Emotionally drained jury receives highest of praise

The jurors who sat in judgment of Sandy Murphy and Rick Tabish the past two months received high praise from everyone associated with the Ted Binion murder trial.

But they disbanded Wednesday night under an aura of mystery.

None of the nine women and three men agreed to talk to reporters and lawyers in the case before leaving the courthouse.

But they did tell District Judge Michael Cherry, a spokesman for presiding District Judge Joseph Bonaventure, that they were emotionally drained after the biggest and most well-publicized criminal case in Las Vegas history.

Cherry spoke to the 12 jurors for about 10 minutes after they had sentenced Murphy and Tabish to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 20 years.

"Most of them said they don't want to sit on juries again," Cherry told reporters outside the courthouse late Wednesday. "This was a very dedicated, committed group of people."

Cherry said the jurors told him they pored over every bit of evidence in the case -- there were hundreds of exhibits and more than 100 witnesses -- and were exhausted.

"They felt it was very difficult to sit in judgment of a fellow man or woman," he said.

The jurors said four women wore sunglasses when they went to court Friday to deliver their guilty verdicts to cover up tears in their eyes.

"They just were upset," he said. "They had red eyes. They had tears, and it was a tough deliberation for them."

Cherry said a few of the jurors still were "visibly upset" when he spoke with them.

"This is an exhausted group of people," he said. "I think that they were happy that they were able to reach a final conclusion in this case as a jury."

Cherry said the jurors told him they had disagreements during the course of their eight days of deliberations, but they were a "unit" on the guilty verdicts as well as the lesser life sentence they handed out.

The foreman, a retired aerospace engineer, wrote a letter to Bonaventure on their progress midway through their deliberations to let the judge know they were going to reach a decision.

The jurors decided against sending Murphy and Tabish to prison for the rest of their lives, Cherry said, because they thought they could be rehabilitated.

The jurors, Cherry added, praised the work of Bonaventure during the trial.

After they handed out the sentence Wednesday, Bonaventure thanked the jurors for giving him a card that he said he would cherish as a lasting memory of the trial.

He also returned the compliment to the jurors.

"I would like to express to you the highest compliment that this court can give a jury and that is that you have served your country, this state and this court to the highest degree possible," Bonaventure said.

"I wish you the very best in all that you do and thank you for upholding the decorum of this institution as you have effectively performed your function in history."

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