eight” poses the greatest threat to the integrity of the system.  And Justice Marrus misses no opportunity to slam her, again and again.

Most strikingly, however, the defendant’s motion reveals extraordinary misconduct, not by a juror, but by the woman who generated this motion — the defendant’s mother.  Acting as a self-appointed juror misconduct vigilante, with the obvious intention to destroy the credibility of a jury verdict that went against her son, the defendant’s mother violated the privacy rights of a juror and sought media coverage to support and glamorize her deceptive conduct before this motion was even filed in court.

Aside from Justice Marrus’ rejection of the tape recordings proffered in support of the motion, which he inexplicably rejected out of hand as failing to meet the requirements for admissibility into evidence even though he was wrong about the requirements and, more significantly, wouldn’t come into play until an evidentiary hearing was had, the judge spent a great deal of effort to show his outrage at Guiliano’s conduct.

One of the more curious arguments made by the court was that juror eight could not have withheld knowledge of the people involved because he asked the panel during voir dire whether they knew anyone, and he didn’t speak up.  Oddly, most people would have viewed this omission as the crux of the problem, rather than proof that there could be no problem.  But of course, if the court asks, and a juror sits mute, then it proves conclusively that there can be no juror misconduct,  After all, the court did ask.

While I had reservations about the tact taken by Guiliano from an institutional perspective, as if spending years tracking down jurors in the hope of catching them in a comment that could be used to undermine a verdict was an inherently good idea, it seemed that in this particular case she had struck gold.  According to the judge, however, she only struck a nerve.

On the other hand, Justice Marrus has gone a bit off the deep end at the other end of the pool, lashing out a mother who is trying save her son, a son she believes with all her heart is not guilty.  Does this really so offend Justice Marrus’ sensibilties that a mother of an innocent son would do whatever she could to vindicate her son?  Does it strike Justice Marrus as so impossible that Doreen Guiliano is right?

It would seem from the decision that as obsessive as Doreen Guiliano was in trying to help her son, Justice Marrus was her match in trying to impugn her.  If the dignity of the system is diminished by those who would disparage it, as Guiliano did, then it’s hardly enhanced by those who would disparage a mother trying to save an innocent son, as Justice Marrus did.