Foreman: Jury’s Deliberations ‘Extremely Emotional’

Raymond Seymour, an airline pilot, flew Air Force combat missions over Vietnam, but he said Friday that they didn’t affect him as profoundly as spending 2 months on the jury that convicted Sheryl Lynn Massip of murdering her 6-week-old son.

Seymour, 40, of Irvine was foreman of the eight-woman, four-man jury that delivered its verdict on Thursday.

“It has been on my mind ever since,” he said. “I don’t know that I will ever get over it.

“I can only speak for myself, but I think that everyone there, we will pray for Sheryl.”

During interviews, Seymour was reluctant to talk about the jury’s 7 days of deliberation or what weighed most heavily in the verdict. Jurors agreed “to some degree” not to do that for fear of being misquoted or having their statements “taken out of context,” he said.

Difficult Decision

“I don’t think I could ever put into words what that decision was like,” he said. “It will take a while to adjust. I’m just trying to relax now, but there will never be a normal routine again.”

Seymour did not want to discuss what sentence he thought Massip should receive, saying the jury was not allowed to consider that during its deliberations. The sentencing judge “has a tough decision,” Seymour conceded.

He was reluctant to discuss witnesses, but he described Dr. Kaushal K. Sharma, the USC School of Medicine psychiatrist who testified for the prosecution, as “a very well-spoken, professional witness.” Sharma testified that he did not believe Massip had been insane when she ran over her baby with a car.

“You really have to put your sympathies aside” while deliberating, Seymour said. But he described the deliberations as “extremely emotional . . . the toughest thing I’ve ever done.

“The fact that it was a young mother, that it was a child (who was killed), that didn’t make it any easier. Had it been a drug-related thing or something like that, I don’t think there would have been the emotion.

“It was very hard. No one will ever understand, because they were not there. We’re all human beings, and human beings have emotions,” Seymour said.

Strong Instructions

“We were called upon and assigned a task. None of us were volunteers. We had very strong instructions (from the judge), Seymour said. They were very complicated, and the jurors had a difficult time figuring them out, he said.

Was Massip well defended? “From what I saw, yes,” Seymour said. “I don’t have that much courtroom experience, but I thought they (the prosecutor and defense attorney) were both very competent. . . . They both did good jobs.”

And what does the jury’s verdict mean?

“The 12 of us (jurors) have to understand what we did; nobody else does,” Seymour said.

A fellow juror, Dean Johnson, 37, of Anaheim, agreed.

“We weren’t sitting there trying to send any messages,” said Johnson, a supervisor for a computer software development. “We were just 12 people off the street. Who are we to start sending messages?

“I don’t think anyone can say we made a rash decision. We looked at all the law and evidence. Unless somebody was in that courtroom and in that jury deliberation room, I don’t think they are in a place to second-guess.”