ne juror who sat on Summit County’s last death penalty case didn’t sleep for weeks afterward.
Another juror said he couldn’t get the images of the triple murder out of his head.
Several jurors were so concerned about their safety after Eric Hendon’s trial that they fought their names and addresses being released to the Beacon Journal.
“I fear for my kids, my family, my wife,” one juror said. “He’s [Hendon’s]a pretty dangerous person.”
These were among the thoughts of the 12 men and women who were tasked with deciding the fate of Hendon, who was charged in the shooting deaths of a Barberton father and his two teenage children on New Year’s Eve 2013.
After a grueling, three-month process, the jurors found Hendon guilty and recommended last April that he spend the rest of his life in prison, rather than being put to death. Judge Amy Corrigall Jones took the jurors’ recommendation in May, sentencing Hendon to life in prison without parole.
The execution of another convicted killer from Akron, Ronald Phillips, has been pushed back several times as the courts sort out the legality of Ohio’s new lethal injection process.
He’s now scheduled to be put to death in May.
As Ohio prepares for the possibility of its first execution in three years, the Beacon Journal is exploring the death penalty by talking to those who have unique insight into the divisive issue.
Today’s story: The thoughts of jurors on a capital murder, who first decide whether a defendant is guilty and then recommend the penalty.
Death penalty views
At the conclusion of the Hendon trial, the Beacon Journal sought from the court — and ultimately received — the names and addresses of the 12 jurors in the hope of speaking to them about what it was like to sit on a capital case. One juror agreed to talk to the newspaper on the condition that his name not be used because of safety concerns. The Beacon Journal got input from other jurors through hearings held to determine whether their information should be released and from their questionnaires.
When the process for picking the Hendon jury began last February, prospective jurors were asked to fill out the questionnaires to provide the court and attorneys with information about their lives and their opinions.
One question was what they thought of the death penalty when the crime is aggravated murder.
A Pew Research Center study released in September found that support for the death penalty nationwide dropped to the lowest in four decades. The study found that 49 percent of Americans favored the death penalty for those convicted of murder, while 42 percent opposed it. The percentage favoring the death penalty fell from 56 percent in March 2015. Support for the death penalty peaked in the mid-1990s when 80 percent favored it, according to Pew.
Similarly, the opinions of the jurors chosen for the Hendon jury varied widely.
One juror said the death penalty is “generally the appropriate punishment with very few exceptions.” Another said it “is not ever the proper punishment as I am opposed to the death penalty.”
The majority of the jurors, however, picked a more middle-of-the-road response that said capital punishment is “the proper punishment in some cases, but not proper in some other cases.”
“I’m not specifically for or against the death penalty,” a 30-year-old male juror from Hudson wrote. “I trust that, if the law provides for it as an option, then there is a good reason for it. I further believe that sentencing someone to death is an extremely significant action, and should only occur if all criteria set forth by the law have been met beyond all doubt.”
A 26-year-old female juror from Green, however, said she supports capital punishment.
“If a person is guilty of aggravated murder of an innocent citizen, I think the death penalty is an acceptable punishment,” she wrote.
A 40-year-old female juror from Cuyahoga Falls talked about how her faith influences her view on the death penalty.
“As a Catholic, I value human life and would need to consider all of the evidence to be sure that this would be the only option to keep the person from taking another life,” she wrote.
The challenge of jury service on a capital case was clearly already weighing on a 52-year-old female juror from Bath.
“I live a pretty sheltered life,” she wrote. “It is very difficult for me to fathom crime against people, especially violent crime. It is equally difficult for me to fathom how capital punishment can be good. I understand it is our law. If necessary, I will do my duty. I must admit, though, my hope coming in was that I would serve on a trial that would not tear my soul apart.”
The trial
In an interview after the trial, a 57-year-old Akron man admitted he wasn’t excited when he was chosen for the Hendon jury.
“At first, I was like, ‘I don’t want to do this,’ ” he said in a phone interview with the Beacon Journal. “Once I got into it, the judge and her staff made it real easy.”
He adjusted the schedule of his part-time cleaning job so that he could work in the morning before court started, which meant his day began at 4 a.m. He was often tired in court, and the judge asked him several times to go to bed earlier. He was the only juror without transportation, so the court paid for his bus pass.
He said the jurors had no problem deciding Hendon was guilty. The only question was whether he deserved to be put to death.
He was among those who indicated his opposition to the death penalty on the questionnaire. Once deliberations began, he found he wasn’t alone.
“The paperwork said if one person is against it, it is off the table,” he said. “Eight people were against it.”
One juror thought the best punishment would be life without parole for 30 years. The rest favored life without parole.
“We all had to talk it out,” the Akron juror said. “In the end, we felt life in prison was the best thing we could do.”
Trial aftermath
Several jurors said they might have recommended Hendon be sentenced to death if they had known about his prior criminal record.
When Hendon was arrested for the triple murder, he was wearing an ankle bracelet to track his whereabouts after he was released from prison for raping a woman and shooting her in the groin in 2000. Prosecutors were prohibited during the triple-murder trial from bringing up this prior case. Several jurors were surprised when they learned about it after the trial.
“I made a decision based on the facts we knew,” one juror said during a hearing about the release of the jurors’ information. “We didn’t know everything. Had we known, it would have been easy — a closed case.”
When the Beacon Journal requested the jurors’ names and addresses, Jones offered to hold hearings to listen to their concerns about this information being released. Six jurors attended hearings held in May and June, expressing concerns to Jones about their safety and the possibility of their personal information falling into the wrong hands.
None of the jurors reported receiving any actual threats, yet they were still fearful. A few also were angry at the newspaper for requesting their information.
“If I knew this would happen — that I would be harassed after the process, that’s what this is — I wouldn’t have done it ... You guys can’t protect me or my family,” one juror said during a hearing.
Another juror said he became paranoid after the trial. He said he saw African-American males in an older-model car near his home, and thought, “Why are they in this neighborhood?” (Hendon is black; the juror is white.)
“It kind of freaked me out,” he admitted.
One female juror became so emotional talking about the toll the trial took on her during a hearing that she got teary, with the bailiff handing her a box of tissues. The juror said she didn’t want to talk to the Beacon Journal because she didn’t want to relive the experience.
“I don’t want to think about this,” she said. “I need to stop messing with my life. I need to move on.”
Jones told the juror she understood her reluctance and appreciated her service.
“You jurors gave a lot,” the judge said. “That’s quite a commitment and a service. Very few sit in on cases like the one you sat on. Everyone is very grateful for that.”
Stephanie Warsmith can be reached at 330-996-3705, swarsmith@thebeaconjournal.com and on Twitter: @swarsmithabj .