Book Reviews

A Trial by Jury
by D. Graham Bennett
183 pages. $21.
Albert A. Knopf, 299 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10171
Phone (212) 572-2151 or (212) 698-7277

Reviewed by Frank Housh*

It has been wisely said that one should avoid the temptation of peering into the kitchen window of the restaurant where you are dining unless you are completely prepared for what you might see. So it is with D. Graham Bennett’s A Trial by Jury, a true account of a homicide trial from the perspective of a college professor who becomes foreman of the jury. It is a disturbing narrative not just of the deliberations, but also of the vulnerability of the rule of law to those jurors who seek to subvert it.

Bennett removes any possibility of suspense in the verdict, informing the reader at the outset that the jury acquitted the defendant of murder. What proceeds from there is an often maddening, much overwritten account of the process of jury nullification.

The acquittal came after the defendant admitted to stabbing the victim in the back 25 times, but offered up as evidence of justification his apparent belief that he was about to be the victim of a homosexual, forcible rape. The acquittal came despite the implausibility of the defendant’s account as well as the fact that the jurors gave the defendant’s testimony little credibility. It is similarly clear from the author’s own account that he went to great and sometimes unethical lengths to engineer a verdict of “not guilty.”

Bennett admits that as a juror, he was biased from the start in favor of the defendant, but stayed silent on that fact at voir dire. He further acknowledges that during deliberations when a number of his fellow jurors were persuaded of guilt and prepared to convict, he made it clear he would never allow a conviction as he was “prepared to ignore all of the wounds to the back.” As foreman, he denied another juror the opportunity to have trial testimony read back and he himself (incorrectly) charged the jurors on the law, including the doctrines of justification and jury nullification.

Bennett’s writing is characterized by a sort of pompous melodrama punctuated by moral vituperations from an author who doesn’t understand that he’s the problem. Take for example this passage as the author walks past the victim’s weeping family with the jury’s “not guilty” notations in hand to meet the defendant: “ I had taken into my head as I left the jury room that I ought to give the 12 index cards to (the defendant), because they belonged to him, because they would have deep significance, because he would understand that they had given him back his life and that they were therefore a precious relic, a sacramental folio . . .”

Bennett fills A Trial by Jury with his overblown musings and often cruel, catty remarks about the people around him. In the end, the reader is as beaten down as the other jurors must have been by Graham’s self-righteous harangues. On the last day of deliberations, by the time he finished his prepared speech about the People’s high burden of proof being necessary in a system that has the power to keep him in a hotel room for three days, I had had enough. I might have done anything to get out of that room, too.

Just keep walking past that kitchen. You don’t want to know.

* Frank Housh is an assistant district attorney in the Erie County District Attorney’s Office (Buffalo, New York) and chair of the Bar Association of Erie County’s Criminal Law Committee.

With Consciousness of Guilt
by Ernest W. Dorling
407 pages. $20.95.
iUniverse.com, Inc.
5220 16th Street, Suite 200, Lincoln, NE
Phone (877) 823-9235

Reviewed by Mark F. Lewis *

When you need to have a pad and pencil handy to keep track of the victims, you know that you are reading a book about a serious sexual predator. In With Consciousness of Guilt, Ernest Dorling tells the story of Sam Consiglio, a former grade school buddy of his who began a life of sexual attacks around the same time that most of us his age were more concerned with getting chosen on one of the teams for the after-school baseball game.

Beginning with an episode of “serial breast grabbing” at the local mall when he was 13, Sam soon graduated to more serious offenses. By the time that he was 19, he had raped at least two women, sexually attacked two others and yet, to the author’s lament, he had no felony convictions. His predatory nature was further demonstrated by the fact that while he was awaiting trial on one case he attacked another woman. During the booking process relating to one of his many arrests, names and phone numbers of six other women were discovered in his wallet.

What causes a man to act in this manner? Dorling does not reach any conclusions, but he does set out some warning signs. Most of this continued aberrant behavior can likely be traced to Sam’s relationship with his father, an abusive man who constantly bailed his son out of jail and “blamed anyone and everyone other than his son for Sam’s problems, especially women who had lodged complaints against him.” In Sam’s eyes, this made him a hero to his father. This apparent need to prove himself superior would play out in the way that he later tried to manipulate the system, a process eerily similar to the methods he used to dominate the women who had the misfortune of coming into contact with him.

Eventually he would be convicted of felonies for two sexual attacks and Sam was finally sent to prison for a long term of years. The courtroom became a stage for Sam not only to profess his innocence, but also to file endless motions and make numerous arguments that would try the patience of the most experienced trial judges. Unfortunately, Dorling’s descriptions of the trials and the subsequent appellate proceedings are too lengthy, providing more detail than that which is necessary to effectively tell this story.

Some editing would also have been helpful in the recounting of the numerous psychological evaluations that he was given, most of which led to the conclusion that he was able to rationalize his wrongdoing. As the author notes, “to Sam, his testimony was not really a conscious bit of deceit, but rather a far more subliminal misrepresentation of the facts.” What is perhaps most frightening is that you come away with the feeling that Sam actually believes the multiple lies he tells.

Along with many other states, Florida has a law allowing civil commitment for violent sexual predators after they have concluded their prison sentences. After reading this work, I am more convinced than ever of the necessity of these statutes.

* Reviewer Mark F. Lewis is an assistant state attorney in Tampa, Florida.

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