Tyco Case Juror Told Judge of Her Fears

Phone Call, Letter Upset Holdout

The holdout juror in the grand larceny case against two former Tyco International Ltd. executives told the trial judge that she was "so frightened about everything" and that "there are people out there that think I am somehow very, very wrong and bad."

Yesterday's release of the transcripts of Ruth B. Jordan's conversation with New York State Supreme Court Justice Michael J. Obus came on the same day the CBS program "60 Minutes 2" broadcast an interview with Jordan. Jordan told CBS's Dan Rather and a reporter for the New York Times that she had not made an okay-sign gesture to the defense, the justification that several news organizations cited in printing her name while the jury continued to deliberate.

Jordan also contradicted statements made by other members of the jury that they were close to convicting former Tyco chief executive L. Dennis Kozlowski and former finance chief Mark H. Swartz on at least some of the charges against them before a mistrial was declared Friday. Jordan said she was prepared to acquit the men on all counts.

In her meeting with the judge, Jordan, a retired schoolteacher and lawyer, said that her life had "permanently changed" and that she would be regarded as "some kind of pariah" after her name became public and she received an alarming letter while deliberations continued. She also said she received at least one disturbing phone call before she received the letter.

"It scares me," she told Obus on Friday, according to the transcript.

Immediately after the conversation, Obus declared a mistrial because the pressure on the 79-year-old juror threatened to prevent a fair outcome. Manhattan District Attorney Robert M. Morgenthau said last week he would retry the defendants "at the earliest possible opportunity."

The transcripts reflect that defense lawyers pushed hard for a mistrial. Swartz's lead attorney, Charles A. Stillman, told the judge that "this woman has been pounded into a submissive state." On the day of the mistrial, Kozlowski's lead attorney, Stephen E. Kaufman, said Jordan was markedly different from the woman who had come before them a week earlier, and the judge agreed.

"Now, Mr. Kaufman is right, this woman is not the woman who appeared before me the last time we spoke about the telephone call," Obus said.

In a previously secret March 29 conversation with the judge, Jordan described the disturbing phone call, which she pronounced "junk." The conversations were made public yesterday after several media organizations, including The Washington Post, asked Obus to unseal transcripts of his discussions with Jordan.

In the first conversation, Jordan told the judge that her two children had expressed concern about vituperative press coverage after the New York Post put her drawing on its front page and labeled her a "batty blueblood" for holding out for an acquittal.

Back then Jordan assured the judge that she was prepared to keep deliberating with her fellow jurors, even though they had clashed over her insistence that prosecutors had not proved the defendants had intended to break the law when they took $170 million in bonuses from the Bermuda company.

In a brief conversation with the judge, Jordan said: "I have very high demands on myself, I think if you knew my people they would say I'm very compassionate too, but my standards are way over, and I did tell them -- that they kept saying to me last week if 11 people can find that is enough evidence, can't you."

Jordan said then she also had withstood accusations from an anonymous caller about alleged payoffs.

"He said how much is the Kozlowski team paying you, and I said, I don't know what you are talking about and hung up the phone, so that was the end of it," she said, according to the transcript.

Still under court seal are a letter Jordan received last week and the transcripts of discussions among the lawyers about how to handle it. Prosecutors are investigating the author of the letter for possible jury tampering, a Class A misdemeanor, but a police source said this week that the author told investigators that he thought a mistrial had already been declared when he sent it. The letter does not make physical threats, the police source said, but instead pointedly questions Jordan for siding with the defendants.