VA Case Still Undecided

VA Case Still Undecided

By John Barton

STAFF REPORTER

DETROIT — Jurors weighing and poisoning charges against two nurses in the Ann Arbor VA Hospital trial filed into their deliberation room for the 13th straight day this morning.

Most informed sources here believe the panel has methodically worked its way through about half of the 10 verdicts which must be reached in the complicated trial of Leonora Perez of Ann Arbor and Filipinia Narciso of Ypsilanti.

The same sources stress there is no reason to believe the nine women and three men are completely deadlocked, despite the fact they have deliberated for a record 78 hours without reaching a verdict.

“It was a long investigation and a long trial.” one prosecutor shrugged. “There are a lot of things to be considered, and there was never any reason to believe they would be able to go in and make up their minds in an instant.”

PEREZ, 33, is accused of using the paralyzing drug Pavulon to poison three men. Narciso, 31, is charged with using the same drug to murder one man and poison four others.

Both women are also charged with conspiracy to poison and injure hospitalized veterans during the summer of 1975.

In order to reach a verdict, the jury must separately consider each count against the women by poring over testimony from 100 witnesses who appeared during the three-month trial.

The jury, including four alternates who were dropped from the panel when deliberations began June 29, has been under guard at a downtown Detroit hotel near the federal building while they are not in the jury room.

THE ALTERNATES are closely guarded by U.S. marshals, but are not allowed any contact with the regular jurors. They do not take part in deliberations but must remain available in case one or more of the deliberating panel becomes ill and cannot continue.

Costs of keeping the jurors, who are paid $25 a day by the government, are estimated at $2,100 a day including room, meals and occasional trips to well-known downtown restaurants.

But most of the time they are housed on the entire 12th floor of the Howard Johnson Hotel, where U.S. marshals working in 12-hour shifts strictly limit the group’s contacts with the outside.

Meanwhile, speculation continues that the jurors have been considering each count in chronological order. If that is the case, the panel is now working its way through the sudden series of events which occurred during the evening of Aug. 15, 1975. On that night, prosecutors say Perez and Narciso used injections of Pavulon to poison four men, three of them within a 15-minute period.