Chapter 9 – Voir Dire
Monday September 19, 1966
Most courtroom dramas don’t bother showing how the jury is chosen, leaving the viewer to assume that the twelve jurors arrived by drawing names out of a hat, or perhaps by some legal form of immaculate selection.
In reality jury selection is often as critical to the success of the prosecution or the defense as the actual trial itself.
Once again a pool of 70 potential jurors had been drawn several weeks before the trial of Dennis Terry Sites for the beating death of Mrs. Carrie Batdorff Layser was to begin, and an additional ten names had been added when 18 of the original names had been deleted for one reason or another. Two individuals had been found to be already dead, which was deemed a sufficient reason to be excused from jury duty, and another one, Luke Klein, was currently on a tour of duty in Vietnam (or Viet Nam as the Lebanon Daily News put it). Luke’s wife Jane informed the sheriff’s office that, “I would be very happy if he could be home for jury duty.” A sentiment probably shared by many wives and parents at the time.
Normally a panel of only 48 possible jurors was selected, but because of the anticipated difficulty of finding 14 acceptable jurors (12 regular plus 2 alternates), the panel had been increased to 70. There had been much more publicity about this case than usual, so finding jurors who did not already have strong opinions was expected to be more difficult than usual. Plus, the jury would be sequestered at the Lebanon Treadway Inn, and the trial was expected to last a week or more, and that might be a hardship for some folks.
The No. 1 courtroom in the Municipal Building had undergone some changes since the previous murder trial. Wooden panels had been installed in one of the rows of benches that was designated the press section. The panels were movable and would serve as desks for reporters. This was done in order to keep the reporters outside the railing where the trial participants sit and was undertaken in order to conform to recent Supreme Court decisions.
Sites was wearing a new dark suit, white shirt, and a dark tie when he entered the courtroom just before 10:00 AM in the custody of the sheriff and a deputy. According to the news report in the Lebanon Daily News, “As Sites seated himself at the defense table his wife, wearing a black and white checked dress with white cuffs and collar, entered the courtroom with Defense Attorneys H. Rank Bickel and Edward H Miller. Sites held his wife’s chair for her as she seated herself at his side and she smiled at him as she sat down.”
The prosecution was being handled by Assistant District Attorneys R. Hart Beaver and George E. Christianson. Because District Attorney Alvin B. Lewis Jr. had participated in the interrogation of Sites, he might be called as a witness, and so Judge Gates had disqualified him from prosecuting.
Sites stood for the arraignment (“his right hand hung at his side and his left hand was in his trouser pocket”), and when the charge was read he pled “Not guilty.”
The jury pool, which now had about 60 members, was on one side of the courtroom, while the spectators, numbering about 25, were on the other side.
By noon three jurors had been seated.
As potential jurors continued to be questioned on Monday afternoon, Sites and his wife were seen holding hands. At one point they laughed along with the rest of the folks in the courtroom when one of the prospective jurors said something funny.
By the end of the day 49 of the 60 potential jurors had been questioned. The commonwealth challenged 15, and the defense 20; 13 of the challenges were for cause and 22 were peremptory challenges. The defense was concerned about prejudices involving insanity, psychiatrists, drinking, and the attitudes toward law enforcement. The defense also wanted to know about church affiliations. The commonwealth was mainly interested in attitudes towards the death penalty.
But at the end of the day, the Sites trial had a jury.
Sidebar
Judge G. Thomas Gates
G. Thomas Gates was appointed to fill Lebanon County’s vacant judgeship in 1960 at the age of 36 by Governor David Lawrence. The post paid about $19,000 per year. The term had two years left to go at which time, Gates became a candidate for the ten year job, and of course he was elected easily.
Gates was a graduate of Lebanon High School and Brown University after which he went to Boston University Law School from which he graduated in 1949. He served as assistant District Attorney in Lebanon County from 1950 to 1954.
In high school he was active in football and basketball, but since becoming a lawyer, his outdoor activities were confined mostly to the official legal sport of golf.
When giving tours of the courthouse, he would proudly point to his many golf trophies that lined the shelves of his office.
There came a time that he was giving a tour to a group of Brownies from the Borough of Richland that had been organized by Mrs. Shirley Weinhold. One of the chaperones for the tour was a Mrs. Arlene Troutman, whose daughter was among the Brownies in attendance.
As Judge Gates was showing off his golf trophies, young Brownie Miss Donna Troutman piped up, “My mother says she prefers bowling to golf because they send the ball back to you.”
Mrs. Troutman, who had a beauty shop in her home, thus had a story to amuse her customers for the next few weeks.
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