Dayton resident John Ahern’s personal account of what it was like to sit in judgement.
By: Joseph Harvie
"This was the first time I ever had jury duty," John Ahern said Tuesday, recalling the day he was selected to be part of the jury pool for the capital murder trial of South Brunswick resident Boris Boretsky.
"I was a little surprised because I heard stories that you go in, bring magazines and newspapers and read all day. I was there for five minutes and they called me for this trial."
Mr. Ahern of Dayton was one of the 16 jurors selected from a pool of 56 to sit through the trial, which began Dec. 6 and ended Jan. 20 when Mr. Boretsky was sentenced to life in prison without parole for murdering his wife of eight years, Saoule "Lana" Moukhametova, 41. Mr. Ahern was one of six jurors who voted that Mr. Boretsky should get the death penalty.
Police said Mr. Boretsky stabbed his wife in the chest with an 8-inch kitchen knife in the kitchen of their Ridge Road home on March 3, 2002.
During the trial, Middlesex County Assistant Prosecutor Nicolas Sewitch argued that Mr. Boretsky killed his wife because she had filed for divorce after he had beaten her on Jan. 19, 2002. Mr. Boretsky’s defense attorney, Joseph Benedict, argued that Ms. Moukhametova killed herself.
The jury found Mr. Boretsky guilty on Jan. 11 in state Superior Court. Mr. Ahern said the jury decided he was guilty after the first hour of deliberations but continued to deliberate because they wanted to go over all of the evidence brought up in the trial before submitting their decision.
He said the jury found him guilty because of the angle of the stab wound, testimony from medical examiners and testimony that Mr. Boretsky waited for more than an hour before calling police to tell them his wife had been stabbed.
"The angle of the knife wound was the main reason we found him guilty," he said. "There were only two options we had based on his attorney’s own statement that she killed herself or that he killed her. Based on the angle of the knife, it was a 45-degree angle, on the right side of chest, near her armpit and she was right handed. That type of wound was perfect for the scenario the prosecution described, that of someone coming up from behind somebody and stabbing them."
The jury also examined evidence supplied by two medical examiners, which Mr. Ahern said was critical to the jury’s decision. He said the jury felt the Middlesex County medical examiner, a witness Mr. Sewitch called, was a more believable witness than an examiner from Atlanta, Ga., a defense witness who said the wound could have been self inflicted.
"What the prosecutor had was the actual medical examiner who worked on the body. I took more weight from the medical examiner who saw the body than the medical examiner from Atlanta who never saw the body," Mr. Ahern said.
A third major piece of evidence that lead to the guilty verdict was testimony from medical examiners and phone records that indicated that Mr. Boretsky had waited an hour after his wife was stabbed before calling police.
"According to the witnesses, experts that testified, it took her at least one hour to bleed to death," he said. "He could have called for help, but instead he chose to clean the blood on the floor and off the knife."
In addition, only one of Ms. Moukhametova’s fingerprints were found on the blade of the knife used in her slaying, a finding the experts called impossible, Mr. Ahern said. The prints should not have been found on the blade but on the handle, he said, and there should have been more than one print.
"A fingerprint expert said that only one print couldn’t be there if she handled the knife," he said. "It had to be placed after she was stabbed. I weighed it all out and it made no sense that only one print would be on the blade of the knife."
During the penalty phase of the trial the jury had to unanimously decide whether or not Mr. Boretsky should be sentenced to death.
"The way the deliberations worked was if the aggravating factors outweighed the mitigating factors, then you voted for the death penalty," Mr. Ahern said. "If the mitigating factors outweighed the aggravating factors then we voted for life without parole."
The aggravating factors were that he committed the crime while violating a restraining order and engaging in burglary. The mitigating factors were that he showed remorse, was under extreme emotional and mental distress and that he does not present a reasonable degree for future danger.
The jury was deadlocked at six to six at the end of the penalty phase, which led to Mr. Boretsky not being sentenced to death, but instead being sentenced to life. Mr. Ahern said that there were some that disagreed that the aggravating factors did not outweigh the mitigating factors but he was not one of them. He said that to him it was clear that the crime Boretsky committed warranted the death penalty.
The trial, which lasted through the December holidays, took an emotional toll on the jurors, Mr. Ahern said.
"As far as for most of us, it was a good time for the trial to happen," he said. "Things slow down (at work) at the end of the year. But to listen to all the brutal testimony and to see all of the graphic photos, and listen to both sides explaining why he killed her, or why she killed herself, and be in a festive holiday spirit was impossible."
Mr. Ahern said he works in sales and marketing and did a lot of work from home, going to the office on Mondays when the case wasn’t being heard.
"My boss was OK and all of our bosses were OK with it, because this is the way it is," he said. "Everyone was informed and knew in advance that this is how it is going to be. Whatever I could do to work from home at nights I would. I was in constant contact with my job."
He said it was hard to stay on top of things at work because he was only in one day a week and by the end of the trial his bosses were wondering when the trial would end.
"We thought that since we had the verdict on Wednesday, Jan. 11, we then go right into penalty phase," Mr. Ahern said. "Then they told us to go home and come back the following Tuesday, because Monday was a holiday. Then the mini-trial for penalty phase started and witnesses came forth to say how wonderful the killer is."
He said it was especially tough because the jury was originally told the trial would begin on Oct. 11. However, it was delayed because of appeals and the slow pace of the jury selection process.
The prosecutor was appealing a Superior Court ruling that would have prevented him from using statements made by Mr. Boretsky to police at the time of his arrest, which the Supreme Court heard on Oct. 11, and deemed admissible on Oct. 20. The trial was further delayed after the appeal because jury selection was still ongoing and didn’t begin until Dec. 6.
Some of the procedures in the courtroom were also interesting, Mr. Ahern said. He said all 16 jurors sat through the trial, despite not knowing which would be an alternate and which would be one of the 12 to deliberate.
"The alternates were chosen strictly by lottery," Mr. Ahern said. "Four people were pulled and were the alternates. The alternates were not part of the deliberations or in the penalty phase. Anytime we had questions and something had to be explained, the alternates would come into the jury room, in case one juror dropped out so they had the same info as the other jurors. They weren’t happy about that."
He said he spent several months avoiding newspapers and dodging questions from friends and family about the trial.
"As a jury we didn’t realize that jurors couldn’t discuss it with each other, which was hard because we were spending all that time together," Mr. Ahern said. "We couldn’t discuss at home, and everybody would ask what’s going on. It was very tough and very awkward. The whole thing was building up for six weeks and when trial ended I told everybody I knew."
The jury had different opinions as to why Mr. Boretsky should get the death penalty, or why he should have received life in He said it is these differences that gives him faith in the American justice system.
"Not everyone had the same opinion," Mr. Ahern said. "That’s why you have 12 people on the jury and don’t have one person deciding. Everyone deliberates on what they heard and there are so many different aspects and so many different things people take away from it. I think the system is very good the way it is set up."