A Maryland man convicted of murdering his ex-girlfriend will get a new trial because of a procedural technicality stemming from a 107-year-old court case involving oyster poaching.
Isa Santiago was convicted in 2006 of murdering LaToya Taylor, his ex-girlfriend who was seeking child support. He was sentenced to serve 55 years in prison.
The Court of Appeals upheld an earlier ruling overturning Santiago’s conviction on Monday, saying his due process was violated when the judge in his trial neglected to confirm with the jury that their verdict was unanimous.
State law requires unanimous decisions. After a verdict is read, lawyers can ask that individual jurors be polled to make sure the decision was unanimous. If a poll isn’t done, the judge or clerk is supposed to confirm the verdict with the jury as a whole.
The process is called “hearkening the jury” and arose from an 1892 case, when a man was sentenced to a year in prison for illegally dredging oysters in the Chesapeake Bay, according to retired Howard County Circuit Court Judge Dennis Sweeney.
To this day, judges and clerks still recite the same phrase to juries that the Court of Appeals ordered more than 100 years ago:
“Hearken to your verdict as the Court hath recorded it, you say [the name of the defendant] is guilty (or not guilty) of the matter wherefore he or she stands indicted, and so say you all.”
Sweeney said the Santiago case shows how serious the state’s highest court considers the process of reciting those “magic words” to the jury.
“The lesson is: They really mean it,” he said.
The Court of Appeals noted that the state had presented a strong case during the 2006 trial, and Santiago didn’t challenge the substance of the prosecutor’s case.
Taylor was a mother of three from Fort Washington when she died in 2003. Her lunchtime disappearance from her job at the Internal Revenue Service’s downtown offices sparked a massive search by several law enforcement agencies, according to media accounts.
Her body was eventually found wrapped in plastic in a field in Southern Maryland, about 150 feet off a highway, according to media accounts.
