Jury selection continued this week in the trial of Robert Springsteen IV, the first of three defendants to be tried in the notorious 1991 yogurt shop murder case. The Travis County District Court jury office called nearly 500 people for jury duty — the largest pool in county history — in an effort to extract the 12 jurors and two alternates needed to hear the case, which has drawn substantial local and national media attention over the nine years since four teenage girls were found murdered in a North Austin yogurt shop. (Of the first 200 jurors called, only one said they’d never heard anything about the case).
On April 16, two pools of 100 jurors each packed the 167th district courtroom of Judge Mike Lynch for the voir dire process, and both prosecutors and defense attorneys addressed the diverse group of county residents. The following day, attorneys began the marathon run of individual interviews (10 per day), in which each juror is asked about his or her background and ability to follow the law — including their personal views on the death penalty, which Springsteen could face if convicted.
While the proceedings have moved fairly swiftly — as of press time, eight of the 14 jurors had already been selected — questions about imposing the death penalty have troubled many candidates. “I’ve never had to think about it much,” answered one potential juror during questioning by Assistant District Attorney Robert Smith, “but the point that gives me pause is the death penalty. I’ve always viewed it from a detached view. I’m not comfortable being the person in that position.”
In fact, most of the jurors who’ve been stricken “for cause” have been disqualified because they said they would be unable to impose the death penalty. Prosecutor Darla Davis said this is not unusual. “A lot of people do agree with [the death penalty] in the abstract,” she told a potential juror, “but they find they have a hard time being involved in it.” Nonetheless, the attorneys said they feel confident a jury will be selected from the initial group of 200. Defense attorney Joe Sawyer said he is encouraged by the general “open-mindedness” of the jury pool. “There aren’t as many people predisposed as I thought there would be,” he said. “Because, I think for once the publicity has been even-handed, pro and con, as opposed to the usual [one-sided] coverage of such a high-profile case. That stuff just isn’t here.”
Springsteen, 27, along with 27-year-old Michael Scott and 25-year-old Maurice Pierce, are charged with capital murder in the deaths of Amy Ayers, Eliza Thomas, and sisters Jennifer and Sarah Harbison. The four victims were found inside an “I Can’t Believe It’s Yogurt” shop on Dec. 6, 1991. The case was unsolved for eight years, despite nearly 5,000 potential leads. In 1999 police announced that both Scott and Springsteen had confessed to the killings during police interrogation. But questions about the two confessions are likely to be a focal point of the case, as defense lawyers are poised to claim APD detectives coerced the confessions. Defense lawyers in 1999 told reporters from the CBS news show 48 Hours that if there was “one thing that doesn’t mean anything in this case, it’s the confessions.”
Indeed, Scott’s confession came after 18 hours of police interrogation, during which time the defendant changed his story repeatedly. Further, defense attorneys will have a heyday over police videotapes of the interrogation showing Det. Robert Merrill holding a gun to Scott’s head. The trial is scheduled to begin as soon as a jury is selected. If the trial follows its estimated pace, Springsteen’s fate should be in the jury’s hands by early June.
This article appears in April 27 • 2001.