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To the editor:
I am appalled to see all the post trial editorials and letters written by Diane Kidwell and her entourage who are attempting to justify the injustice imposed on the Commonwealth of Virginia by 23 of the 24 jurors impaneled to hear her case.
I am not suggesting the jurors did not fulfill their obligation. They did. Jurors are obligated only to hear the testimony and render a verdict. All were present during the proceedings and some of them even stayed awake.
Where I feel the juries went awry was in their misinterpretation of the facts. Instead of assimilating them at face value as a whole, the first jury concocted their own and the second jury ignored most of the testimony save Diane Kidwell's selfserving tale.
In the first trial, 11 jurors opted for acquital, disregarding even the defendant’s testimony. They based their decision, as reported to the newspaper, on one of the jurors’ war stories about bulldozers being used as weapons during WWII. In Diane Kidwell’s letter to the editor, November 17. she states: “I did not shoot at Mr. Spellman for making threatening passes at me with the bulldozer.” The first jury obviously committed a grotesque judgmental error.
The second jury, on the other hand, paid close attention to the testimony, at least that of the perpetrator, when she told the court that she was in fear for her life when Mr. Spellman reached for his gun.
I ask what gun? How did Kidwell know he was wearing a gun? She testified that her brother told her he had seen a gun. Her brother did not testify. This gun was not discovered until an hour after the killing during the standard inventory of a victim’s effects. Diane Kidwell did not tell the authorities when they arrived that Mr. Spellman had a gun nor did the officers observe it when they discovered his body because it was indistinguishable as it wras located under a down vest and a completely buttoned flannel shirt.
Like the officers, neither Diane Kidwell nor her brother could have seen a gun under all that clothing.
Diane Kidwell was secluded in her house w ith her family and attorney for several hours after the shooting before telling her story to the authorities. I suggest
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