Journalist Judged As Potential Juror

A reporter entered the courtroom for a trial about a fatal fire at an illegal rooming house — not to write about the case, but to get screened as a possible juror.

The reporter, Austin Mirmina of the New Haven Register, was the first jury candidate to face intensive ​“voir dire” questioning in a trial about a 2019 fire that killed two tenants of 150 West St. in the Hill.

Over the course of more than an hour, attorneys grilled Mirmina on his capacity to be even-handed in the trial — and ended up scrutinizing the very nature of ​“objectivity” in both the newsroom and the courtroom.

Lawyers are in the process this week of finding a jury for the trial, which centers on a house fire at an overcrowded two-family house at 150 West St. That fire killed two men, Michael Randall and Corey Reed, and displaced 14 other tenants, some of whom leapt out of windows during the blaze in order to survive.

Randall’s twin sister, Clarice Elarabi, and the estate of Corey Reed are suing the city over that fire. (A group of other former West Street tenants were previously suing alongside them; a judge separated their cases this week.) Elarabi and her attorneys say that local government officials knew about the illegal rooming house and should have intervened to prevent dangerous conditions, including a lack of working smoke alarms and insufficient fire exits. The city countered in a cross complaint that the landlord at the time, John Farrar, is the only one who should be held responsible for the fire.

In a fourth-floor state courtroom at 235 Church St. on Wednesday, Mirmina told lawyers that he had not previously heard about the fire. ​“I was actually in school in 2019,” he said. 

He said he grew up in North Haven and has lived in Connecticut for most of his life. He moved to New Haven two years ago. He said he’s worked for the New Haven Register for nearly two years, on top of a year of working for the Middletown Press, a paper also affiliated with Hearst Connecticut.

Over the course of the questioning, Mirmina maintained that his experience as a journalist would translate well to serving on a jury, having trained him to keep an open mind and focus on evidence rather than impressions.

The attorneys each attempted to uncover any background knowledge and potential biases that Mirmina might have about the issues involved in the case — about fires, civil trials, particular city departments, and rooming houses — given his work as a reporter.

Craig Smith, a lawyer representing Elarabi, told Mirmina that too much expertise on a given topic wouldn’t make for an ideal juror.

“We don’t put doctors on a medical malpractice trial,” Smith said. ​“They know a lot and they have an opinion. It’s harder for them than for someone who has a blank slate.”

Mirmina revealed that his work primarily revolves around towns outside of New Haven. ​“I cover the towns of Cheshire and Hamden, although I do cover things in New Haven,” especially during weekly shifts covering breaking news, Mirmina said. 

Smith asked about the kinds of New Haven stories that Mirmina has covered. 

Mainly ​“criminal incidents,” Mirmina said. ​“Most of my work covering breaking news is covering crimes that occur.”

After further questioning, Mirmina explained that he’s covered New Haven fires in the past, although he hasn’t interviewed anyone displaced by a fire or any of the fire marshals involved in investigating those fires. He established that he didn’t know about the Livable City Initiative, New Haven’s housing code enforcement agency. As a reporter primarily covering other towns, Mirmina said that the primary New Haven city officials he’s interacted with are Mayor Justin Elicker and Police Chief Karl Jacobson.

He did have a question for the lawyers. ​“There’s a chance this trial might be covered by another reporter in my newsroom,” he said. Would that be a problem?

Smith informed him that he would not be allowed to discuss the case with his colleagues — or anyone else. If he were asked to make a decision while knowing that a colleague might witness the outcome, ​“would that make you feel limited?”

“No,” Mirmina said.

Later, the lawyer representing the City of New Haven, Tom Gerarde, pressed Mirmina on this answer.

“You’d be informed not to say anything” to your colleague. ​“Don’t you think that is going to be difficult?”

Mirmina replied that if he were a juror, he would refrain from discussing the case.

“Why are you so confident?” Gerarde challenged.

Mirmina hesitated.

“While I acknowledge that it would be difficult,” Mirmina said, weighing each word, ​“I would be told not to, so I wouldn’t.”

What, Objectively, Does A Life Cost?

Smith asked whether Mirmina considers himself an impulsive decision-maker. 

No, Mirmina said. Everyone jumps to conclusions sometimes, he conceded, but ​“with so much recently, learning more about implicit bias, I’m trying to take a step back” from those first impressions.

Smith warned that the case may be emotional, as it centers around grief and the loss of loved ones. ​“We do ask that everybody try to set aside sympathy” when evaluating a potential verdict, he said.

“I don’t think that would be an issue for me,” Mirmina said. ​“My job has prepared me — desensitized me, to a certain degree.”

“We do want people to use personal common sense,” Smith added. ​“Yeah, you’re supposed to be objective, but we don’t want people to become robots.”

“I think I would be able to do that pretty confidently,” Mirmina said.

The trial, as lawyers noted, could require jurors to quantify the loss of two lives, as well as the grief reverberating from those deaths, in a particular dollar amount. 

So what does it mean to be ​“objective” without being a ​“robot” when faced with such a question?

Lawyers on both sides tried to get a sense of how Mirmina understood this balancing act (or unsolvable paradox?) facing the jury.

Mirmina told Smith that if chosen to serve on the jury, he would work with other jurors to come up with a dollar amount based on ​“evidence,” accounting for dollar amounts that the lawyers come up with and any legal caps or minimums for a monetary award.

“I would have to be open-minded,” he said. ​“I don’t think that it should be excessive … If someone’s asking for a billion dollars, that’s too much.”

Gerarde later zeroed in on Mirmina’s suggestion that he would weigh any monetary suggestions raised by lawyers during the trial.

“That makes me nervous,” Gerarde said. He pressed Mirmina, once again, on how he would determine whether and what the city owes Randall and Reed’s relatives in the aftermath of their deaths. 

“I was just trying to emphasize that I don’t really know what that amount should be,” Mirmina said.

He paused. A sudden silence swept the courtroom.

“I don’t think I would be entirely brainwashed” by any one solution suggested by a lawyer, he added. ​“Yes, I’m confident that I can be objective.”

In the end, the plaintiffs’ attorney chose not to contest seating Mirmina on the jury.

The lawyer representing the city decided to disqualify him. That means Mirmina got bumped, and won’t be a juror in the case after all.

Previous coverage of the 150 West St. fire:

• 2 Die In Hill Fire; Tenants Leap For Lives; Questions Raised On Smoke Alarms, Exits
• Tenants Who Escaped Deadly Fire: Smoke Alarm Didn’t Sound. Slumlord Didn’t Care
• Files Reveal Slumlord-Chasing Challenges
• Police Report: 150 West St. Landlord Assaulted Tenant Who Later Died In Fire
• Slumlord Unloads 2 More Hill Properties
• Tenants Return, Retrieve Burnt Belongings
• City Alerted To Perils Before Fatal Fire
• Fatal Fire Lawsuit Heads To Trial