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American Morning
Interview With Lynne Schwarz
Aired September 09, 2002 - 07:07 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We, the jury, find as follows as to Count I of the indictment: Guilty of second-degree murder, a lesser included offense, without a weapon.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
BILL HEMMER, CNN ANCHOR: With that verdict on Friday comes more controversy in a bizarre Florida court case. Alex and Derek King convicted on Friday of murdering their father, but now members of the King jury are angry with prosecutors for keeping them in the dark about another verdict for the same crime, the "not guilty" verdict against a family friend who had also been charged with the murder.
Lynne Schwarz was the jury forewoman in the trial of the King brothers. She is live this morning in Pensacola.
Good morning to you.
LYNNE SCHWARZ, JURY FOREWOMAN: Good morning.
HEMMER: Why did you and the others on the panel not become convinced that the boys, indeed, swung that baseball bat?
SCHWARZ: It was the evidence that was presented. We thought that because the back door had been unlocked, and the boys didn't go out to run away, that they had known that he was going to come, and they were going to let him in the house, and Mr. Chavis was going to be there in the house.
HEMMER: Knowing that they had confessed previously and then recanted, what evidence, though, did you see that was presented in court that led you to believe and conclude that very thought, then?
SCHWARZ: We really didn't believe the confessions totally. There were certain parts of the confessions that sounded so coaxed that they had been rehearsed. There were words that were highlighted when -- if you listened to their testimony slowly, you could hear that their voices would go up on certain words, and those words just weren't consistent with 11 and 12-year-old boys. We just didn't feel that that confession was really true.
HEMMER: How do you reconcile this, then: No evidence presented in the case that shows Ricky Chavis, the 40-year-old man, that was inside that house -- no evidence that indicates that? SCHWARZ: How do we really know there was no evidence? We only know what they presented to us. And they don't even really know the boys were in the house. I mean, if they didn't have those boys' confessions, they wouldn't have a case. And we felt that Ricky Chavis was there.
It just -- the facts says we saw them that -- the bat, the way that he was hit across the chest. It looked like he was getting ready to get up out of the chair. And if a young boy had done that, he would have reached up and tried to stop that bat, because he would have woken up when that first blow came. Those were obviously hit before the ones on the head, because there was no blood on the outside of his shirt.
HEMMER: Lynne, what...
SCHWARZ: So, if it was...
HEMMER: What did you and the others think, then, when you heard the verdict come down "not guilty" for Ricky Chavis?
SCHWARZ: I can speak for myself and two others, who I have talked to since then, and we were horrified. We -- I couldn't believe it. I just -- we were convinced all along. We had talked about it after the fact, of course, because you can't discuss the other case. But we thought that he was guilty. I mean, in our eyes, he was guilty.
And we understood that later, after we heard about what was going on, that they had presented such a different case to the first jury. That they didn't get the same facts we did. We didn't get the facts they got. They decided what they wanted us to know, and that's what we had to make our decision on.
HEMMER: Lynne, what do you make of the prosecutor's comments that essentially you and the 11 others were issuing some sort of jury pardon, perhaps because you disagreed with the thin guidelines upon which Florida law now states? Your response to that?
SCHWARZ: I don't think it was a jury pardon. I think that we took what they gave us. They said, these are the choices you can make in this case. And we tried to fit the evidence to one of those verdicts. And it was -- that's how we -- we didn't think about, oh, is it going to be life, is it going to be 25 years, is it going to be 10 years? We just thought about what was the verdict that went with the facts.
HEMMER: In a word, do you think this is right for appeal, then?
SCHWARZ: Probably. I hope so.
HEMMER: Lynne, thanks. Lynne Schwarz, jury forewoman in Pensacola, Florida with us this morning -- thank you for your time.
SCHWARZ: Thank you.
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