When the jury in the Rae Carruth murder trial began its deliberations on Jan. 16, 2001, noise consumed the room. It was like sitting around the table at Thanksgiving dinner _ everyone wanted to talk at once.
Judge Charles Lamm had first instructed the jury to pick a foreman. To courtroom observers, Herb Brown seemed like a shoo-in: He was a lawyer with 37 years of experience.
But Brown wanted no part of the job.
He told the others that if he was the foreman, whatever verdict they reached would be torn to bits, and that outsiders would wonder if the decision had been made by a lawyer and his 11 puppets. He didn't want that to happen.
They needed another volunteer.
Clark Pennell, 52 at the time and working at a Charlotte, N.C., charity called Crisis Assistance Ministry, raised his hand. So did Jerry Karst, and at least one other juror.
Pennell _ who had served as a juror on a murder case before, although not as a foreman _ was elected in a secret ballot.
The jury needed to come to unanimous agreement on each of the four charges facing the former Carolina Panther in connection with the death of Cherica Adams, who was nearly eight months pregnant with Carruth's child when she was shot on Nov. 16, 1999.
The four charges were decided upon by the judge shortly before the jury received the case of State of North Carolina v. Rae Lamar Wiggins aka Rae Theotis Carruth.
They were, in order of most to least severe: First-degree murder; conspiracy to commit murder; using an instrument with intent to destroy an unborn child; and discharging a firearm into occupied property.
The jury received a verdict sheet for each charge. Once they decided on all four charges, Pennell would fill out the sheets, writing "guilty" or "not guilty" on each piece of paper.
Triggerman Van Brett Watkins had pleaded guilty to second-degree murder as part of his plea bargain, guaranteeing he couldn't be sentenced to death. But the Carruth jury wouldn't have second-degree murder, which doesn't require premeditation, as an option.
The district attorney's office had offered Watkins the lesser charge in order to secure his cooperation _ and also offered it to Carruth and the other co-defendants. Only Watkins agreed.
But once the trial began and the evidence was presented in the Carruth case, mostly about his alleged premeditation, deliberation and specific intent to kill Cherica Adams, the second-degree charge didn't fit, according to interviews with both the defense and prosecution.
Gentry Caudill, the lead prosecutor, said that the first-degree murder charge was the right call by the judge.
"An ambush of this young woman, firing five times into her at point-blank range _ there's no reason, no justification, for submitting anything but first-degree murder by way of premeditation," he said.
As the 12 jurors _ seven men and five women _ began deliberations, it quickly became apparent Carruth wouldn't walk out of the courtroom a free man like former NFL star O.J. Simpson did after he was tried in the brutal murder of his wife and her friend in 1995.
Juror Karst said he was convinced of Carruth's guilt when Watkins testified about the night he shot Adams.
"His story was powerful, nasty and evil as you can get," Karst said.
And when the jury finally got to debate the case, Karst was ready. He asked the others if everyone agreed that Carruth was in it "up to his eyeballs."
Everybody agreed that Carruth was.
