Dec 17, 2007 - 04:08:58 CST
FARGO (AP) - A juror in the first murder trial of Moe Gibbs, which ended in a 6-6 deadlock, says she and others made suggestions to prosecutors before Gibbs' second murder trial began.Jurors in second trial of the former Barnes County jailer found him guilty last month of killing Valley City State University student Mindy Morgenstern.
Attempts to contact jurors from Gibbs' second murder trial for comment have been unsuccessful. Judge John Paulson has not released their full names.
Terri Beck, a member of the jury in Gibbs' first trial, held in Minot in July, said she and a few other jurors went to prosecutors with suggestions. She was worried the second trial, in Bismarck, also would end in a hung jury.
"There are people in this world who don't believe stuff if they didn't see it happen," Beck said.
She said she recommended more focus on Gibbs' DNA found under Morgenstern's fingernails.
An expert witness from Connecticut testified in the second trial that Gibbs' DNA was the result of "vigorous physical contact" and was "absolutely not" transferred through touching the same item such as a doorknob. Gibbs and Morgenstern lived in the same apartment building,
Walter Skrainy, the first jury's foreman, said that additional evidence, as well as other changes, likely helped a second jury reach a unanimous decision that Gibbs was guilty.
"We had a bunch of people who really didn't buy into the science," he said.
Jurors in the second trial did not see a video of Gibbs' interrogation before his arrest for Morgenstern's Sept. 13, 2006, death.
Beck remembers watching a 90-minute redacted version of the video and remembers it showed Gibbs' stepdaughter clinging to him at the beginning.
"It showed me how that little girl that he carried into the room loved him," Beck said. That frustrated her, she said, when she found out after the trial that Gibbs faced charges of sexually assaulting jail inmates, charges to which he has since pleaded guilty, and that he had been convicted of attempted murder in 1993.
"We didn't get to know anything bad about him; why should we get to know that he was a good parent?" Beck said.
Gibbs, 35, is to be sentenced today for killing Morgenstern, 22, of New Salem. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison without parole.
Another juror in the first murder trial, Dale Olson, stopped in Valley City this summer. He said he could not bring himself to go in the apartment building where Morgenstern was killed, but visited a garden across the street established in her memory.
"I'll never get her out of my mind," Olson said. "But after Bismarck, I do feel I have a more of a respect and a confidence for our system; justice can prevail."
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