Local educator reflects on jury service during monthlong federal trial

On March 9, an historic federal court case concluded with a jury in the Southern District of Ohio convicting former Ohio House Speaker Larry Householder and former Ohio Republican Party chair Mathew Borges for their roles in a racketeering conspiracy. Much has been written about the $61 million bribery scheme, the lengthy investigation and the trial that lasted over a month, but the unsung heroes of the case thus far have been the jurors.

One such individual — the foreperson of the jury — was a Highland County native and local educator, Jarrod Haines. Haines agreed to speak with The Highland County Press to reflect on his service as a juror on what has been described as the biggest public corruption case in state history.

Starting at the beginning, Haines said he first received mail from the Southern District of Ohio regarding potential federal jury duty. Having never served as a juror before, even at the local level, he completed two sets of questionnaires via mail before being summoned to the courthouse.

“I think they said [the jury pool] started at like 300, then went to like 175, and then when I went that day, it was 55 of us,” Haines said.

Going through jury selection in person was an all-day affair, as he arrived around 7:30 a.m., and the jury wasn’t seated until close to 4 p.m.
 
“It was probably the most stressful day, honestly,” Haines said. “The more I sat there, the more I was like, ‘Gosh, they’re going to pick me. What's going on?’”

The voir dire process involved answering a lot of questions, starting with reviewing the names of witnesses for the case.

“We had to fill this witness paper out, where if we knew any of the witnesses, we had to check it,” Haines said. “After that, we probably waited there for two hours before we all went down to the courtroom.

“That’s when they've already seated the jury, kind of. The top 16 are their priority, so they sat them in the jury boxes, and everybody else was like out in the gallery.”

Haines said he was also asked by the judge if he knew any of the other prospective jurors. Coincidentally, an aunt’s sister was also a part of the jury pool, which he pointed out to Judge Timothy Black. An individual from Sabina was also part of the initial group.

The prospective jurors were also questioned on their knowledge of the case. Haines said he was aware of it, but not overly familiar with the specifics.

“I had to go in front of both sets of lawyers, and they had both had pretty big teams,” Haines said. “We had to answer questions about whether we would have a bias on the case.”

Haines said that he told Judge Black that serving alongside people he knew, or hearing from witnesses he knew, or having some outside knowledge of the case would not affect his judgment. However, he said, he did explain that he had responsibilities as the varsity girls basketball coach at McClain.

“[The judge] said that court wouldn't let out every day until 4:30, and it didn’t,” Haines said. “I said, that’s a huge problem. It was like 3 [p.m.] at that time, and I was like, ‘we’re getting ready to practice right now.”

But Haines agreed to “make it work,” and that’s what he did for the next couple months.

"One thing [Judge Black] said was ‘jury duty is an inconvenience for everyone,’” Haines said. “I didn't really have a legitimate excuse that he saw.”

Haines added that Judge Black was “awesome” and gave him a nickname that lasted throughout the trial.

“The judge called me ‘Coach,’” Haines said. “Every time I’d go back in, he’d call me ‘Coach.’”

After the trial was over, Haines said, he was listening to a podcast about the case where a news reporter referred to the jury foreperson as “Coach, this guy who was like 6-10,” so the judge’s nickname for him stuck.

Along with talking to the judge, the jurors also had to go answer various other questions from both attorney teams throughout the afternoon, Haines said.

“Then we went back upstairs and they did their final stuff, and I’d say it was about 3:30, 4 o’clock, we went back down,” Haines said. “They called numbers in fours. Everyone else got to leave, and we got seated and sworn in, and then it started the following Monday.”

Haines said that the jury “was very diverse, from a lot of different backgrounds” and different age groups. Of all the jurors, he had the longest commute to and from Cincinnati each day.

“I think the farthest, other than me, was 45 minutes,” Haines said. “Beyond 75 miles, they’ll get you a hotel. I was 74.”

Haines added that the court did offer to set him up with accommodations, but between his family and work obligations, he declined.

The trial officially began Jan. 23, but only lasted two days before there was a weeklong delay after a juror contracted COVID-19.

“We heard opening arguments and they started with the first witness, and we had a COVID delay,” Haines said.

Throughout the trial, Haines said the jurors were permitted to take notes, but “couldn’t take them with us,” and they could not talk about the case with anyone — including each other — until it was time to deliberate.

As the jury was “partially sequestered,” a typical day for the jurors, Haines said, began with arriving to their designated parking lot, then being driven by a U.S. Marshal to the courthouse.

“The drive down there was a little stressful on me just because you never know what you're going to get,” Haines said. “I was late just once, and I couldn’t help it. There was a wreck that just totally plugged up 71.”

After passing security at the courthouse and being tested for COVID-19 each day, the jurors then received a U.S. Marshal escort to the ninth floor of the courthouse to sit in their jury room.

“We weren't allowed to leave that floor once we got there, unless we went down to the courtroom,” Haines said. “We were marshaled everywhere, basically.”

The jurors would sit in their room for roughly 30 minutes each morning waiting to be called down to the courtroom. They had a jury commissioner who was “awesome and made sure that we always had everything we wanted,” Haines said.

At approximately 9:30 a.m., the jurors would enter the courtroom and listen to testimony for around 90 minutes to two hours before taking a break, then return for another hour or two before taking another break for lunch. The jurors were provided lunch every day, Haines said.

The jury would get another mid-afternoon break before being dismissed around 4:30 p.m. each day.

“That was the longest part, after lunch,” Haines said. “It seemed like it took forever.”

Driving home was also a challenge, because it coincided with rush hour, and making the trip from Cincinnati to Greenfield or wherever the Lady Tigers were playing was stressful.

“I never would make practice and barely made some games,” Haines said. “I usually got home about 6:15, and then I’d have to turn around and do it all over again.”

Another delay — which didn’t really affect the trial so much as it did Haines’ job — was an afternoon in which Haines and eight other jurors were stuck on an elevator for an hour before being rescued by the fire department.

“I missed my first game ever, coaching, in 15 years,” Haines said. “It was awful.”

The following week, the Lady Tigers had to travel to Marietta for their first tournament game, which ultimately was Haines’ final game as their head coach, as he stepped down this offseason to accept an administrative role at MHS. The drive to Marietta was over 200 miles from the Potter Stewart U.S. Courthouse, but Haines said he managed to make it, largely due to the elevator incident.

“I requested it because I missed the game [the day he was stuck in the elevator], and I was hot,” Haines said. “Word got to the judge, and he was super apologetic. I mean, he was all about us jurors and making us comfortable. I requested to get out early [the day of the Marietta game], and court did adjourn early.”

Although Haines declined to elaborate much on the month and a half’s worth of testimony and evidence he heard, he said it was an educational experience in a lot of ways.

“You’re learning about how court goes, and you're asking questions, because you have no clue,” he said. “We would always ask our [jury] commissioner. But then, not just that — you learn about Ohio politics, and I learned a lot about campaign finance and 501(c)(4)s.

“I mean, it was very inconvenient, but I learned a lot about our judicial system, of course, and Ohio politics, the ins and outs, how dirty they can be. Their defense was, ‘yeah, this is politics,’ which is super scary.”

He also said that since he and other jurors were not aware of some of the things going on behind the scenes when they were out of the courtroom, there were some surprises along the way.

“There were things we had no clue about, like that [lobbyist and co-defendant] Neil Clark was dead,” Haines said. “We were waiting for him to take the stand. It was never shared in court — it was not allowed to be shared in court.”

The FBI agent who investigated the case testified for eight straight days, Haines said.

“He did a good job,” Haines said. “There was a lot of circumstantial evidence where they would find it, but they had to put in an order through emails or texts.

“It was crazy. There just wasn't really any evidence that said, ‘I did this.’ It was bank accounts and phone calls.”

The co-conspirators were also “big witnesses in the case,” Haines said, and “a lot of politicians were in and out.”

Haines said he learned details he wasn’t aware of after the case as well, as he said there were some “fireworks” in the courtroom among attorneys when the jurors weren’t present.

“As far as when we were in there, it was pretty controlled,” Haines said. “There were a couple instances.

“I thought it was kind of cool to see how, you know, the prosecution would go to a witness and the defense would come back, and then the prosecution would come back again. I was just really impressed with how professional and the lawyers really knew [the evidence] — especially the prosecution.”

Haines said the lead prosecutor, Emily Glatfelter, was “very, very sharp” and amazed him with her knowledge of the exhibits for the case.

“There were a million pieces of artifacts in those books, and [Glatfelter] knew every single one of them,” Haines said. “When the defense will be crossing somebody, you could see her getting books and going through stuff and finding things, knowing where things were.”

However, Haines said, the defense attorneys were also impressive.

“I thought both teams did an outstanding job, and I think that's probably why it took a long time [deliberating],” Haines said.

As reported by the Ohio Capital Journal, those deliberations took over nine hours.

“I think every juror took their civic duty seriously, which is why it took a while,” Haines said. “We wanted to make sure that we were getting things right.”

Haines was one of the main facilitators of the deliberations since, as mentioned, the fellow jurors named him as their foreperson.

“Really, it was just maintaining discussion and keeping it on track when we were in our jury room deliberating,” Haines said. “We never really could talk about [the case] until deliberation, so you never knew how the person beside you felt until then.

“The deliberations were a little bit more stressful than I thought they'd be, but all in all, it ended up working out, I think, in the right way.”

Haines said he tried several different tactics to make sure the jury stayed “on track” as they reviewed the case by asking each person’s opinion, reviewing exhibits and finally breaking down the elements of the case.  

“We sat there and went around the table, asking everyone, ‘Where are you at?’” Haines said. “Then we tried to look in through stuff.

“They gave us 71 pages of jury instructions, so I just started reading them, because in this case, like there were seven elements of RICO [Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations]. If you met those, that's what mattered, so that's kind of what the jury focused on because you could get off topic real quick.”

Haines said things got a little heated among the jurors during deliberations as they felt pressure to make the right decision, but the debate was mostly civil.

“We just really were making sure that we were making the right decision," Haines said.

“I gave up my life for seven weeks, basically, to do this, so I was going to take it seriously.”

Haines said the jurors deliberated for roughly a day and a half, but once they reached a verdict, he still didn’t want to rush them.

“I said, ‘Let's just sit here and make sure,’” Haines said. “We kind of visited and signed the verdict form, and then we decided. I just wanted to make sure everybody thought it was the right decision.”

Now that the trial has been over for a while, Haines said that he is still in touch with fellow jurors. They recently reunited at a restaurant, seeing each other for the first time since the verdicts were handed down.

Going from never being a juror at any level to serving on one of the most high-profile cases in state history, Haines summed it up:

“It was a cool experience that I never want to do again.”