Jury asks for more time

Press, 17 March 1982, Page 9

Jury asks for more time

NZPA-Reuter Newport, Rhode Island The jury in the widely publicised trial of . the Danish socialite, Claus von Bulow, on charges of attempted murder, said yesterday it could reach a verdict “given sufficient time" but not immediately. The trial judge then allowed the jurors to carry on with their deliberations. Amid increasing reports of a stalemate on the fifth day of deliberations. Judge Thomas Needham sent a note into tne jurors’ room

asking if they could reach a j verdict yesterday or at all. c The seven men and five women had deliberated for I 36 hours on the charges that t von Bulow-had tried twice to j murder his heiress wife with t insulin injections. c The jury foreman. Barbara 1 Connett, replied to the judge’s note that the panel c could not reach a verdict c yesterday but could do so i given sufficient time. t “This case is in the hands \ of the jury and they have, to a direct question, indicated t that they are making pro- ( gress,” the judge said. “I will <

allow them to continue to deliberate." A defence lawyer, Herald Fahringer, asked the day before for the declaration of a mistrial, citing his instinct that the jury was hopelessly deadlocked. The judge turned him down. The jury has the evidence of 52 prosecution and 12 defence witnesses to weigh in its deliberations about the trial, which has lasted nine weeks. The prosecution alleged that von Bulow, aged 55, opce a close aide of the late oil magnate, J. Paul Getty,

plotted murder so that he could irihefit his share of his wife’s SUS7S million fortune and riiarry his mistress.. Mrs von Bulow, aged 50, has been in a deep coma for nearly 1£ months since the second alleged injection. The defence says she caused the coma herself through abuse of drugs. Hundreds ot people again crowded outside the courthouse yesterday to await the jury’s verdict and to catch a glimpse of von Bulow in Newport, a holiday gathering place for the wealthy.