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By NOAH BIERMAN
Of The MIAMI HERALD
Two juries in a murder trial were presented with an almost identical set of facts.
Yet they delivered substantially different verdicts.
One man, Mark Hawkins, faces 15 to 20 years for killing Vera Lawrence in a Miramar apartment by injecting her with industrial-grade silicone as part of a back-alley cosmetic procedure. His partner, Donnie ''Viva'' Hendrix, convicted of lesser charges, faces no more than six years in prison.
Now, two members of Hawkins' jury say they are unhappy with the verdicts, which came last week. ''It's not fair that one guy may get up to 20 years and another guy might get up to five years,'' said Mercedes Cataldo, one of the two jurors who came forward to the defense attorneys.
Broward Circuit Judge Peter Weinstein has scheduled a hearing on the issue Monday, where he'll interview the two jurors.
It's rare such after-the-fact concerns from jurors result in new trials unless judges find proof that outside influences corrupted the jury room, which Cataldo said did not happen in this case. Cataldo said her jury followed the law. She just didn't like the overall result -- Hawkins convicted of third-degree murder by Cataldo's jury, Hendrix found guilty of lesser charges, including culpable negligence, by the other jury.
Interviews with her and other jurors show the silicone trial offers a textbook example of how the human element in jury deliberations can mean drastic differences in the lives of defendants.
For both juries, scientific evidence seemed key.
Defense attorneys argued that Vera Lawrence died because she'd had so many silicone injections, over a period of months if not years.
They said the fact that she died soon after an injection from Hendrix and Hawkins was an unfortunate coincidence -- what prosecutor Howard Scheinberg derided as the theory of a ``medical lottery.''
The jury that came down with the harsher verdict for Hawkins had a registered nurse sitting on it. And she argued forcefully in the jury room that the defense's ''medical lottery'' theory was bunk, she told The Herald.
''This [argument] is a big joke,'' said Marla Liles, who has been a nurse for 10 years. ``I could see how if you were nonmedical, this is just going to come in and send you spinning.''
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She said she listened intently to testimony from the assistant medical examiner who performed the autopsy on Lawrence and from a former Broward medical examiner employed as an expert by the defense.
When Liles got back to the jury room, she drew rough charts to illustrate how the blood flows, and to explain her belief that silicone probably did enter Lawrence's bloodstream.
Fellow juror Ondrea Burney, a 19-year-old college student on the jury, said she found Liles' explanation helpful. ''It had to be a buildup and the last shot was the one that did her in,'' she said.
A member of the Hendrix jury said his panel had a similar discussion, but found the defense theory just credible enough to offer reasonable doubt.
''If we had more information, it might have tipped the scales'' in favor of a murder conviction, said Jason Cottrell, a project manager for a Miami construction company. ``It's just a matter of degree and we were real close. We got into the definition of reasonable doubt.''
Lawyers selected a registered nurse to serve on the Hendrix jury as an alternate. But she was dismissed before deliberations began. Cottrell said he and his fellow jurors discussed how helpful it would have been if she were there.
The case required two juries because Hawkins and Hendrix both made statements to the police. A statement made by a defendant can be played as evidence against him, but is considered hearsay if used against someone else. In this case, Hendrix jurors did not hear Hawkins' statement and vice-versa.
The split verdicts do not surprise jury consultant Louis Genevie, a psychologist who operates LGA Litigation Strategists Ltd. out of New York. Genevie, whose clients have included Dr. Jack Kevorkian, routinely conducts mock trials before four different test juries. ''Very rarely do all four panels see the case the same way,'' he said.
Genevie said it's especially risky to allow someone with specific expertise on a jury, because fellow jurors are likely to give their opinions greater weight than the witnesses'.
Hawkins' lawyers, Eric Schwartzreich and Robert Buschel, are hoping the more lenient verdict rendered to Hendrix will extend to their client. ''They were being tried together. They were being considered a team,'' Buschel said. ``Justice should dictate that they get the same sentence, although the law doesn't require it.''
Scheinberg was not available for comment Friday and fellow prosecutor Deborah Zimet declined to comment.
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