Empty Promises

to four each day. “We kept from getting claustrophobia,” a juror commented, “because we had a window in the jury room and Judge Wartnik let us take occasional breaks outside the jury room.”
    A jury is always made up of diverse personalities with different backgrounds, professions, education, and yet somehow they usually meld into a solid entity. They acknowledged that Jami was dead from the beginning. Most of them were in agreement on a verdict within the first two days on the murder charge, but of course no one waiting anxiously outside the closed door knew that.
    Again and again, the twelve of them went over the points that seemed the most important: Jami would never have willingly left Chris; Steve apparently had uncontrollable fits of anger; he was physically and mentally capable of killing; the odd collection of items in Jami’s duffel bag; the suicide attempt that seemed orchestrated; the extra key; and—very important—the trail the search dogs followed.
    A few jurors had seen Steve Sherer mouth what seemed to be threats to certain witnesses, especially Rich Hagel and Bettina Rauschberg, even though his usual expression had been cold and stony.
    It was much harder for one juror, in particular, to grasp the concept of premeditation. Within her frame of reference, the thought that anyone would deliberately plan to kill another human being was incomprehensible. Humans just didn’t do that.
    The frustration level in the room mounted, although no one actually got angry. Finally the juror who couldn’t comprehend premeditated murder said suddenly, “He thinks differently than the way the rest of us do! I’ve just realized that I’ve been basing my decisions on how I think. Murder on purpose? I couldn’t even imagine it.”
    And still the days crept by without any signal from the jurors that they had reached a verdict. Someone had suggested they go through all the salient points one more time, just to be sure.
    The usual rule of thumb is that the more rapidly a jury returns, the more likely they are to find the defendant guilty. As the days passed, both the prosecution and the defense waited with one ear tuned to the phone. For the Schielkes and the Hagels, the hours stretched out interminably, and the Redmond detectives wondered if they should have gotten just a few more interviews or looked for Jami’s remains in a wider circle.
    Six days passed. The defense began to be cautiously optimistic. It was quite possible that Steven Sherer was going to walk out of the King County Jail a free man. Steve himself believed he would. Marilyn Brenneman, who admits to eating chocolate at times of stress, admitted to friends that she was going to have to double her workout time in the gym and in her garden to burn off the extra calories. In their offices high up in one of the tallest buildings in Seattle, even the view of Elliott Bay and the ferryboats crisscrossing the water failed to ease the prosecution team’s apprehension. Other prosecutors assured Marilyn Brenneman, Kristin Richardson, and Hank Corscadden that they had all had cases under deliberation far longer than this one. They cited juries in some of their cases who had deliberated for two weeks or more and had still come back with guilty verdicts. They may have exaggerated, but they were trying to ease the tension.
    It was 2:00 P.M. on Thursday, June 8, before the jury foreperson signaled Judge Wartnik that they had a verdict. They worried that it might be too late in the day to assemble all the principals in the courtroom. But it was quickly jam-packed with families and friends, and attorneys interested to see if anyone could get a conviction of murder when there was no body.
    Judge Wartnik glanced at the paperwork, and shook his head slightly. The jurors had failed to write in their verdict on both of the charges. He sent them back to the jury room and cleared the courtroom. “We’d made up our minds on both counts,” a juror recalled, “but we forgot to sign Count Two. It only took us five minutes, but it took a lot longer to reassemble Mr. Sherer, the lawyers, and all the spectators.”
    “Mr. Sherer looked as if he expected to go home that night,” another juror said. “He seemed very sure that we were going to acquit him. I read later that he actually told people that.”
    But Steve Sherer wasn’t going home.
    The foreperson handed the verdicts to the bailiff who passed them to the judge. Judge Wartnik then handed them to the court