News : Jury Duty: Stechcon trial demonstrates how rules define allowed evidence

The jurors who convicted Chad Stechcon of first degree burglary, domestic assault with a deadly weapon and false imprisonment on Thursday, Oct. 4, heard testimony and saw evidence of those crimes during two-day trial that preceded the verdict.

They heard how he threatened a woman with a knife after entering her house wearing rubber gloves and carrying electrical tape and zip ties. They saw the letter he wrote from his mother in prison, explaining his actions and verifying most of what the victim said in court.

But there were many things about Chad Stechcon’s life, his criminal history, and his other encounters involving that same victim that the members of the jury were not allowed to know under the rules of evidence for criminal trials.

The jurors did not know that Stechcon had been found guilty of assaulting the same woman in 2006, or that he pleaded guilty to domestic abuse assault causing injury and child endangerment in 2000.

They did not know that despite a restraining order, Stechcon called the victim from a hospital less than a week after the original assault. Neither did the jury know that Stechcon pleaded guilty a month later to attacking that same victim in Linn County, after hiding under her car.

He also, according to court records, tried to contact her twice late in August, and was arrested on a warrant after a high speed chase in which his car collided with a law enforcement vehicle in September of 2011.

The jury was not allowed to know those things because under court rules, a defendant is only on trial for a specific act at a specific time.

“It’s not about what kind of person the defendant is, but whether or not the state can prove that the defendant committed the crimes with which he was charged,” said District Judge Douglas Russell, who presided over the trial.

The jury foreman, a Vinton resident, heard about the other charges that Stechcon had faced only after the verdict.

“That makes me feel better about the verdict,” said the foreman, who told me that while most of the jurors had relatively quickly reached a “guilty” decision, one member of the jury questioned for a while whether an argument between a couple that got heated deserved that level of criminal punishment.

As a member of the potential jury pool during Chad Stechcon’s first trial, I knew nothing about him other than that he was accused of a few crimes.

But during his second trial, as member of the media doing my normal job of researching the background of the defendant like journalists should do in any criminal case, I learned a lot more about Stechcon than jurors are allowed by law and rules of evidence to know.

The difference between what information was available to me as a potential juror and what information from public records is available to the media (and anyone else) highlights an important aspect of jury duty.

“You are not allowed to research this case on your own,” Judge Douglas told the jury.

Modern technology has made it much easier for everyone, including jurors, to research the court and/or criminal history of anyone. At the Iowa Courts web site, every time a person is mentioned in an Iowa court case – from traffic tickets to divorces to estate settlement to criminal trials – that person’s name is placed in the data base. While that technology makes it easier for journalists, potential employers and others interested in learning more about the criminal history of an individual, it also makes that information much more accessible to jurors – who are strictly ordered to avoid accessing that information during the trial.