MURDER TRIAL
Race can be a jury divider
With scant physical evidence against a black man accused of killing a white woman, four mistrials have been declared. Some say race was a factor.
By Amy Sherman
Miami Herald
September 17, 2006
The fourth mistrial in a murder case against a black man accused of stabbing to death his white ex-girlfriend is raising a provocative but unavoidable question:
Are jurors responding to a lack of physical evidence or racial bias -- or both?
The first trial against Alan Ruff, 45, ended last fall in a mistrial after a witness planned to add to her testimony.
Three more also ended in hung juries -- most recently earlier this month. Most of the jurors pushing for a conviction were white. Most of the jurors fighting against convicting were black, according to interviews with jurors and the defense attorney.
That split along racial lines doesn't surprise veteran attorneys.
In cases dripping with evidence linking the suspect to the crime, the race of jurors may not matter.
But in cases with scant or circumstantial evidence, jurors fill in the holes based on their own past experiences about the credibility of the judicial system, experts say.
''In a weak case, those are the cases where people of color are more likely to hold out,'' said Stephen Bright, of the Southern Center For Human Rights in Atlanta. ``If it's a slam-dunk case, an overwhelming case for guilty, everyone will vote for guilty, regardless.''
Black jurors may doubt testimony from police more often since they are more likely to have been mistreated by police or know someone who has, experts said.
While race barely came up in the Ruff jury room, some said it was an unspoken element in the deliberations.
''Race definitely played an issue,'' said Todd Frank, a white 48-year-old accountant and jury foreman who wanted to convict in the second trial. ``This was our own version of O.J. Simpson. It really was.''
Traci Cooper, a widowed mother of three, met Ruff at a Winn-Dixie where she shopped and he worked as a manager. He was estranged from his wife, whom he later divorced. Both were raising three kids.
Ruff and Cooper moved in together with their children and lived as a family for about four years. When things turned sour, Cooper tried to break it off, but Ruff grew more possessive.
She took out a restraining order in 2001 claiming he cut the brake lines on her truck and broke into her home.
''I do believe Alan is going to totally flip . . . and hurt me seriously if he's not stopped,'' she said in court documents.
Less than two months later, 39-year-old Cooper was killed in her office at Lindstrom Air Conditioning in Coconut Creek. Her shirt was ripped and she was slashed in the neck, stabbed in the shoulder and abdomen.
NO SMOKING GUN
The murder case always lacked a smoking gun. Despite Broward Sheriff's
Office investigators' claim they found evidence at the scene linking
Ruff to the murder, they took 14 months to charge him.
More than 30 bloody paper towels were found in trash cans. Investigators tested two, and Ruff's blood was not on them. No murder weapon was found, nor any fingerprints, nor blood evidence that linked him to the crime. Ruff told investigators he was home at the time of the murder.
An eyewitness said he saw Ruff speeding in the area of her office around the time of the murder but the defense poked holes in his testimony.
Jurors never heard about the restraining order because the judge said it was hearsay.
Prosecutors hung their physical case on three strands of hair found at the crime scene that investigators say matched Ruff's DNA.
But Ruff's sister also worked with Cooper in the office, meaning the hair could have belonged to her, making the DNA evidence inconclusive.
Jurors who voted for convictions said they were convinced by what they heard about the hair, the witness that said he saw Ruff speeding by or phone records showing Ruff's daughter repeatedly paged him the morning Cooper was killed.
''It's basically circumstantial evidence, but it's very good circumstantial evidence,'' said Frank, the jury foreman of the second trial. ``A reasonable person could look at that evidence and say he's obviously guilty.''
Dawn Loewinthan, 28, a white retail manager who sat on the second trial, said she was suspicious when Ruff hesitated before answering investigators' questions about whether he saw Cooper the day of the murder.
''We literally counted on a watch how many seconds it took for him to answer,'' she said, referring to the tape.
Jurors in the most recent case created a timeline to help them link the crime to Ruff, said George Gerstner, 36, a white computer programmer: ``We just said there are too many coincidences. The story line fits too well.''
But Bert Deckert, 66, a white juror from the third trial, didn't feel prosecutors proved their case: ``I started with the so-called premise [of] innocent until proven guilty. I think there was a botched investigation there. The links were not there. Everything ended up being circumstantial.''
JURORS' EXPECTATIONS
In this CSI television age, jurors expect prosecutors to produce physical
evidence.
They also enter the jury box aware of news reports about police wrongdoing and convicts -- oftentimes minorities -- who are later exonerated by DNA, said Michael R. Band, a former chief assistant for the Miami-Dade state attorney's office and current defense attorney.
''They expect DNA. They expect fingerprints,'' Band said. ``They expect more than a modicum of evidence.''
Jean Dobbs, 46, who works in a supermarket office, recalled her jury in the second Ruff trial was also split along racial lines.
Dobbs, who is white and wanted to convict, remembers this sentiment among the three black jurors: ' ``You don't know how it is in our neighborhood. They'll just arrest you. We live this every day. This is the way of life in our neighborhoods.' ''
But Willie Vickers Jr., who said he was the black juror who made that comment, said race had nothing to do with his not-guilty vote.
''If the state could have proved Alan Ruff was guilty, I would have been the first one to send his a-- away,'' the 46-year-old truck driver said.
In his eyes, the state failed to meet the burden of proof.
''I can't send a man to prison going on a gut feeling,'' Vickers said. ``There was no physical evidence, no trace evidence. The eyewitness they got was confused.''
In the last trial that ended in a hung jury, jury foreman Glenn Stofsky, 36, a software engineer , said one black juror's past experience with police ``left him with a belief that all police and detectives are bad.''
But the juror, Jacquelin Belizaire, 50, a security guard who said he's studying criminal justice at an online university, said he felt the case was weak: ``My answer is we don't find enough evidence. We cannot base on opinion. We base on fact.''
Another black juror, who declined to be interviewed, ultimately sided with Belizaire, Stofsky said. He thinks the two jurors, who are Caribbean, didn't fully understand English and race was also a factor.
''You have 10 white jurors giving huge detailed explanations why they feel he was guilty and two black jurors saying he was innocent, they know he was innocent when he walked in,'' a frustrated Stofsky said. ``You come to your own conclusions.''
Blacks may indeed look at certain cases with more skepticism, said Jack McMahon, a Philadelphia lawyer who created a controversial video for prosecutors in the 1980s concluding the best jurors are stable middle-class residents from good neighborhoods.
''In an African-American community, they are more aware of the possibility of law enforcement overreaching than possibly the white community,'' said McMahon, now a defense attorney ``They may be more skeptical of the government when they are coming in with a shaky case like this.''
While the debate continues, Assistant State Attorney David Frankel is preparing for a fifth trial.
Ruff remains in jail.
The lack of convictions ''has nothing to do with the evidence,'' said Peter Holden, who prosecuted the first three trials. ``It's just a matter of getting the right folks there to listen to the case.''
But defense attorney Bruce Raticoff said hung juries are a result
of a weak case: ``There is no credible evidence directly connecting
[Ruff] to the scene. They've got problems in their proof. It's one
of the most winnable murder cases I have ever been associated with.''
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
© 2006 MiamiHerald.com and wire service sources. All Rights Reserved.