Jury duty is a precious, profound responsibility

By Peter Finney Jr. 
Clarion Herald

If there were a Mount Rushmore chiseled of the four pieces of mail you’d least like to receive, it might look like this, but not necessarily in Washington, Jefferson, (Teddy) Roosevelt and Lincoln order: the Internal Revenue Service; the Sewerage and Water Board of New Orleans; Entergy; and the Orleans Criminal District Court Jury Commission.

Each of us has moaned at some point about receiving a jury duty notice, compelling, under the force of law, our appearance as potential jurors. It’s even more unsettling when the jury duty notice involves the possibility of deciding a first- or second-degree murder case.

Until two weeks ago, I had served on only one jury, and that came in a civil trial in which the plaintiff claimed his doctor had not followed the “professional standard of care” in treating his on-the-job injury, leading to chronic pain. He was asking for big-money damages.

Sobering evidence

As meaningful as that was – and it was – I could think of only one thing on Aug. 29, the 19th anniversary of Katrina, as Criminal District Judge Rhonda Goode-Douglas allowed us jurors in the second-degree murder trial of Preston Higgs to examine the state’s evidence against him, displayed in buffet style on a wooden conference table in her Section E courtroom at the conclusion of New Orleans District Attorney Jason Williams’ case.

Should I pick up the ax?

For those who did not follow the trial, in which 39-year-old high school teacher Liz Quackenbush, a native of Minnesota, was axed to death in 2021 in her Desire Street shotgun home, this was gruesome stuff.

The photos taken by homicide detectives on the scene and by the forensic pathologists who conducted the autopsy for the Orleans Parish Coroner’s Office were difficult to see – and impossible to unsee.

The black Fiskars camping ax in the middle of the table, which had been entered into evidence as State Exhibit No. 25, weighed about 1 1/2 pounds. Whenever Williams and Assistant District Attorney Penny Kissinger had picked up the ax during the trial, they slipped on blue protective gloves.

As I picked up the ax to examine it, Quackenbush’s mother, Dianne Holland, and her son Michael sat in the front row of the courtroom, no more than 10 feet away.

When we had been interviewed during the voir dire selection process, we had been warned there would be disturbing images and testimony. One potential juror, whose family member recently had been murdered, said the testimony might be too raw for him to keep an open mind about Higgs’ guilt or innocence. He was excused.

During the four days of the trial, the 14 jurors (two jurors would be designated as alternates before our deliberations began) were not allowed to talk about the case as we huddled for breakfast and lunch in a second-floor space above the courtroom.

Honored our pledge

What personally was most amazing and exhilarating was how faithful everyone was to our pledge to listen to the entirety of the testimony. 

Over donuts at breakfast and po-boys at lunch, we learned tidbits about each other: two of the jurors were lawyers (I always thought that was a golden ticket not to be selected); one was a pain doctor who specializes in treating stroke patients; one was an IT specialist; one was a former school librarian; one was a mom who had to pick up her daughter from school by 5:30 p.m. each day to avoid the $1-a-minute overtime charge; another was a recent graduate, 22, serving on his first jury.

To a person, everyone was impressed with the defense raised by public defender Aaron Zagory, who argued that Higgs had responded to a knife attack to the groin and arm by Quackenbush and was acting in self-defense and in fear for his life, which by law would require the jury to return a not-guilty verdict.

Jury as fact-finders

The jury, however, examined the evidence. No knife was found at the scene. Higgs’ blood was not detected. A home surveillance video of Higgs leaving the house indicated he was wearing the same clothes he had on when he entered, and he showed no discomfort in opening the gate to the front yard or to his car as he began a four-month, multi-state disappearing act. 

In a video Higgs sent to a former female colleague just hours after the killing, he told her he was not going back to jail. Higgs had spent 13 years in prison – from age 19 to 32 – on armed robbery and sexual assault convictions before he had been released from jail and met Quackenbush through an online dating site.

As a registered sex offender, Higgs’ location had to be shared with everyone in the neighborhood. The jury heard evidence that at a party Higgs and Quackenbush recently attended, he had made inappropriate advances toward two of Quackenbush’s female friends.

She wanted him out of the house. She told him to leave. He did not.

And perhaps even more telling, none of Higgs’ family members who had been in contact with him after the killing ever told police that Higgs had mentioned to them that Quackenbush had threatened him with a knife. 

In his closing argument, Williams walked to the back left corner of the courtroom to show where Quackenbush’s body had been found.

“She retreated as far as she could,” Williams said. “There was nowhere else for her to go.”

Decision time

As we went around the room and eventually centered on second-degree murder, we all remembered what we had been told: If guilty, Higgs would be buried at Angola. “Life” meant “life.” No parole.

Each of the 12 jurors had to sign a slip of paper testifying that he or she agreed with the guilty verdict. Eleven slips were slid across the desk to the jury foreman. The youngest juror still held on to his.

“I’m 22, and I’m sending him to prison for the rest of his life,” he said.

“Let’s discuss it, we can absolutely keep talking about it if you feel uncomfortable,” another juror said.

A few seconds later, he signed his name.

The verdict meant Holland, Quackenbush’s mother, somehow could move forward. The jury was dismissed and escorted by sheriff’s personnel out of the courtroom. We walked past the family. Holland and her son were sobbing in the front row. 

“It means I can stop always looking back at how she died and move forward to a much more peaceful future for all of us,” she told reporters later.

Those four days of jury duty were not just profound. They were necessary.

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