Jean Harris Trial: 1980-81

"Don't compromise!" Aurnou told the jury, confident that they would acquit his client completely. It was a disastrous supposition. The jury found Harris guilty of second-degree murder. When Judge Leggett pronounced the mandatory 15-years-to-life sentence, with no possibility of parole until the 15year minimum had been served, he asked if Harris had anything to say.

"I did not murder Dr. Tarnower," she answered.

"I loved him very much and I am innocent as I stand here. You and Mr. Bolen have arranged my life in such a way that I'll be in a cage for the rest of it, and with irons on my hands every time I go out."

She held up her hands as if they were manacled.

"That is not justice. It is a travesty of justice."

Some spectators applauded when she concluded her statement.

"You have had a fair trial," Judge Leggett replied, expressing regret that "the events of March 10" had ever taken place. The judge hoped that Harris would use her teaching talents to aid fellow prisoners.

Despite her defiant protests that she had been condemned by perjury and an immoral justice system, jurors later revealed that Harris' own testimony convicted her. During eight days of deliberations, the jury tried to re-create the scene in Tarnower's bedroom as Harris described it. They found no way that Tarnower could have been shot through the palm by trying to deflect the pistol from her temple. The jury also was impressed by her lack of any explanation for the other two bullet wounds in Tarnower's body.

Attorney Aurnou appealed for a reversal of the verdict, accusing one juror of possible bias and citing the presence of a police officer during Harris' phone call to a lawyer friend after the shooting. The officer later testified to overhearing Harris say, "Oh my God, I think I've killed Hy." Aurnou also argued that international press coverage had made a fair trial impossible and that the jury's attempt to re-create the shooting during deliberations had been improper.

Westchester County District Attorney Carl Vergari retorted that the "Scarsdale letter" had convinced the jury that Harris was "a liar and that the roots of her hatred for Dr. Tarnower ran to the marrow." Vergari called the letter "an X-ray of Mrs. Harris' state of mind as it existed on March 10" and faulted Aurnou's "go for broke" pursuit of a total acquittal instead of pursuing an "arguably valid defense of extreme emotional disturbance." Many observers including Judge Leggett, agreed that Harris might have gotten a shorter sentence or been acquitted if she had agreed to plead guilty to a lesser charge.

An appeals court unanimously ruled that while Harris' trial was not perfect, it was fair. Judges noted that Aurnou himself had been lax in securing physical evidence. He had not asked for a change of venue and had participated in pretrial publicity. As to the jurors' conduct, the decision noted stonily that "the defendant would appear to be in no position to complain since, in defense counsel's summation, he twice invited the jurors to test Mrs. Harris's version in the deliberation room."