Christopher Peak Photo
Defense attorney Dow leaving the courthouse.
After being around serious mental illnesses at her job for 26 years, Lisa isn’t used to second-guessing what people say about their lives. To her, it matters more how clients interpret what’s happened to them, rather than if any of it was “real.”
Lisa described that judgment-free approach in Superior Court room Tuesday afternoon as lawyers sought to decide whether it makes her a good person to send on a fact-finding mission into a decade-old claim of child sex abuse.
It was the second day of a painstaking selection process. Attorneys continued trying to put together a six-member jury who will hear accusations that Rabbi Daniel Greer sexually abused a teenage student at the Yeshiva of New Haven nearly 15 years ago.
Lisa was the last of roughly 20 more prospective jurors who were interviewed on Tuesday in Judge Jon Alander’s fourth-floor courtroom at 235 Church St.
After two full days, the attorneys have approved only three jurors so far.
Before her turn, only one juror had made it through the vetting: a “hockey mom” from East Haven who works as an office manager at a land-surveying company. Among those rejected: a high-school arts teacher from Woodbridge whose late husband died a year ago believing in Greer’s innocence; a high-school science teacher from Meriden who’d been repeatedly trained to report sexual abuse; and a Goodwill regional manager from East Haven who questioned why someone innocent would want to remain silent.
The day’s final back-and-forth with Lisa — a person willing to listen to whomever took the stand without prejudice — showed why that process can be so tricky.
For close to a half hour, attorneys questioned Lisa about her beliefs. Would she be able to figure out the facts? Would she be able to see through a lie? Could she ditch her normal approach to conflict?
Lisa works as a residential counselor at BH Care in Branford, helping clients who have severe mental illness eventually become independent enough to live on their own.
She’s there when roommates fight about who’s doing chores, when clients are overwhelmed with anxiety, when former drug users relapse, and when an ambulance is needed for suicidal thoughts.
An older woman with long blond hair, Lisa spoke softly from the witness stand, so quietly that defense attorney Willie Dow had to wave his hand to remind her to project. She had a slight accent, almost Appalachian, that sometimes softened the last letter of her verbs, like saying her job involves “a lot of counselin’.”
“Now one of your jobs as a juror is to determine credibility,” or in other words, believability, state prosecutor Maxine Wilensky said to Lisa. When you do that in your work, “what factors do you use?”
Lisa said that she usually doesn’t. There’s just not much use in trying to determine “whether the person is accurate,” she said.
“Right or wrong, it’s how they interpreted what they’ve experienced,” she explained.
That seemed to throw Wilensky for a loop.
“Okay, let me just think, because of what you just said,” said WIlensky, who’s spent much of her career on sex crimes. “In their interpretation, are they necessarily wrong in what they’re relaying to you?”
“No,” Lisa said.
“Even if they’re mentally ill, they can still tell you the truth?” Wilensky asked.
“Mh-hm,” Lisa affirmed. She said, for example, inconsistencies in what someone’s saying don’t automatically mean they’re lying.
Dow picked that up when it was his turn, asking Lisa to describe more of her work and how it might affect the way she listened to witnesses.
“Each individual is unique,” she said. “There are some who are very sick that are isolated and quiet, and others that may have the same diagnoses and be more needy and comin’ to the staff for support.”
Like Wilensky, Dow said he didn’t know how to square that either.
“What’s going through my mind, what I’m trying to figure out, is how does that experience affect how you would look at a case like this one?” he asked.
“I just feel like, in my job, you have to be very open-minded and very understanding of differences, to see underneath what a person is going through,” she said.
“Let’s say when somebody comes to you with a problem, I don’t care what it is, do you assume they’re truthful?” Dow pressed. “I’m trying to get to how you think of credibility.”
“It doesn’t really matter,” Lisa said. Credible or not, they have a problem that she needs to deal with, she explained. “You gotta try to deescalate whatever the client is goin’ through.”
Fair enough, Dow said. But his next line of questioning got at a bigger point that makes it so hard to find the right juror: She might not hold prejudices now, but would she be skeptical enough later.
Stereotypes against Orthodox Jews? “Nothing to worry about with you,” he said. But what about disbelieving what someone testifies under oath? Both the accuser and the accused couldn’t be right when it came time to announce a verdict. What would she do then? Dow asked.
Lisa paused for a moment.
“If they’re under oath, I guess I have to believe it,” she said.
Judge Alander cut in. He wanted to make sure she hadn’t confused the law.
“You’re not legally obligated to believe everybody who raises their right hand and swears. The job of the juror is to determine whether they are in fact telling the truth or when they are in fact being accurate,” he said. “Do you accept that?”
“I would hear it out,” Lisa said.
“Because there’s a possibility they’d lie?” Dow asked.
“Yes,” she said.
“This is different,” Dow said at another point. “If you’re chosen as a juror, you’re not deescalating. You’re resolving an issue. How do you think your experience affects your ability to do that?”
“I think my experience has helped me to allow different perspectives,” Lisa said. “I weigh as much information as possible before making a decision.”
By the end, Dow had seemingly warmed to her.
Wilensky, too, was satisfied: She OK’d Lisa as a juror.
Dow turned to Greer.
Whispering in hushed tones, still audible from the courtroom benches, he said he’d be all right with her on the jury. But he left it up to Greer to make the final decision.
Greer turned her down.
Lisa was called back in, told that she’d done nothing wrong and that it just didn’t work out, and sent home.
Another day ahead, three jurors and two alternates to go.
Previous coverage of this case:
• Suit: Rabbi Molested, Raped Students
• Greer’s Housing Corporations Added To Sex Abuse Lawsuit
• 2nd Ex-Student Accuses Rabbi Of Sex Assault
• 2nd Rabbi Accuser Details Alleged Abuse
• Rabbi Sexual Abuse Jury Picked
• On Stand, Greer Invokes 5th On Sex Abuse
• Rabbi Seeks To Bar Blogger from Court
• Trial Mines How Victims Process Trauma
• Wife, Secretary Come To Rabbi Greer’s Defense
• Jury Awards $20M In Rabbi Sex Case
• State Investigates Greer Yeshiva’s Licensing
• Rabbi Greer Seeks New Trial
• Affidavit: Scar Gave Rabbi Greer Away
• Rabbi Greer Pleads Not Guilty
• $21M Verdict Upheld; Where’s The $?
• Sex Abuse Victim’s Video Tests Law
• Decline at Greer’s Edgewood “Village”?
• Rabbi’s Wife Sued For Stashing Cash
• Why Greer Remains Free, & Victim Unpaid
• Showdown Begins Over Greer Properties
• Judge: Good Chance Greer’s Wife Hid $240K
• Sex Abuse Too Much For Many Jurors