Jurors Report Experiencing Continuing Trauma After Serving in South Carolina Death-Penalty Trial

Jurors in South Carolina report that they are expe­ri­enc­ing pro­found psy­cho­log­i­cal effects from their expo­sure to graph­i­cal­ly vio­lent images, tes­ti­mo­ny, and argu­ment dur­ing the death-penal­ty tri­al of Tim Jones, Jr. (pic­tured). Three months after the June 13, 2019 con­clu­sion of the penal­ty phase of a tri­al in which jurors sen­tenced Jones to death for killing his five young chil­dren, nine of the 18 Lexington County jurors and alter­nates from the case agreed to speak with the local news­pa­per, The State, about the case. The evi­dence, the news­pa­per said, has left them shak­en and haunt­ed, and is hav­ing a con­tin­u­ing impact on their lives.

Throughout the 21-day tri­al, jurors heard graph­ic tes­ti­mo­ny about how Jones killed his five chil­dren, drove around with their bod­ies in black garbage bags for 9 days, and even­tu­al­ly dumped their remains in the rur­al Alabama woods. News reports reflect that the tri­al was halt­ed ​“almost every day” as jurors required time to process the evi­dence about the crime.

“I think about it every day,” said one woman who served as an alter­nate juror. ​“Many times dur­ing the tri­al, I went in the jurors’ bath­room and just wailed – cried my eyes out.” Another alter­nate juror — a mil­i­tary vet­er­an — said that the tri­al dredged up mem­o­ries of mass war crime graves in Bosnia. ​“I smelled death in Bosnia, and since then, I’ve had night­mares about it,” she said. The tri­al ​“brought it back like it was yes­ter­day.” Another juror said that “[t]here wasn’t a day when I didn’t dri­ve home and say to myself, ​‘I can­not believe I’m in the mid­dle of this.’ It was every day.”

A psy­chol­o­gy pro­fes­sor at Wofford College, Dawn McQuiston, explained to The State that jurors can expe­ri­ence men­tal health issues after expo­sure to grue­some tes­ti­mo­ny. This ​“sec­ondary trau­ma,” McQuiston said, pro­duces symp­toms such as ​“sud­den cry­ing, night­mares, anx­i­ety and depres­sion” com­pa­ra­ble to the symp­toms of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. People who have expe­ri­enced sec­ondary trau­ma, she said, often need psy­cho­log­i­cal coun­sel­ing in its after­math. ​“The peo­ple typ­i­cal­ly select­ed for jurors — they’ve nev­er seen or heard such graph­ic details before. You can only imag­ine the shock to their sys­tem,” said McQuiston.

The jurors’ expe­ri­ences high­light one of the under­ap­pre­ci­at­ed con­se­quences of death penal­ty tri­als. Jones had repeat­ed­ly offered to plead guilty in exchange for mul­ti­ple life-with­out-parole sen­tences, and jurors would have been spared the long-term trau­ma from their ser­vice if the plea offer had been accept­ed. However, local pros­e­cu­tors turned down the offer and pro­ceed­ed with the tri­al. ​“If this wasn’t the case for the death penal­ty, we don’t need a death penal­ty,” 11^th Circuit Solicitor Rick Hubbard, who pros­e­cut­ed the case, told The State. ​“For me, I could not live with a deci­sion not to seek the death penalty.”

The cap­i­tal tri­al also cre­at­ed a range of oth­er hard­ships for the jurors. ​“There were peo­ple on the jury liv­ing pay­check to pay­check. Fifteen dol­lars a day [the juror’s dai­ly stipend] doesn’t go very far. Some employ­ers weren’t pay­ing them,” one juror explained to The State. ​“There were sin­gle par­ents and young men with fam­i­lies – it was a hard­ship.” Another juror had to skip med­ical treat­ments to attend the tri­al. Others had to begin work­ing on the weekends.

Still, jurors thought Jones deserved death. ““It wasn’t hard to do the right thing with Tim Jones. He wasn’t crazy. He was evil,” one juror said. Another juror, who wasn’t sure she would be able to cast a vote for death, said, ​“I did the right thing. Those chil­dren had no voice but us.”

The cap­i­tal tri­al also had an adverse impact on the vic­tims’ fam­i­ly. Jones’ ex-wife, the moth­er of the mur­dered chil­dren, tes­ti­fied against sen­tenc­ing Jones to death. ​“He did not show my chil­dren mer­cy by any means. But my kids loved him and if I’m speak­ing on behalf of my kids and not myself,” she said, they would not have want­ed their father to die. Jones’s father, step­moth­er, sis­ter, and two broth­ers all also plead­ed with jurors to save Jones’s life. A 2012 study pub­lished in the Marquette Law Review found that fam­i­ly mem­bers in homi­cide pro­ceed­ings in which the death penal­ty was unavail­able were phys­i­cal­ly, psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly, and behav­ioral­ly more healthy and expressed greater sat­is­fac­tion with the legal sys­tem than fam­i­ly mem­bers in death-penalty cases.