LETTERS: SPLIT DECISIONS BY JURIES

To the editor:

As my life spins out, more and more of the precious illusions which I used to have are being shattered. The latest involves a criminal court case in which there was a multiplicity of charges. The jury came in with a verdict of guilty for only some of the charges and not guilty for the rest.

I'll bet there are some people among your readership who thing that defendants are only punished for those charges for which the juries find them guilty, right? Don't be bashful. I thought so myself, although the famous case of Sayyid Nosair should have been a warning. Nosair was acquitted of the murder of Meir Kahane but given a much heavier sentence on a weapons possession charge than was proper for a first-time offender.

Well, it didn't turn out that way in this recent case. The very inventive judge who sat on the case decided that the fact that some of the charges were sustained meant that the rest was true too. So, in sentencing the defendant for the sustained charges, the judge laid on an extra-heavy sentence, reasoning that the jury leaned toward a guilty verdict on the other charges even though they could not achieve unanimity. The U.S. Supreme Court, with two dissenting votes, seems to have endorsed this concept.

The idea of abandoning the requirement of unanimous verdicts in criminal cases ought to scare all but the most innocent naifs. If this judge's practice becomes widespread, the time may come when any seven members of a 12-member jury will be all that it takes to send a person to prison or even to take his life. It means that prosecutors are not going to have to work nearly so hard to achieve convictions. One convictions out of a whole list will suffice, and the rest will ride on the coattails of the one. Miscarriage of justice under the older, more stringent rules are continually coming to light. Can anyone believe that the situation will not degrade under less stringent rules?

I realize that all this is in line with the law-and-order crowd's dream of maintaining this nation's world leadership in percentage of population behind bars, but those who are not proud of this statistic ought to strive against this new, lower standard.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.