Oprah Winfrey Called to Jury Duty

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OPRAH CALLED IN FOR JURY DUTY

Oprah Winfrey will be stepping away for her usual talk show setting this week to report for jury duty.

Billionaire Winfrey is scheduled to appear on Monday for jury duty in Illinois' Cook County Criminal Court, along with about 300 other prospective jurors.

Winfrey will not receive special treatment once she's inside the courtroom, but she will be allowed to use an alternate entrance to avoid any problems, says Cook County sheriff's office spokeswoman Sally Daly.

Daly says, "Obviously, due to her popularity and her status, there is the potential -- if she would come in the front public way -- to cause a commotion, confusion or a possible security issue."

Can you imagine being tried for murder or something, you go in to Court for your first Hearing and Oprah is in the Jury? You'd die of shock!

Larger-than-life TV star Oprah Winfrey yesterday landed on a jury set to hear a Chicago slay case, court officials said.

"I'm just hoping it doesn't take longer than a week, because I've got shows to do," a slightly worried Winfrey said before being chosen from among 300 participants to hear the case.

Her selection means the Chicago billionaire will be leaving her ultra-posh digs each day to travel to a rundown courthouse on the other side of the city — all for a whopping paycheck of $17.20 a day.

The case she'll be sitting on involves a deadly dispute over a counterfeit $50 bill.

The defendant, Dion Coleman, is accused of shooting Walter Holley to death after Holley accused Coleman of trying to pass the phony currency.

Before her selection to the jury, Winfrey had said she didn't think she would be picked because she is too opinionated.

Winfrey has appeared in court before — but in front of a jury.

In 1998, she won a suit brought against her by Texas cattlemen who charged that she damaged their business by her on-air comments about diseased meat.

CHICAGO (Reuters) - Oprah Winfrey and 11 fellow jurors on Wednesday found a 27-year-old Chicago man guilty of murder, and the billionaire TV talk show host described the three-day trial as the saddest experience of her life.

After a trial that would have largely escaped notice except for the presence of Winfrey on the jury, she and her fellow jurors deliberated for more than two hours before finding Dion Coleman guilty of killing Walter Holley, 23, over a counterfeit $50 bill that Coleman passed.

"The bigger story here for me is a man is dead, murdered, supposedly over $50, and that the real war is still going on in the inner-city streets every day. Young black men killing each other. (It was) one of the saddest, saddest experiences I've ever had," Winfrey, flanked by other jurors, told reporters afterward in the lobby of the Cook County courthouse.

Winfrey was an attentive juror during the trial, sometimes taking notes, but she said the violent nature of the crime -- Holley was shot seven times, including in the face -- had shaken her when it came time to view photographs of the victim.

"I had problems looking at the graphic evidence. I'm not a person who watches murder shows. If there's a gun involved and it's in a movie, I turn away. I make a choice not to go to violent films. I make a choice not to watch violence on television or read about it," she said.

The $17.20 daily paycheck for jurors was a far cry from Winfrey's usual income as the queen of daytime talk that has helped make her a billionaire.

Jury experts questioned why either lawyer would agree to keep such a high-profile juror whose opinion might sway the rest of the panel.

Winfrey said she was not the jury foreman, and said she tried to tread lightly during deliberations in order not to make herself "a jury of one."

It may have been Winfrey's notoriety -- and not her reputation as an honest and intelligent television personality -- that led the attorneys to keep her on the jury, said Dr. Philip Anthony, a jury expert.

It must've been hard actually. It seems to me that a LOT of Americans are Oprah-crazy and if you were on the Jury with her, you would kind of get sucked into beliveing her side of the arguement. I hope they made the right decision.

Oprah invites fellow jurors to come on her show

Oprah Winfrey, the queen of daytime television, may only have been paid $17.20 (£9.40) a day for her recent stint as a juror but she plans to cash in on the experience by featuring it on her show next week.

Ms Winfrey, a billionaire, was one of 12 jurors who convicted a Chicago man of murder on Wednesday following a three-day trial in Cook County, Illinois. Next week some of those jurors will appear on the show with her. In case anyone might have thought Ms Winfrey was trivialising the affair, she assured a mass of reporters outside the court that she had taken it very seriously.

"It was an eye-opener for all of us," she said. "It's a huge reality check; there's a whole other world going on out there. When your life intersects with others in this way, it is forever changed." She added: "The bigger story here is that a man is dead, murdered, supposedly over $50, and that the real war is still going on in the inner-city streets every day. Young black men killing each other. It was one of the saddest, saddest experiences I've ever had."

Ms Winfrey, who initially opposed going on the jury because she believed she was too opinionated, said the media attention surrounding the trial had been unhelpful.

Reporters paid great attention to her every move in the court, down to such fascinating details as what Ms Winfrey ate for lunch on Wednesday.

"This is not good for the victim's family. This is not about Oprah Winfrey. The fact is, a man has been murdered," she said, without explaining how next week's show will help the family. Other jurors, meanwhile, were delighted to have been sharing the jury bench with the television star. "It was a lot of fun," said Suzanne Goodman, who has agreed to appear in the special feature next week. "It was like being on her show."

One person who will not be participating in the show is the defendant, Dion Coleman, 27. Ms Winfrey and the other jurors took just two hours to find him guilty of first-degree murder. He is due to be sentenced next month and faces up to 45 years in jail for shooting Walter Holley, 23, in February 2002.

More than a dozen reporters and sketch artists filled the seats in the cramped courtroom. Ms Winfrey called all the attention distracting.

Some had argued that Ms Winfrey's fame made her an unsuitable juror. However, "she was accepted by both parties and we want fair, intelligent jurors on a jury whether it's Ms Winfrey or anyone else," said the prosecutor Kathy Van Kampen.

The defence lawyer, Cynthia Brown, said that she had thought Ms Winfrey would be a good juror because she had been a lawsuit defendant - in a 1998 defamation case brought by Texas cattlemen - and might better understand what it was like to be accused of something. The Texas farmers accused her of making false statements about the risks of BSE on her show. A jury exonerated Ms Winfrey.

Not everyone's happy about her being on the Jury: